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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Kurdish language forbidden in Kirkuk hospitals |
| 2005-04-20 |
| The Kurdish newspaper Aso reported on Sunday that the Kurdish language is still not allowed to be used in Kirkuk's hospitals. The newspaper reported that in a meeting in Kirkuk Childrens Hospital, Dr. Shahen requested that Kurdish writings in the hospital should be removed and only Arabic should be used as it is the language of the holy Islamic book Qur'an. The same newspaper reported a few weeks ago in issue number 69 that the Iraqi Islamic Party, the large Sunni party which boycotted the January elections in Iraq, condemned the use of Kurdish with the Latin alphabet in its newspaper 'Dar-Al-Salam' and regarded it as a threat to the Arabic language. |
| Posted by:phil_b |
| #11 Thanks LH. It was a serious question. Are you here all week was for TW hilarious comment. :) |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-04-20 6:13:17 PM |
| #10 I think they looked at Cyrillic and said, screw that, Latin works better. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet 0’ Doom 2005-04-20 6:02:41 PM |
| #9 BTW - veal can be kosher if its slaughtered properly (just like beef). But no, it cant be consumed in proximity to dairy products - but then thats true for any meat, even, by a stretch of rabbinic logic that troubles even me, poultry.:) I'll be in and out, as usual. |
| Posted by: Liberalhawk 2005-04-20 4:33:31 PM |
| #8 Are you here all week? So how's the veal? BTW is veal kosher? Or does that come under seething the calf in its mothers milk? WTF? |
| Posted by: Liberalhawk 2005-04-20 4:30:05 PM |
| #7 The fact is that Arabic script lacks vowels so while it can more or less transcribe vowel-poor languages like Arabic (only three vowels: a, u, i plus a kind of semi-vowel who could be transcribed e) it is unadequate for vowel-rich languages like Turkish and indo-european languages who have ten or more vowel sounds if you count accented characters (or several ways to utter the same letter like in English) and a lot of diphtongs so there is no way to guess the word by looking at the consons |
| Posted by: JFM 2005-04-20 4:28:32 PM |
| #6 from http://www.omniglot.com/writing/kurdish.htm Kurdish is a member of the Western Iranian branch of Indo-European languages. Approximately 26 million people speak Kurdish in Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Kazakstan and Afghanistan Kurdish began to appear in writing in a version of the Persian alphabet during the 7th century AD. However for much of their history, the Kurds have prefered to use Arabic, Persian or Turkish for their literary works. The first well-known Kurdish poet was Ell Herirl (1425-1495), and Kurdish literature started to become popular during the 16th century. In Turkey Kurdish is written with the Latin alphabet and in parts of the former Soviet Union it is written with the Cyrillic alphabet. When Kurdish is written with the Arabic script, Arabic loan words retain their originally spelling, though are often pronounced quite differently in Kurdish. |
| Posted by: too true 2005-04-20 12:11:21 PM |
| #5 Are you here all week? So how's the veal? BTW is veal kosher? Or does that come under seething the calf in its mothers milk? |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-04-20 11:50:39 AM |
| #4 You are up to a third hand there, Liberalhawk. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-04-20 10:48:00 AM |
| #3 condemned the use of Kurdish with the Latin alphabet I presume Kurdish is traditionally written in Arabic script, like Farsi (Persian) to which it is related. OTOH I wonder if Kurdish is written in Latin script in Turkey, since Turkish is written in Latin script (since Ataturk). I could see where the Iraqi Kurds would be interested in switching to Latin script, both to improve ties to their brothers in Turkey, to be closer to the West, and to differentiate themselves from both Arabs AND Iranians. OTOH I could also see where Iraqi Arabs could find this threatening(and i dont suppose the Turks would be too pleased either - while they themselves use the Latin script, they can hardly be happy with links between their Kurds and the Iraqi Kurds) |
| Posted by: Liberalhawk 2005-04-20 10:06:35 AM |
| #2 Good. The more the Arabs insist in linking Arabic and Kuran, the more they insist on cultural imperialism the more the Kurds will see Islam as merely a tool for enslavement and reject it. |
| Posted by: JFM 2005-04-20 9:12:18 AM |
| #1 If they want to speak "arabic" they can move their sunni asses to Saudi "Arabia" except the Saudi's won't have them. Being the losers means you lose. Something "Arabs" will argue to death because that is all they know how to do, argue and kill other humans. The time the sunni have for screwing around with this bull shit is running out. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet 0’ Doom 2005-04-20 12:19:37 AM |