Kurdistan Region

UHH/privat

Ludwig Paul, University of Hamburg

The project aims to investigate the multiple historical, linguistic, cultural, social and political factors that determine the linguistic situation of the autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) today and that are responsible for the recent rise of English. The special features of Kurdish lie in the linguistic-cultural and to some extent also political emancipation that is possible for a Kurdish community within the KRI for the first time in modern history, and in the tension between self-determination, political reality and economic-social constraints.

Linguistic questions and problems such as the relationship between the two main Kurdish varieties (Badinani and Sorani) and the relationship between Kurdish and Arabic and English are embedded in these contexts. English, as a promise of modernity and prosperity, may become a greater threat to Kurdish cultural identity in the near future than the attempts at Arabisation by the Iraqi state, which Kurds have bravely fended off for decades. The discourse on this topic within Kurdish society is also taken into account and lends the project additional social relevance.