KCOkurds.globalKCOLanguage

Language

Preservation

Which languages of the community are endangered, by which source, and how members can help document them.

01Endangerment at a glance

Languages by endangerment statusEach language counts once, at its most endangered entry.
  1. Not endangered3
  2. Threatened6

Sources Glottolog 5.3 (2025), Agglomerated Endangerment Status Verified

Show as a table
StatusLanguages
Not endangered3
Threatened6

02Endangered languages

Languages with at least one entry rated threatened or worse.

03Every entry

The UNESCO World Atlas of Languages first, to verify until it can be read; beside it, Glottolog’s Agglomerated Endangerment Status for each entry, with the source it rests on.

LanguageUNESCO AtlasGlottolog entryStatus (AES)BasisSource
Kurmanji (Northern Kurdish)To verifyNorthern KurdishThreatened6b (Threatened)Eberhard, Simons and Fennig (eds.). Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 28th edition. SIL International. (2025) Secondary source
Sorani (Central Kurdish)To verifyCentral KurdishNot endangered1 (National)Eberhard, Simons and Fennig (eds.). Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 28th edition. SIL International. (2025) Secondary source
Zazaki (Kirmanckî, Dimilkî)To verifyDimliThreatenedVulnerableCampbell, Lee, Okura, Simpson and Ueki. The Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ElCat). (2022) Secondary source
Zazaki (Kirmanckî, Dimilkî)To verifyKirmanjkiNot endangered5 (Developing)Eberhard, Simons and Fennig (eds.). Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 28th edition. SIL International. (2025) Secondary source
Southern Kurdish (Kelhurî, Feylî)To verifySouthern KurdishThreatened6b (Threatened)Eberhard, Simons and Fennig (eds.). Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 28th edition. SIL International. (2025) Secondary source
Gorani / HawramiTo verifyGuraniThreatenedVulnerableCampbell, Lee, Okura, Simpson and Ueki. The Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ElCat). (2022) Secondary source
Kurmanji in CyrillicTo verifyNorthern KurdishThreatened6b (Threatened)Eberhard, Simons and Fennig (eds.). Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 28th edition. SIL International. (2025) Secondary source
Kurmanji in the Arabic-based script (Badînî)To verifyNorthern KurdishThreatened6b (Threatened)Eberhard, Simons and Fennig (eds.). Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 28th edition. SIL International. (2025) Secondary source
LakiTo verifyLakiNot endangered6a (Vigorous)Eberhard, Simons and Fennig (eds.). Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 28th edition. SIL International. (2025) Secondary source
RussianTo verifyRussianNot endangered1 (National)Eberhard, Simons and Fennig (eds.). Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 28th edition. SIL International. (2025) Secondary source

Sources Hammarström, Forkel, Haspelmath and Bank. Glottolog 5.3. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (2025) Verified; Campbell, Lee, Okura, Simpson and Ueki. The Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ElCat). (2022) Secondary source; Moseley (ed.). Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, 3rd edition. UNESCO Publishing. (2010) Secondary source; Eberhard, Simons and Fennig (eds.). Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 28th edition. SIL International. (2025) Secondary source; UNESCO. World Atlas of Languages. (2025) To verify

04Documentation archives

05How members can help

  • Record a speaker, with their consent, and deposit it in an archive.
  • Point us to a dictionary, grammar or recording under an open licence.
  • Correct an entry: every page links to the corrections form.
  • Teach: heritage schools need teachers for every language.

Shared listings

Sharing opens soon

Organisations, services, resources and public places shared by members, each linked to its official site.

Cite this page
APA

The Kurdish Cooperation Organization. (2026). Preservation. kurds.global. https://kurds.global/language/preservation/

Chicago

The Kurdish Cooperation Organization. 2026. “Preservation.” kurds.global. https://kurds.global/language/preservation/.

BibTeX
@misc{kco2026_language_preservation,
	author = {{The Kurdish Cooperation Organization}},
	year = {2026},
	note = {Licence: CC BY 4.0},
	title = {Preservation},
	url = {https://kurds.global/language/preservation/},
	howpublished = {https://kurds.global/language/preservation/},
}

Download .bib

RIS
TY  - ELEC
AU  - The Kurdish Cooperation Organization
DA  - 2026///
PY  - 2026
ID  - kco2026_language_pre
N1  - Licence: CC BY 4.0
TI  - Preservation
UR  - https://kurds.global/language/preservation/
ER  - 

Download .ris

Licence CC BY 4.0

06Research and sources

Recent and relevant work on this page’s subject, from approved open scholarly sources. Metadata and links only. Titles stay as published. Not yet reviewed.

  1. Kurdish and Persian: Dialects or Separate Languages?

    Mohammed Khalid Mahmood,, Ali Qadir Hama Rash,, Mohammed Amin Qadir Hama Rash, et al. · 2023 · Zenodo

    ArticleDataCiteZenodoOpen accessCC-BY-4.0

  2. Gorani: A Distinct and Independent Language Not a Variety of the So-called Kurdish

    Sayyed Mahdi Sadjadi · 2023 · International Journal of Language & Linguistics

    ArticleOpenAlexOpen accessCC-BY

  3. A Comparative Study of the Function of Modal Verbs in Persian and Kurdish Languages (case study: two contemporary Persian and Kurdish novels)

    Zaniar Naghshbandi, Fardin Hosseinpanahi · 2024 · پژوهشنامه ادبیات کردی

    ArticleDOAJOpen access

  4. The First Parallel Corpora for Kurdish Sign Language

    Zina Kamal, Hossein Hassani · 2023 · arXiv

    PreprintarXivOpen access

  5. Struggling against language shift: Kurdish language education in Turkey

    Anu Leinonen · 2022 · Kurdish Studies

    ArticleCrossref

  6. Proto-Kurdish: Historical Development and Linguistic Distinctiveness within the Northwestern Iranian Languages

    Marwan Hamay · 2025 · Zenodo

    ArticleDataCiteOpen accessCC-BY-4.0

  7. Dasinya: A dataset and preprocessing pipeline for the Badini Kurdish dialect.

    Saeed VA, Jacksi K · 2026 · Data Brief

    ArticleEurope PMCOpen access

  8. The Theories of standardization of language and Kurdish language

    Omar Ahmed Azeez · 2026 · Qalaai Zanist Scientific Journal

    ArticleOpenAlexOpen accessCC-BY

  9. Language and Speech Technology for Central Kurdish Varieties

    Sina Ahmadi, Daban Q. Jaff, Md Mahfuz Ibn Alam et al. · 2024 · arXiv

    PreprintarXivOpen access

  10. Kurdish Dialects and Neighbor Languages Automatic Recognition

    Abdulbasit K. Al-Talabani, Zrar K. Abdul, Azad A. Ameen · 2017 · ARO-The Scientific Journal of Koya University

    ArticleDOAJOpen access

  11. Optimizing Fake News Detection in Low-Resource Languages: A Comparative Study of Deep Learning Models Using Sentence-Level FastText Vectors in Kurdish and English

    Karim¹ AM, A.Hassn B · 2026 · Research Square

    PreprintEurope PMC

  12. Towards Machine Translation for the Kurdish Language

    Sina Ahmadi, Mariam Masoud · 2020 · arXiv

    PreprintarXivOpen access

Sources, licences and fetch dates: arXiv (Metadata CC0 1.0; papers under their own licences), 2026-10-23; Crossref (Metadata facts, any use; abstracts may be publisher-owned and are never shown), 2026-10-23; DataCite (CC0 1.0 (DataCite metadata)), 2026-10-23; DOAJ (Metadata CC0 1.0 (DOAJ); articles under their own open licences), 2026-10-23; Europe PMC (Metadata reusable; full text under each article’s licence), 2026-10-23; OpenAlex (CC0-1.0 data; metered API (free key)), 2026-10-23; Zenodo (Metadata CC0 1.0; each record under its own licence), 2026-10-23.