Talk:Kurdish language/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Unacceptable reliance on Mackenzie as a source

The first objection is clearly that he is used as the primary source despite being 50 years old and being highly questionable in its metholodology, as well as the expertise of Mackenzie in the field of Kurdology when his work was produced so long ago. Additionally, the ethnic origin theory he provides is totally irrelevant and based on the same flawed metholody and inconclusive sample sizes and analysis. Mackenzie is NOT a reliable source for these reasons.

What is perhaps more so disturbing is that the sources provided for his alleged studies are merely small and hideously undetailed mentions in the works of OTHERS. I have attempted to provide criticism of Mackenzie's work based on the immensely valid point made by van B., whose work was sourced for the information on Mackenzie's study while his CRITICISM WAS COMPLETELY LEFT OUT. That is not neutral! The limitations of Mackenzie's so-called studies, as well as inter-connected nature of his theories in that many are based on the findings of already unreliable studies he has conducted, render most of his arguments completely invalid and unscientific, yet before I touched this article, his opinion was stated as fact, indeed the preposterous claim that it was the "LEADING" opinion, with no trace of academic crticism of his work being mentioned. He appears to do no more than draw conclusions and make assumptions with little fact to go on, not least of all because of the unacceptable limitations and incomprehensive scope of his studies, but the limitations the studies already face by the lack of consistent evidence aside from words of Median origin in Old Persian, which apparently is totally acceptable to compare to modern Kurdish and declare them different! How ABSURD. More so, the claims of a relationship between Kurdish and Persian as being genetic rather than a result of influence. WHY would Kurdish have such origins, yet have formed into the language it has today despite the centuries of suzerainty Persians held over Kurdish populations? It doesnt even make clear which dialects of Kurdish he has analysed, as it is common knowledge that Sorani Kurdish is vastly influenced in vocabulary and grammar by its proximity to South-Western Iranian languages, most significantly in this case from PERSIAN.

This is a complete shambles. These sources are totally unreliable and i find it obscene that whoever had written the article in the form I found it relied upon a SINGLE SOURCE who also happened to be the LEAST RELIABLE. Stop providing decisive information, and try to outline the differing viewpoints IN EQUAL SHARE by different academics. What happened to Minorsky? He is an EXPERT source, far more reliable than this Mackenzie or the Armenian ideologue "G. Asatrian" whose anti-Kurdish sentiments are so abundantly clear upon reading his work that it makes me cringe to think he believes he's hiding it well. This is the man who would label the Yezidi religious group a separate ethnic group from Kurds because they've at times been in conflict which is, whatever he may say, so retarded that I believe most academics would find it positively laughable. In addition, he refuses to recognise even those Zazaki speakers who identify as Kurds as anything but what he'd believe a totally separate and distantly related ethnic group. By their own identification! Yet the Yezidis? It's not enough that they even speak Kurdish and are ethnically Kurdish, but because they refuse to identify as such, they're given the status as a separate ethnic group. Anyway, I've made myself incoherently clear. Fix this shit!

languages, plural?

From what I've read, it seems that the Kurdish "dialects" are not any more closely related to each other than they are to several other Western Iranian languages; they're considered Kurdish only because their speakers are ethnic Kurds. Should we move the article to the plural? — kwami (talk) 01:36, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I'd say yes. And move the 'dialects' to "... language".--JorisvS (talk) 07:49, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

We should do some research about WP:COMMONNAME, and how it is commonly addressed in the literature. I'm not familiar with the topic, but we should bear in mind that Arabic language and German language are practically always used in singular, despite the fact that the underlying dialects may even be mutually unintelligible; however, they have [practically a] single standard variant each. Now, judging by the lead, Kurdish has at least two; still, I would go after our sources. No such user (talk) 11:27, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Not that it's really a RS, but the ISO standard has these are four languages, and Ethnologue has "Kurdish" as their superior node. There are several hundred hits at GBooks about Kurdish languages, and only a few are 'X and Kurdish languages'. I'll move the article. — kwami (talk) 10:20, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

When it is used in plural, Zazaki and Gorani are also counted in. Otherwise, Kurmanji and Sorani are just northern and southern dialects of same single language. Roboskiye (talk) 18:06, 13 October

The difference between languages and dialects are not linguistic. Kurds call all the dialects that they are speaking as Kurdish. Similar to chinese dialects, both Cantonese and Mandarin are regarded as dialects by the people living in China. I urge you to read textbooks of History of Languages. All Kurdish dialects are one language because the distinction between languages and dialects are sociopolitical not linguistic.