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Gorani (), also known by the name of its main dialect, Hawrami (ھەورامی, Hewramî), is a Northwestern Iranian language spoken by ethnic Kurds in northeastern Iraq and northwestern Iran and which with Zaza language constitute the Zaza–Gorani languages. Zaza and Gorani are linguistically distinct from the Kurdish language, although the great majority of their speakers consider their language to be Kurdish.
Gorani is spoken in Iraq and Iran and has four dialects: Bajelani, Hawrami, and Sarli, some sources also include the Shabaki language as a dialect of Gorani as well. Of these, Hawrami was the traditional literary language and koiné of Kurds in the historical Ardalan region at the Zagros Mountains, (2025). 9781511523493, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 9781511523493 but has since been supplanted by Central Kurdish and Southern Kurdish.Meri, Josef W., Medieval Islamic Civilization: A–K, index. p. 444 Gorani is a literary language for many Kurds.
Gorani had an estimated 180,000 speakers in Iran in 2007 and 120,000 speakers in Iraq as well in 2007 for a total of 300,000 speakers. Ethnologue and the DOBES reports that the language is threatened in both Iran and Iraq, and that speakers residing in Iraq includes all adults and some children, however it does not mention if speakers are shifting to Sorani or not. Many speakers of Gorani in Iran also speak Sorani, Iranian Persian, as well as Southern Kurdish. Most speakers in Iraq also speak Sorani, while some also speak Mesopotamian Arabic. Furthermore in the 2010 edition of UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger Gorani (Hawrami) was classified as an endangered north-western Iranic language.Pg. 47 of the Former Source
The names of forty classical poets writing in Gorani are known, but the details and dates of their lives are unknown for the most part. Perhaps the earliest writer is Mele Perîşan, author of a masnavi of 500 lines on the Shi'ite faith who is reported to have lived around 1356–1431. Other poets are known from the 17th–19th centuries and include Shaykh Mustafa Takhtayi, Khana Qubadi, Yusuf Yaska, Mistefa Bêsaranî and Khulam Rada Khan Arkawazi. One of the last great poets to complete a book of poems (divan) in Gurani is Mawlawi Tawagozi south of Halabja.
The Kurdish Shahnameh is a collection of epic poems that has been passed down orally from one generation to the next. Eventually, some of these stories were written down by Almas Khan-e Kanoule'ei in the 18th century. There exist also a dozen or more long epic or romantic masnavis, mostly translated by anonymous writers from Persian literature including: Bijan and Manijeh, Khurshid-i Khawar, Khosrow and Shirin, Layla and Majnun, Shirin and Farhad, Haft Khwan-i Rostam and Sultan Jumjuma. Manuscripts of these works are currently preserved in the national libraries of Berlin, London, and Paris.
Due to concerns with the decline of Hawrami speakers, as people move away from the Hawraman region to cities like Erbil, Jamal Habibullah Faraj Bedar, a retired teacher from Tawela, decided to translate the Qur'an from Arabic into Hawrami. The translation took two and a half months and 1000 copies of the publication were printed in Tehran.
All voiceless plosives and affricates are aspirated.
Gender distinctions in nouns are indicated by a combination of final stress and vowel/consonant ending. Masculine nouns in the nominative form are indicated by a stressed "-O", -Δ, "-U", "-E", "-A" and all consonant endings. Feminine nouns are indicated by an unstressed "-E", "-Î", a stressed "-Ê" and rarely, a stressed "-A".
There are 3 declensions. The declensions of each gender will be demonstrated as an example.
First Declension (Masculine Consonant Ending; Feminine Short Unstressed Vowel Ending)
Second Declension (Masculine Stressed Short Vowel Ending; Feminine Stressed "-Ê” Ending)
Third Declension (Stressed Long "-A" Ending)
In Hawrami, definiteness and indefiniteness are marked by two independent suffixes, "-ew", and "-(e)ke". These suffixes decline for case and gender. The indefinite suffix "-ew" is declined by the first declension pattern while the definite suffix "-(e)ke" follows the second declension paradigm
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