This forced them out of the metropolitan areas and into the mountains. They were forced to acculturate to the cultures that they were in. this affected them because they were forced to keep their culture very secret, for example speaking the Kurdish language in Turkey was punishable for a long time so they could only speak it in private. And in the 1980's the Iraqi Kurds faced what many refer to as genocide by the Iraqi government. The history of the Kurds has shaped the culture as a whole the most. First we will discuss language, then marriage, then family, then religion, and finally art.
They speak a language called Kurdish. Kurdish is an Indo-European language belonging to the Northwestern Iranian branch and is divided into several dialects, (Granville 799). Kurdish is also written in four different alphabets, the Sorani alphabet, which is written in an Arabic script, mostly used to communicate in Iraq and Iran. The Hawar alphabet, which is in Latin script, mostly used to communicate in Turkey and Syria. The Armenian alphabet used in Armenia. Lastly Cyrillic used by the former Soviet Union. Kurdish is a language because it is known publically to send and receive specific messages to the sender and receiver. Also Kurdish uses symbols to send and receive messages. This section will discuss how Kurdish fits into the definition of language and how it displays the 5 properties of language, and how it shares a relationship with the people who use it. The Kurdish language has a saying for almost everything, (Kutschera 1344). Some examples are God finds a low branch for the bird that cannot fly, and no matter where you go, your destiny follows you.
Like all other cultures, the Kurds have language. They speak Kurdish, This language shows the five properties of language, multimedia ability, arbitrariness, discreteness, productivity, and displacement. It shows multimedia ability because it can be spoken and written by multiple sets of characters.