Southern Kurdish is one of the dialects of the Kurdish language, spoken predominantly in northeastern Iraq and western Iran. The Southern Kurdish-speaking region spans from Khanaqin in Iraq to Dehloran southward and Asadabad eastward in Iran.

Name

'Southern Kurdish' is a linguistic term for a group of related dialects in Western Iran. Speakers are not familiar with the term and do not refer to the language as such. They generally identify the kind of Kurdish they speak as a local dialect (the Kurdish of a given village), or as a regional variety such as "Garūsi".

Variants

Southern Kurdish has many variants, linguist Fattah divides them into 35 varieties. These include: Other variants include: Bîstûnî, Çihrî, Hersîn, Payrawend, Kirmaşanî, Sencabî, Xalesa, Çemçemal, Qesri Şîrînî, Serpuli Zehawî, Harasam, Kelhurrî, Îwan, Erkewazî, Şêrwanî, Îlamî, Salihabadî, Rîka, Bedreyî, Melikşahî, Mêxasî, Mihran, Xaneqînî, Mendilî, Duşêxî, Kaprat, Warmizyar, Zurbatiya and Feylî.

Alphabet

The Southern Kurdish alphabet is very similar to the Central Kurdish (Sorani) alphabet, which is a derivation of the Arabic alphabet. Southern Kurdish has one additional letter "ۊ"; the Arabic letter waw with two dots above.