Kurdish as a living language

A unique trio of books is coming out from the Cairo-based Bibliomania publishing house: three bilingual picture books called "ABC’ ya Ajalan" (ABC of the animals), written by linguist and translator Marwan Sheikho and illustrated by Neirouz Houri. The books are glossy illustrated dictionaries of more than 100 common animals in three different language pairings: Kurdish and Arabic, Kurdish and English, and Kurdish and German. More language pairings are on the way. 

It’s not the publishing debut Marwan would have imagined for himself when he was admitted to the University of Aleppo back in 2006. Back then, he says, he wrote poetry in Arabic and wanted to study English literature. Several members of his family objected to his focus on English. They weren’t opposed to the language—Marwan became the seventh in his extended family to study it—but rather because the degree only seemed to lead to one end: becoming an English teacher in a Syrian school. 

Marwan always had a "big love for languages", he says. He spoke Kurdish at home and Arabic at school, and learned to read English from a bilingual Bible. He developed his love for poetry while still at school. He was less enamoured with the long, boring political speeches that secondary school students in Aleppo were made to memorise, but could help himself digest them by translating the speeches from Arabic to English.

In those days, Marwan's dream was to complete a Master’s in translation. He had just been accepted into a translation program in 2011 when mass protests erupted across Syria, triggering brutal government repression and marking the beginning of a civil war that continues to this day.  

At the start of the war, Marwan wanted to stay in Aleppo and finish his Master’s. But by the summer of 2012, the situation in the city was dire. That September, he lost his niece and made the difficult decision to leave the country. "I went to Istanbul with just a few things: no books, just my passport and copies of my certificates," he remembers. He found a good job, teaching English at Marmara University, and stayed in Turkey for over two years.  

Rediscovering the Kurdish language

Until he moved to Istanbul, Kurdish had been a language he mainly used at home and with family. His scholarly work focused on Arabic and English. Marwan suddenly had a new reason to use the language when he found himself surrounded by Kurdish-speaking refugees. He decided to volunteer as a translator. "This was the spark," he says. 

Marwan left Istanbul in 2015 to start a new Master’s in Germany. There, just as in Istanbul, he worked as a translator for Kurdish refugees. When he came to choose a research topic for his dissertation, Marwan decided to write about the Kurdish language and its development in Syria and Turkey. He found a way to pull all of the various strands of his life together: "my Bachelor’s, translation, and my identity as a Kurd."

The next spark was the birth of his first child. Even before his birth, Marwan knew he wanted his son to speak Kurdish but quickly realised he didn’t have the resources to create an immersive environment for learning the language.  

"I started developing materials for my son in 2019, because we didn’t have many Kurdish materials for children," he said. "It’s thanks to him and my daughter that I have this passion for children’s literature."

It was vital for Marwan that his children were proud of their Kurdish identity and language. "When I was a child, I was ashamed of my identity," he said. "I was rebuked when I spoke Kurdish in school."

The teaching materials Marwan was creating might never have left his own home if not for the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020. It was then, when people were stuck indoors and online, that he launched the platform NasName: Our Language Is Our Identity. Under this umbrella, Marwan started a podcast, a regularly updated Instagram and a YouTube channel, all focused on the Kurdish language.  

On NasName, Marwan explores the etymologies of common Kurdish words, translates Kurdish songs, and talks through common Kurdish proverbs. The site is also a hub for discovering and sharing the nuances of Kurdish dialects across different cities and regions.  

Making bilingual connections

As his children grew up, Marwan tried to acquire more Kurdish picture books. Of those already available in Kurmanji, the most widely spoken Kurdish dialect, Marwan says that few are well produced or targeted to the ages of their intended audience. The German publishing house Edition bi:libri also produces some German-Kurmanji bilingual books, but most have been translated from European languages and don’t reflect Kurdish culture or organic language use. “We need more books written originally in Kurdish for children,” he says. 

Bilingual books are vital, Marwan says, because books aren’t just about telling stories. They’re also about making connections. He recalls sitting on the couch with his German wife and two children, all four of them sitting around a bilingual book borrowed from the local library. His wife would start reading in German, and he would follow with the same idea in Kurdish. “My goal is to make or ignite some kind of communication,” he says. “Let’s read it together, let’s go through it together.” 

Next, Marwan is set to translate an Arabic picture book, الكناري الذي صار أسداً (The Canary that Became a Lion), into Kurmanji. As he continues to develop his skills as a writer and translator of children’s literature, he said his goals are growing clearer. “My goal is—I would like to publish 20 books for kids in the next five years,” he said. “I want to create books that respect (children) a lot, to give them this sense that my language is nice, my identity is nice, I need to connect to it.” 

“At the end of the day,” he added, “I want Kurdish to be a living language.”