State-funded dictionary in Turkish-Kurdish ready

ANKARA - Anatolia News Agency

Hürriyet photo

The Turkish Language Institute (TDK) has come to an end of the preparation phase of a Kurdish dictionary.

A commission consisting of academics whose mother tongues are Kurdish has completed the Turkish-Kurdish chapter of the dictionary. The dictionary is in the Kurmanji dialect, the dialect spoken most widely by Kurds in Turkey, and was prepared for elementary schools’ elective Kurdish classes. There are nearly 10,000 words in the dictionary and it is planned to enter into use in the 2013-2104 academic year, TDK head Mustafa S. Kaçalin said.

Kaçalin also said that a version for adults would be also prepared if demanded. Nezir Gümüş, Ahmet Korkut and Ziver İlhan, all native Kurdish-speaking graduate students from the Kurdish Language and Culture Department of Mardin Artuklu University’s Living Languages Institute began working on the project in 2012.