Kurdish Stories from my Collection

Extract

The stories published in this issue of the Bulletin are from the same stock as the tale of Suto and Tato given in Vol. III, Part I, which I had the good fortune to publish with the most kind help of the late Major E. B. Soane. whose premature death we have to deplore so deeply. The Kurdish in which our stories are written may be termed the Central dialect of the Northern group according to E. B. Soane's classification. The author, Molla Said Kazi of Kurdistan, was a learned Kurd from Nahri, the capital of Shamsdinan. Indeed, we see in the text some characteristics which can only be met with in the Northern group, such as the plural in īd, the termination rā, the preposition zhe (from), which is only used in the Northern group and replaces la which has the same value in the Southern group; and the preterite hābū (he was), which only extends as far south as Rawandiz, whose dialect is decisively Southern. But on the other hand, there are some peculiarities which lead one to think that this Shamsdinan dialect is not a pure Northern group dialect, but may present a transition to the Southern group. For example this dialect uses indifferently as the genitive particle ä and ī it also makes indiscriminate use of the preposition zhe or la. These, of course, are only faint signs, but one can hope that further careful investigations may furnish other proofs. Anyhow, we must remember that Molla Said was born in the Nahia of Girdi, i.e. the most southward part of this qazā.