If you've ever heard someone from Duhok, Zakho, or Aqrah speaking Kurdish, you were likely hearing Badini. It's one of the most widely spoken forms of Kurdish in northern Iraq, yet it remains one of the least supported by modern technology. Here is what you need to know about Badini Kurdish, where it comes from, who speaks it, and why it matters.
Badini is a Dialect of Kurmanji Kurdish
Kurdish is not a single language. It's a family of related dialects spread across a wide region. The two largest branches are Kurmanji (Northern Kurdish) and Sorani (Central Kurdish). Badini falls under the Kurmanji branch. Linguists classify it as part of the Northwestern Iranian language group within the larger Indo-European family. That puts it in the same broad category as Persian and Pashto, though Kurdish languages are distinct from both.
Badini shares most of its grammar and core vocabulary with other Kurmanji varieties spoken in Turkey and Syria. But it has its own pronunciation patterns, some unique vocabulary, and a strong connection to the culture and history of the Badinan region.
Where Badini is Spoken
The heartland of Badini is the Badinan region of northern Iraq. This includes the Duhok governorate and surrounding areas like Zakho, Aqrah, Amedi, and Barwar. These cities and towns form the core of where Badini is spoken daily, in homes, markets, schools, and local government.
But Badini speakers aren't limited to Iraq. Because Kurmanji is spoken across a wide geographic belt, closely related varieties of the dialect exist in southeastern Turkey, northeastern Syria, and parts of northwestern Iran. In all of these places, the spoken language is similar, though local accents and vocabulary can vary.
There is also a significant Badini-speaking diaspora in Europe, especially in Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Many families from the Badinan region emigrated in the 1990s and 2000s, and their children and grandchildren often still speak Badini at home while using the language of their new country outside it.
How Many People Speak Badini?
Exact numbers are hard to pin down because census data on Kurdish dialects is limited. Kurmanji as a whole has an estimated 15 to 20 million speakers, making it the most spoken Kurdish dialect by far. Badini speakers make up a significant portion of that total, numbering in the millions when you count both Iraq-based and diaspora communities. In the Duhok governorate alone, the population exceeds 1.5 million, and nearly all of them speak Badini as their first language.
Two Scripts for One Language
One of the most distinctive things about Badini is that it can be written in two completely different scripts. In Iraq, Badini is written using a modified Arabic alphabet. This is the version taught in schools, used in government documents, and printed in local publications. The Kurdish Arabic script includes extra characters not found in standard Arabic, added to represent sounds specific to Kurdish.
In Turkey and across the diaspora, the same language is written using the Latin-based Hawar alphabet, developed by Jeladet Ali Bedirkhan in the early 20th century. This creates a situation where two Badini speakers might not be able to read each other's writing, even though they understand each other perfectly when speaking.
Badini in Daily Life
In the Badinan region, Badini is the language of everyday life. People use it at home, at work, and in social settings. Kurdish is one of the official languages of Iraq, and in the Kurdistan Region it's used in education from primary school onward. Local television channels, radio stations, and newspapers broadcast in Badini. Social media has also become a major space for Badini content, with creators posting videos, songs, and discussions in the dialect.
For younger generations in the diaspora, maintaining Badini can be a challenge. Without the daily immersion that comes from living in the region, language skills can fade. Many families work hard to keep Badini alive through conversation at home, community events, and connections to media from the homeland.
Why Badini is Underserved by Technology
Despite millions of speakers, Badini barely exists in the digital world when it comes to language tools. Google Translate does not support it. Most language learning apps ignore it. Even within Kurdish tech efforts, the focus tends to be on Sorani, which has official status in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and a larger corpus of digital text.
Several factors contribute to this gap. The dual-script situation makes building tools harder, since any useful tool needs to handle both Arabic and Latin scripts. There is also a lack of large, digitized text datasets in Badini, which are needed to train machine translation systems. And because Kurdish dialectsare often grouped together, tools that claim to support "Kurdish" usually only mean Sorani or generic Kurmanji, leaving Badini speakers without a real solution.
Efforts to Change That
Things are starting to shift. A growing number of developers, linguists, and community members are working to bring Badini into the digital age. Online content in Badini is increasing. Social media accounts dedicated to teaching and promoting the dialect are gaining followers. And new tools are being built specifically for Badini speakers.
This translator is part of that effort. It was built from the ground up with Badini in mind, not as an afterthought to a Sorani or generic Kurdish tool. It supports both Arabic and Latin scripts, translates between Badini and 11 different languages, and is completely free to use. The goal is simple: give Badini speakers the same kind of digital tools that speakers of larger languages take for granted.
Want to try translating Badini yourself? Open the Badini Translator and start translating between English and Badini Kurdish for free.