Language ideologies and the process of borrowing European words into the Kurdish language

Abstract EN

It is common knowledge that all living languages change over time, which occurs at three levels; vocabulary, grammar and phonemic system.

One of the factors that makes languages change is the contact of languages with each another.

However, it does not mean that the Kurdish language did not borrow vocabulary from other languages, especially European ones, as there are many European words related to natural sciences and technology that entered the Kurdish language (Bucak, M, 1988 : 104), and over time became a part of the Kurdish language that one could not distinguish between them and the original Kurdish vocabularies.

These words have gone through a process of assimilation that of adopting the grammatical and phonological features of the Kurdish language.

However Arabic has been always more influential on Kurdish in comparison to other languages due to the factor of Islam religion and its holy book of Quran which is written in Arabic and the affiliation of the majority of Kurds to it.

The researchers have conducted this study to find out whether the factor of "language ideology" as identified by Michael Silverstein (1979 : 193); Woolard, K.(1998 : 4) affects Kurdish intellectuals and makes them borrow lexicon from English and European languages into Kurdish.

To reach convenient results, the researchers have conducted a qualitative empirical study and the data have been collected by interviewing 15 intellectuals from different academic disciplines from the inhabitant of Duhok city.

The collected data have been submitted for deep content analysis.

The outcomes of the study have shown that language ideologies play a considerable role in borrowing words from European languages, especially the English language.