People often talk about "Kurdish" as if it's a single language. It's not. Kurdish is a group of related dialects, and the two biggest branches, Badini (a form of Kurmanji) and Sorani, differ in grammar, vocabulary, and writing system. If you're trying to understand the Kurdish language landscape, knowing these differences is essential.
What is Badini (Kurmanji)?
Badini is a variety of Kurmanji, the northern branch of Kurdish. It's spoken primarily in the Badinan region of northern Iraq, including Duhok, Zakho, Aqrah, and Amedi. Kurmanji as a whole is the most widely spoken Kurdish dialect, with an estimated 15 to 20 million speakers stretching across Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and the European diaspora.
What makes Badini distinct within the Kurmanji family is its location and its script. In Iraq, Badini is written in Arabic script, while Kurmanji speakers in Turkey and Europe use Latin script. The spoken language is very similar across these regions, but the writing looks completely different.
What is Sorani?
Sorani, also called Central Kurdish, is spoken mainly in the Sulaymaniyah and Erbil governorates of Iraq and in parts of western Iran. It has around 6 to 8 million speakers. Sorani is one of the two official languages of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (alongside Arabic), which gives it a strong institutional presence.
Sorani is written exclusively in a modified Arabic script. Unlike Badini and Kurmanji, there is no widely used Latin-script version of Sorani. This means Sorani has one writing system, while Badini effectively has two.
Grammar: The Biggest Differences
The grammatical differences between Badini and Sorani are significant enough that linguists sometimes debate whether they should be considered separate languages rather than dialects. Here are the main areas where they differ.
Grammatical gender.Kurmanji, including Badini, has grammatical gender. Every noun is either masculine or feminine, and this affects articles, adjectives, and verb agreement. Sorani has mostly lost grammatical gender. Nouns don't carry gender marking in the same way, which simplifies some aspects of the grammar.
Case system.Kurmanji uses a case system for nouns. Nouns change form depending on whether they're the subject or object of a sentence. This is sometimes called the oblique case system. Sorani doesn't have this feature. Word order and prepositions handle the job instead.
Verb conjugation. Both dialects use a split ergative system in past tenses, but the details differ. In Kurmanji, past transitive verbs agree with the object rather than the subject, which can be confusing for learners. Sorani handles this differently, with its own set of verb agreement patterns.
Ezafe construction.Both dialects use an ezafe (a linking particle between nouns and modifiers), but the forms differ. Kurmanji uses "a" for feminine and "ê" for masculine, while Sorani uses "i" as a general linker. This small difference shows up constantly in everyday speech.
Script Differences
Script is one of the most visible differences. Sorani uses a modified Arabic script exclusively. Badini, because it's a form of Kurmanji, can be written in both Arabic and Latin scripts. In Iraq, Arabic script dominates. In Turkey and the diaspora, Latin script is the standard.
Even when both Badini and Sorani use Arabic script, the specific letter forms and conventions differ. They are not interchangeable. A reader of Sorani Arabic script would recognize many letters in Badini Arabic script but would encounter unfamiliar spelling patterns and vocabulary.
Vocabulary Differences
Badini and Sorani share a common Kurdish root vocabulary, but centuries of geographic separation and different cultural influences have created real differences. Sorani has absorbed more loanwords from Arabic and Persian due to its proximity to Arabic-speaking regions and Iran. Badini shares vocabulary with Kurmanji varieties in Turkey, including some Turkish-influenced words. For common everyday items, the words can be completely different. A Badini speaker saying "av" (water) and a Sorani speaker saying "aw" are close, but in many other cases the words diverge much further.
Mutual Intelligibility
Can a Badini speaker understand Sorani, and vice versa? The answer is: partially, and it depends. People who have had exposure to the other dialect through media, travel, or living in mixed areas generally understand more. Someone from Duhok who has watched Sorani television for years will follow a Sorani conversation better than someone who hasn't. But without that exposure, comprehension can be limited. The grammar is different enough and the vocabulary gaps are wide enough that full mutual intelligibility is not automatic. Many Kurdish dialect experts compare the relationship to that between Spanish and Portuguese, or Dutch and German. Related, recognizable, but not the same.
Which Should You Learn?
This depends entirely on your goals. If you're connecting with family or friends in the Badinan region (Duhok, Zakho), or in the Kurmanji-speaking diaspora in Europe, Badini is the right choice. If your connections are in Sulaymaniyah or Erbil, or if you're working with Kurdish institutions that use Sorani as their official language, then Sorani makes more sense.
There is no wrong answer. Both are living languages with millions of speakers and rich cultural traditions. The important thing is to pick the one that matches the community you want to engage with.
How This Translator Handles Badini
Most translation tools that claim to support Kurdish actually support Sorani, or a generic version of Kurmanji that doesn't account for Badini-specific vocabulary and usage. This translator was built specifically for Badini. It produces output in both Arabic and Latin scripts simultaneously, handles Badini vocabulary and grammar patterns, and supports translation between Badini and 11 other languages. Whether you're a native speaker, a learner, or someone trying to communicate with Badini-speaking family, it's designed for you.
Want to try translating Badini yourself? Open the Badini Translator and start translating between English and Badini Kurdish for free.