Language

Several digital initiatives now preserve Yazidi sacred verses, including the Yazidi Community Archive, the Institute for Ezidi Sciences, and academic collaborations documenting Qewls and Beyts. Researchers can access these resources through open‑access portals, downloadable datasets, and institutional repositories.

Yazidi Kurmanji, the Kurdish dialect spoken by Yazidis in the Khabur Valley of Syria and in Armenia, shows distinct phonological, lexical and morphosyntactic traits. These differences stem from historical migration, contact with Arabic, Turkish, Russian and Armenian, and divergent religious vocabularies.

The article surveys how Yazidi liturgical terms shift in pronunciation, morphology, and semantics across Sinjar, neighboring Kurdish areas, and diaspora communities. It draws on fieldwork, manuscript studies, and oral‑tradition analyses to map these dialectal patterns.

Yazidi Kurmanji, the dialect used for Yazidi religious texts, faces unique Unicode encoding hurdles due to script diversity, non‑standard letters, and limited resources. Recent discussions on Kurdish Sorani and specialized Kurdish letters have shaped practical solutions for digital preservation.

This article examines the linguistic journey of the most important Yazidi religious terms, tracing their roots from Old Iranian languages through successive Kurdish adaptations. It highlights scholarly debates, oral tradition evidence, and regional variations that shape contemporary usage.

Across the United States, Yazidi refugees and diaspora families have created a network of schools and language programs that teach Kurdish (Kurmanji), English, and cultural heritage. Partnerships with churches, NGOs, and youth councils provide classroom space, volunteer teachers, and curricula that balance integration with preservation.

Yazidi oral poetry, known as qewl and beyts, has been systematically recorded in Georgia since the early 2000s. State agencies, NGOs, and community members collaborate to archive, digitise, and transmit this intangible heritage, creating a model for minority cultural preservation.

Yazidi Kurmanji, the dialect spoken by Yazidi communities, diverges from mainstream Kurdish through a set of unique phonological traits such as the retention of the Proto‑Indo‑Iranian *ɣ, distinct vowel harmony patterns, and a reduced emphatic consonant series. These differences reflect historical isolation, religious lexicon, and contact with neighboring languages.

The Yazidi Academy has been pivotal in creating a unified Kurmanji orthography for Yazidi communities, bridging oral tradition and modern literacy. Its work, grounded in scholarly collaboration, has shaped education, publishing, and cultural preservation across the Middle East and diaspora.

Yazidi writing has evolved from early Arabic‑script transcriptions to modern Latin and Cyrillic orthographies, culminating in a Unicode proposal in the 2010s. This article traces the historical milestones, scholarly debates, and regional variations that shaped the scriptic landscape of the Yazidi community.