The story of the letters we use to write Kurdish (Kurmanji) today, such as ê, î, û, ç, ş, x, w and q, goes back to the 1930s.
The Hawar magazine
In 1932, in Damascus, the magazine Hawar, published by Celadet Bedirxan and Kamuran Bedirxan, began to appear. It became one of the most important publications to popularise the Latin-based Kurdish (Kurmanji) alphabet. Today this alphabet has 31 letters, each representing a single sound, which makes learning to read and write Kurdish relatively easy.
Similar to Turkish, but different
Most of the alphabet is shared with Turkish, but to represent sounds specific to Kurdish it uses the circumflex vowels ê, î, û as well as the letters x, w and q, which do not exist in the Turkish alphabet. The word xwendin (to read), for example, contains two of these letters (x and w) at once.
Kurdish in the digital world
That these letters display correctly, can be typed on keyboards and exist in fonts matters for Kurdish to thrive in the digital world. The fonts used on this site support all of ê, î, û, ç and ş; you can reach the Kurdish version of the site here.
Producing Kurdish content is one of the strongest ways to keep the language alive. We continue on this path with our radio broadcasts and our articles.