A Critical Review of Kurdish Language Branches Based on Geographical Residency

There is no unanimous agreement among linguists and sociolinguists regarding the definition and distinction among terms and concepts of language, dialect and accent. Even some researchers, who study the relationship between language and society, employ both sociolinguistics and sociology of language differently to make a distinction between both of them, while some other use them interchangeably just to say that both are the same. The same issue can also be observed regarding the Kurdish language division, its branches, dialects, accents, and even the numbers of the branches. That is, most researchers who study Kurdish language are in disagreement regarding not only the definition of the terms and the number of Kurdish branches, dialects and accent but also in the basis on which the the divisions and definitions are done and most of them do it geographically rather than considering linguistics elements and features. This paper, firstly study the historical and geographical aspects of Kurdish language and put under criticism all those Kurdish language divisions done by the researchers in the field of Kurdish language study. Then, the researcher concluded that the current Kurdish language divisions are all suffer serious problems. Finally, the researcher offers new suggestions and directions for future divisions as well as approximate places in which Kurdish language and its major branches are distributed.