In their latest effort to make the Kurdish language more widely available on multimedia applications, Kurdish IT experts Layik Hama and Sia Nariman recently developed a Kurdish keyboard for iOS 13.
Their keyboard is among a raft of world languages adopted by the new system.
In a tweet thanking his colleague Nariman for the joint endeavor, Hama said: “The work paid off… We moved a big step forward. I was waiting for this day since iOS 4 came out.”
Kurdish is composed of four main dialects: Upper Kurdish (Kurmanji or Badini), Central Kurdish (Sorani), Lower (Southern) Kurdish, and Zazaki-Gorani.
It is already available on other key internet applications, but its adoption by tech giant Apple is seen as a major achievement.
The Kurmanji dialect was added to Google Translate in 2016, with linguists in Halabja already working to add the Sorani dialect to the application.
Bokan Hassan, one of the contributors on the project, told Rudaw: “The most important thing for us is to continue this work until Google approves the dialect and it’s added to the system.”
Students learn the Kurdish language at the Musa Bin Nusayr school in the northeastern Syrian city of Qamishli. File photo: Delil Souleiman / AFPAlthough Kurds make up the second largest ethnic group in Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria, their language is only officially recognized in Iraq.
In Turkey, the official use of Kurdish was banned for almost a century, while in Iran and Syria it is yet to be officially recognized.
In Iran, Kurdish is regarded as a mere regional dialect, while Turkey is openly hostile to its promotion and use.
In Iraqi Kurdistan, Kurdish is the official language of government and media. In Iraq as a whole, it is recognized as an official language alongside Arabic. Kurdish is found on official paperwork including passports and currency.
The Iraqi Education Ministry has also made the Kurdish language mandatory in Iraqi schools.
Kurmanji is written in the Latin alphabet while Sorani has its own script similar to Arabic. Sorani is the official dialect of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
However, many products made in the Kurdistan Region often do not feature Kurdish words of their packaging – opting instead for the more widely understood languages of Arabic and English.
