The Sorani Kurdish alphabet: 34 letters and its own vowel letters

Sorani Kurdish is written in an Arabic-based alphabet, from right to left — but unlike Arabic, it writes most of its vowels as letters. If you know the Arabic or Persian alphabet, you can start reading quickly: the new parts are a handful of vowel letters, a trilled ڕ, a dark ڵ and the letter ڤ for v. This guide covers them with words checked in Wiktionary, and shows the same words in Kurmanji, Kurdish written in Latin letters.

Updated November 13, 2026 · 6 min read

Kurdish, three scripts

The Unicode Standard says Kurdish is written in several orthographies, using the Latin, Cyrillic or Arabic scripts, and that it has competing Arabic and Latin or Cyrillic orthographies in different countries. When Kurdish is written in Arabic script, Unicode calls the alphabet Soraní. That is the alphabet of this guide.

In Iraq, Article 4 of the 2005 Constitution, as published by Constitute Project, makes Arabic and Kurdish the two official languages of the country. If you came to Kurdish through the Latin alphabet, the section on Kurmanji below lines the two up word by word.

The 34 letters

Wiktionary's list of Sorani letters has 34 entries, from ئـ to ێ. Two of them are not single characters in the usual sense: ئـ, the hamza seat that starts words beginning with a vowel, and وو, two waws written together for a long u. The letters Arabic does not have are the ones to learn first:

Sorani also has the Persian letters پ چ ژ گ for p, ch, zh and g, which Arabic lacks. If they are new to you, the Persian alphabet guide explains them.

Vowels on the line

Arabic usually leaves short vowels out of the line of writing. Sorani writes most of its vowels as letters. Unicode notes that ۆ stands for the Kurdish vowel [o] and that the pair وو stands for the long vowel [uː]; Wiktionary gives ێ as /eː/. You also see ە, as in ئەو ew /æw/ (he, she; that), and ا, as in ئاو aw (water).

Not every vowel is written, though. Wiktionary gives کتێب (book) as /kəteːb/, with a short vowel after k that has no letter, and transliterates it ktêb. Our advice: read the letters you see, and let the recordings or your teacher fill in the small vowel between consonants.

ڕ and ڵ: two letters only Sorani uses

Unicode names two letters used only for Sorani: ڕ, reh with small v below, for the Kurdish trilled r, and ڵ, lam with small v, for the Kurdish velarised l. The little v is the only difference from ر and ل, so watch for it: ڕۆژ roj (day) starts with the trilled r.

Wiktionary's entry for ڵ gives its sound as [ɫ] — a dark l, said with the back of the tongue raised, close to the l at the end of English full. Its transliteration writes it as ll: سڵاو sllaw (hello), ماڵ mall (home), گوڵ gull (flower).

ئ at the start of a word

Wiktionary's list begins with ئـ. In written Sorani you meet it in front of words that begin with a vowel: ئاو aw (water), ئەو ew (he, she; that). Read it as a silent seat for the vowel that follows, not as a sound of its own.

Joining: the letters that never join forward

As in Arabic, most letters join the next one. Unicode's joining data marks these as right-joining, so a gap always follows them: ا د ر ڕ ز ژ و ۆ ە. That covers four of Sorani's vowel letters (ا و ۆ ە), so a Sorani word often breaks into several pieces — a useful clue when you look for where the vowels are. ێ and ڵ, by contrast, join on both sides.

Sorani and Kurmanji: the same words, two alphabets

Wiktionary gives the Kurmanji form of many Sorani words, written in Latin letters. Reading them side by side is a quick way into the Arabic-script spelling — or out of it, if you are moving the other way.

More first words

• نان nan — bread
• گوڵ gull — flower
• کوردی kurdî — Kurdish (the language and the adjective)
• سوپاس — another spelling of سپاس, thanks

A two-week plan

1. Days 1–3: the letters Sorani shares with Arabic and Persian. If they are new, start with the Arabic alphabet.
2. Days 4–6: the vowel letters ا ە و وو ۆ ی ێ, and ئ at the start of a word.
3. Days 7–8: ڕ and ڵ, and ڤ for v.
4. Days 9–10: the letters that never join forward.
5. Days 11–14: read both tables above every day, then take the free Sorani Kurdish level test — or the Kurmanji one if Latin-script Kurdish is your goal.

A note on 16Word's Kurdish: Sorani and Kurmanji are both marked New in the app. The word lists were machine-authored and are waiting for native review, and very few words have recordings yet — use them for reading and recall, and a native speaker for sound. Our plans page says what is free and what is in 16Word Plus.

Keep learning

• The Arabic alphabet — joining forms and short vowels
• The Persian alphabet — پ چ ژ گ and the Persian ی
• The Pashto alphabet — another Arabic-based script with its own letters
• The Urdu alphabet · the Azerbaijani alphabet · the Hebrew alphabet
• Free level tests: Sorani Kurdish · Kurmanji Kurdish · Arabic · Persian · Turkish · all 36 languages
• All guides