23. The written standard and common errors

🔴 پێشکەوتوو · وانەی ٢٣ لە ٢٣

ئەم پەڕەیە ئێستا بە ئینگلیزییە.

This last lesson is about writing Kurmanji correctly: the spelling problems that appear in real texts, how zimankit repairs or flags them (skills_kmr/orthography.py), and the grammar errors a checker must catch.

1. Turkish and other foreign letters

Most Kurmanji writers also type Turkish, and Turkish keyboards produce letters that do not belong to the Hawar alphabet:

wrong	right	note
ı (dotless i)	i
İ (dotted capital I)	I
é, è, ë	ê	the circumflex is the only Kurmanji accent
í, ï	î
ú, ü	û	ü is a Turkish letter
ș (Romanian)	ş	looks identical
ğ, ö	·	not Kurmanji: usually a Turkish name

2. What the normaliser fixes

typed text	after normalising	problems the validator still finds	note
Kürdistan	Kûrdistan	·	Turkish ü for û
şéwe	şêwe	·	acute é for ê
İro baran dibare.	Iro baran dibare.	·	Turkish dotted İ
Ez dıçım malê.	Ez diçim malê.	·	Turkish dotless ı
Ew’ê hat.	Ew'ê hat.	·	curly apostrophe

3. What the validator rejects

Some words cannot be standard Kurmanji at all, usually Turkish names or typing errors. The validator reports them; the wordlist pipeline keeps frequent capitalised ones as proper nouns:

typed text	after normalising	problems the validator still finds	note
Erdoğan	Erdoğan	Erdoğan: foreign letter(s): ğ; non-Hawar character(s): ğ	ğ is not a Kurmanji letter
Göktürk	Göktûrk	Göktûrk: foreign letter(s): ö; non-Hawar character(s): ö	ö, ü
kurrrd	kurrrd	kurrrd: tripled letter; four consonants in a row	three r in a row

4. Real words, wrong place

Some mistakes produce valid words. Only grammar can catch them:

error	wrong	right	lesson
wrong ezafe gender	* bava min	bavê min	8
direct case after a preposition	* li mal	li malê	9, 16
direct agent in the past	* ez nan xwar	min nan xwar	14
oblique object in the past	* min wê dît (meaning her)	min ew dît	14
verb agrees with the agent in the past	* min tu dîtim	min tu dîtî	14
oblique subject of an intransitive verb	* min hatim	ez hatim	13
bi- kept after a preverb	* birabe	rabe	20
na- instead of ni-	* nazanim	nizanim	21

The third, fifth and sixth are checked by zimankit’s detect_alignment (lessons 14 and 22). The others need the case and gender information the analyzer already provides. Combining them is the plan for a full Kurmanji grammar checker.

Summary

Use only Hawar letters: ê î û ş ç, never Turkish ı İ ğ ö ü or accented é í ú.
zimankit normalises the common confusions and rejects impossible spellings.
Grammar errors (case, ezafe gender, ergative agreement) need context: the next step is a grammar checker.

Congratulations, you have finished the Kurmanji course. The reference pages have every verb and noun of the course in full.