Language Challenge: Arabic vs. Kurdish

Despite belonging to two different language families, due to the centuries of interaction, Kurdish and Arabic do share a fair number of words in common. The words that the languages share are not only originally Arabic or Semitic, but also words which are Kurdish and Iranic. In today’s episode, the language challenge will be between Meena, an Arabic speaker from Baghdad, and Serhat, a Kurdish speaker from Van. Thank you for all those who took part in the latest Instagram poll! This video won by a small margin so follow us on Instagram and vote in the next poll so you can decide what video we should do next! If you live in Toronto and would like to participate in a future video, reach us on Instagram as well: My Instagram page (@BahadorAlast):   / bahadoralast   Shahrzad’s Instagram page (@Shahrzad.Pe):   / shahrzad.pe   The Kurdish languages are part of the Northwestern Iranian languages with three main dialects, Kurmanji (Northern Kurdish), Sorani (Central Kurdish), and Southern Kurdish (Palewani or Xwarig/Xwarîn). It should be noted that the Kurdish spoken in this video by Serhat is Kurmanji. A separate group of non-Kurdish Northwestern Iranian languages, the Zaza–Gorani languages, are also spoken by several million Kurds. Arabic is a Central Semitic language and the official language of Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, SADR, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania (Zanzibar), Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Arabic is also the liturgical language of Islam.