ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Wikimedia on Wednesday launched an online dictionary in the Sorani dialect of the Kurdish language and Kurds are being called on to contribute to the crowdsourced site.
Wiktionary, an online dictionary by the US-based Wikimedia Foundation, is available in dozens of languages. The Kurdish dialect of Kurmanji is the thirteenth largest with over 740,000 entries. The dictionary is also available in Zazaki dialect.
The Sorani edition of the dictionary was launched on Wednesday and has nearly 5,000 entries.
The dictionary is called Wikiferheng in the three dialects, which translates to Wiktionary.
Mohammed Sardar, a volunteer of the Sorani dictionary and an admin of Wikipedia, told Rudaw English on Thursday that volunteers have been working on it for nearly a year.
“A group of volunteers from Southern and Eastern Kurdistan contributed to the establishment of the Sorani edition of Wikiferheng,” he said, referring to the Kurdistan Region and Kurdish areas in western Iran.
“They have been working hard for more than a year to launch the Sorani Wikiferheng,” he added.
The team of volunteers plans to expand the Sorani dictionary “relying on available and reliable resources,” he added, calling on Kurds to contribute to the project.
There are several dialects of the Kurdish language. The most common are Kurmanji, Sorani and Zazaki. Sorani is mostly spoken in the Kurdistan Region, where it is the official language, and the Kurdish provinces of Iran. Kurmaji is predominant in northeast Syria (Rojava) and southeast Turkey (Bakur). Zazaki is mostly spoken in southeast Turkey by the Zaza Kurds.
