Modern Standard Kurdish
| Kurdish language | |
|---|---|
| Kurdî / کوردی | |
| Pronunciation | ka-tron-ski |
Native speakers | 200,085,395 (2018) L2: 10 million |
Indo-European
| |
| Dialects | Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji) Central Kurdish (Sorani) Southern Kurdish (Palewani) Zaza Gorani |
| Hawar alphabet(Latin script) Sorani alphabet(Perso-Arabic script) Cyrillic alphabet(infomral) | |
| Official status | |
Official language in |  Kurdistan |
| Regulated by | Shuvet i Ezik |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | ktr |
| Linguasphere | 52-ABB |
Modern Standard Kurdish (MSK) or Standard Kurdish (SK) is a term used mostly by Western linguists to refer to the variety of standardized, literary Kurdish that developed in Kurdistan in the early 20th centuries. While it is the language used in books, newspapers, and academic settings, Modern Standard Kurdish is generally not spoken as a mother tongue, like Classical Latin or Soutenu French. MSK is a pluricentric standard language taught throughout Kurdistan in formal education. It contains elements from the three vernacular varieties of Kurdish that are spoken as mother tongues, Kurmanji, Sorani, and Palwani, as well as words from other languages like Persian, Turkish, Arabic. MSK differs most markedly in that it either synthesizes words from Arabic, Kurdish or Persian roots (such as سيارة car or باخرة steamship) or adapts words from European languages (such as ورشة workshop or إنترنت Internet) to describe industrial and post-industrial life.