On “International Mother Language Day” ... The Kurdish language is ranked the third in the world

ARK News… In order to enhance awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism, the world celebrates “International Mother Language Day” on February 21 of each year.

It was decided to designate that day during the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in November 1999.

The Kurdish language is a member of the Indo-European language family, and it constitutes the first language or mother tongue of more than 50 million people worldwide, according to some statistics.

The Kurdish language is one of 168 languages listed in the Wikipedia dictionary, known as “Wikipedia,” and it ranks eighth in terms of the number of words.

According to the English dictionary website, the number of Kurdish words in the dictionary reached 918,123 words. In contrast, there are 67,624 Arabic words, 104,581 Persian words, and 359,195 Turkish words.

The Kurdish words that were added to the dictionary are in the Upper Kurmancî and Lower Kurmancî dialects only, that is, they do not include words from the Kurdish, Zaza and Lor dialects. According to the English Wikipedia newspaper, when all its dialects and sub-dialects are taken into account, it includes 1.2 million words and expressions, and thus it ranks third in the world after Finnish and Korean.

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