I have completed my Kurdish-Turkish dictionary project after a long and hard working period. I am very happy about that. After the Turkish-Kurdish dictionary work, for this time my objective was to prepare a Kurdish-Turkish dictionary. Here I am happy because I have reached my aim and finished this dictionary.
It is really hard to be in a dictionary work. Beyond this hard work, you have to face with reproaches and complaints. In spite of your all efforts, it is not possible to make everyone happy. I was aware of this as I started to this project. So, I want to leave all critics of this work to specialists, all rights of criticism belong to them.
Before all, this is a bi-lingual dictionary. In the other words, it is a Kurdish to Turkish dictionary. This aspect was always in my mind when I was working on this dictionary project. As far as possible, I tried to give all the meanings of Kurdish words in Turkish in the exact and right way. I wasn’t satisfied with only that; I also gave paragraph head Kurdish words at the end of paragraphs again. To make meaning exact and clear, we thought it is suitable to give example sentences.
This dictionary is a result of work, which takes long years, and lots of efforts. Although, I started to study on this dictionary after Turkish – Kurdish dictionary was published; in reality my works are much older than this.
Shortly, after research and collection activities, which took years and four years night and day, work, this dictionary was ready to press.
I want to add some words about the content of the dictionary. The dictionary consists of 131 thousands of Kurdish words and 35 thousands of the continuation of these words. These 35 thousand words are the paragraph ends and phrases of the words. On the other hand, about 6 thousand of words are not included in this dictionary. I choose this way, because I have not enough and exact knowledge about the real meanings of these words.
I want to make clear that this is not the capacity of Kurdish language. As a matter of fact, this dictionary does not include all Kurdish words and we do not have any pretension about that. It is impossible to mention about the richness of Kurdish language if there isn’t any research on written and oral literature and field works in free and proper conditions. Generally, we are lack of this kind of works. Researches in these areas are very few in reality. Now, in these conditions, only that, many words could be collected together in this dictionary.
In addition, because of the very few works about these areas, as far as we could, we tried to remove deficiency of these branches. Both before this Turkish-Kurdish dictionary and when I was working on Kurdish-Turkish dictionary, I read and searched lots of Kurdish pressed works from all areas and I collected words and phrases from them. My works on word collecting, which causes the name ‘word hunter’ given to me, were started in early years of 80s.
These two works, my first work Turkish-Kurdish dictionary and lost work Kurdish-Turkish dictionary can be thought as the continuity of each other more than to be separate ones. So, I finished these works without so much time between them. For this reason, I gave enough knowledge about the word collection and sources about my works in the introduction of my first dictionary. So, it is impossible to give all works I used by their names. But, I gave the sources that I should give in the reference part.
We had some problems about the spelling of some Kurdish words. As known, in Kurdish writing, spelling rules are not perfectly clear. Regional differences and non-standard peculiarity of daily language affect our written language. For this reason, we had to give more than one pronunciation for some of the words. But, we took the one, which is primarily used, in the written works. Some of others are labelled with bnr (see) to make users to go to the preferred word in the usage. As we make these preferences, the method of linguistics was used. Especially, composed words and the words, which got voice changes in them, are etymologically and phonologically examined with all faces, and then the best one was chosen.
After all these explanations, I would like to mention another point about the name of this dictionary. Although, the name of the dictionary is Ferhenga Kurdî-Turkî (Kurdish-Turkish dictionary); in reality we preferred the word ‘Kurdi’ instead of ‘Kurmancî’. Majority of Kurds speak Kurmancî dialect of Kurdish and the use of the word Kurdî instead of Kurmancî, especially in dictionary works, is a familiar tradition.
The words in this dictionary are the words of Kurmancî, which is the biggest dialect of Kurdish language. Therefore, this is a Kurmancî-Turkish dictionary in fact. This is necessary to be known. However, I have to clarify something. Especially in the last 10-15 years, so many words, needed for the written language, entered into the Kurmancî dialect from the Middle Kurdish (Soranî dialect). These are especially about scientific, juridical, administrative, political and literary fields. Here, in this dictionary, these words are included. It is important to mention again: this is the dictionary of Kurmancî dialect.
When I was working on this dictionary, many people sent me the words they gathered from their districts. I would like to thank to these people by their names:
Xemgin/Zara, Yücel Atalay/Iðdýr, Seyda Goyan/Þýrnak, A. Vahap Karaaslan, Mehmet Kömür/Elbistan, Evdile Koçer/Eruh, Ehmed Neco/Mardin, Mazlum Doðan/Elbistan, Beso Mala Hesene Kate/Elbistan, Akide Arslan, Cabbar Barýþ/Þirvan, Mele Nuriye Hesori/Kamýþt.
On the other side, I would like to thank to Kerem Soylu, who gathered words from “Ferheng Kurdî Nujen”, a dictionary Kurdish to Arabic written by Ali Seyda Gevrani, and from “Rebera Se Zemanî”(Guide to three languages) written by Eziz Reþit Akreyi in Kurdish Arabic and English. Then, I would like to thank to Þefik Beyaz who gave me his own “Kurdish- Turkish” works on words.
Next, thanks to the people who I have worked together in the Administrative Board of Institute and together decided to prepare this dictionary: firstly thanks to deceased Feqî Huseyn Saðniç, Hasan Kaya, Kerem Soylu, Mülazým Özcan, and Eþref Doðaner.
Except all that, some of my friends gave me both economical and moral support: H. Mem, H. Baþer, Ýbrahim Gürbüz, Mehmet Aktý, M.
Þafi Ekinci and my uncle Nazmi, special thanks to all of you.
As a last word, I want to note here my deep gratefulness to my lovely wife, the mother of Roni and Rojan, to Sultan. We had good and bad days together.
We are grateful to the people who struggle for this honored and pressured, sweat language and who works for new generations. Today we can build up this kind of dictionaries through the works of these people. Again lots of thanks to the people who care about Kurdish Language and who take part in the works about this language.
Zana Farqînî
19. 03. 2004
