The Gender Mystery
In Kurdish, nouns have gender. They are either masculine or feminine. This is why we say:
- Mêr (Masculine - "the man")
- Jîn (Feminine - "the woman")
The same is true in French:
- Le (Masculine - "the man")
- La (Feminine - "the woman")
And in Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, Greek, and every major European language.
Why This Matters
Grammatical gender is not something you borrow from another language. You can borrow words, but you don't borrow grammar. Grammar is in the DNA of the language structure itself. It's the architecture of how you think and communicate.
The fact that Kurdish has gender like French, Spanish, and Italian—and the fact that this gender system is so similar in structure and application—is scientific proof that Kurdish is woven into the fabric of the European language family.
The Comparison
| Language | Masculine Article | Feminine Article | Family | Gender System |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kurdish | e / - | a / -a | Indo-European | 2 genders |
| French | Le | La | Indo-European | 2 genders |
| Spanish | El | La | Indo-European | 2 genders |
| Italian | Il | La | Indo-European | 2 genders |
| German | Der | Die | Indo-European | 3 genders (including neuter) |
| Russian | - | -a | Indo-European | 3 genders |
The Ancient Pattern
In Proto-Indo-European, nouns had one of three genders: masculine, feminine, or neuter. Over thousands of years, different Indo-European languages evolved differently.
Some languages (like English) mostly lost gender distinctions. Some languages (like German and Russian) preserved all three genders. Some languages (like French and Spanish) kept masculine and feminine but lost the neuter.
Kurdish kept the masculine-feminine distinction just like French, Spanish, and Italian.
This is not random. This is evidence of shared evolutionary patterns. All these languages inherited the gender system from their common ancestor and then evolved it independently—but in similar ways.
Conclusion
Grammatical gender is in the DNA of Indo-European languages. The fact that Kurdish has gender—and that it follows the same patterns as French, Spanish, and Italian—is definitive proof that Kurdish belongs to the European language family.