Difference between revisions of "User:Rkamal1/Language selection"

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* '''Script:''' Variant of Arabic
 
* '''Script:''' Variant of Arabic
 
* '''No. of speakers:''' 2,270,000
 
* '''No. of speakers:''' 2,270,000
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The language is spoken mainly in the Mazandaran Province north of Tehran, Iran. Speakers of the language tend to know Farsi—the official language of Iran—but there is a low literacy level in L1. Usage of the language is decreasing because of the need to educate children in Farsi instead of Mazandarani.
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[[Category:sp21_LanguageSelection]] [[Category:Central Kurdish]] [[Category:Gurani]] [[Category:Mazandarani]]
 
[[Category:sp21_LanguageSelection]] [[Category:Central Kurdish]] [[Category:Gurani]] [[Category:Mazandarani]]

Revision as of 04:09, 16 February 2021

I am a CS major, so I would like to partner up with someone who is more familiar with linguistics. I have no preference as to who exactly that someone may be. In terms of languages, my ranked preferences are: Central Kurdish, Gurani, and Mazandarani. All of these are Indo-Iranian languages, which is the broad family of languages I am interested in working with.

Central Kurdish

  • ISO 639-3: ckb [1]
  • Status: 2 (Provincial)
  • Script: Variant of Arabic
  • No. of speakers: 4 million

Central/Sorani Kurdish is mostly spoken in the Kurdistan Autonomous Region of Iraq, but it is also popular in Iran and parts of Sweden [2]. It is agglutinative and "highly inflectional," using both prefixes and suffixes [3]. Interestingly, the language has no grammatical gender.

I have a personal connection to the language as it is my native tongue, which makes it my first preference. On the other hand, it is an official language of Iraq [4] and has some Apertium support, so it may not be the quintessential under-resourced language for the purposes of this course. In particular, I cannot develop a morphological analyzer for the language, as one already exists. Still, I am listing it because Prof. Washington hinted at his willingness to make exceptions where there are personal reasons to choose a language.

Resources

It is very easy to find texts for Sorani Kurdish from sources such as dictionaries [5] and newspapers [6]. I also already own PDFs of Sorani books.

Gurani

  • ISO 639-3: hac [7]
  • Status: 7 (Shifting)
  • Script: Variant of Arabic
  • No. of speakers: 300,000

Gurani (not to be confused with Guarani) is spoken in villages near the Iraq-Iran border such as Hewraman and Kermanshah. It is a variety of Kurdish that is similar to but not mutually comprehensible with the Sorani dialect. Its morphology is agglutinative and inflectional (with prefixes and suffixes) [8].

Resources

Many authentic texts in Gurani come in the form of epic poems and religious scripture, such as the Ahl-e-Haqq (I am not sure how to access these online, but I may be able to find them with the help of the Professor/TA). There is also an OLAC Record that contains IPA transcriptions of Gurani audio [9].

Mazandarani

  • ISO 639-3: mzn [10]
  • Status: 5* (Developing)
  • Script: Variant of Arabic
  • No. of speakers: 2,270,000

The language is spoken mainly in the Mazandaran Province north of Tehran, Iran. Speakers of the language tend to know Farsi—the official language of Iran—but there is a low literacy level in L1. Usage of the language is decreasing because of the need to educate children in Farsi instead of Mazandarani.