The Lord’s Prayer in Northern Kurdish: Lexical and orthographic journeys since 1787

Abstract

This article presents a survey of sixteen translations of the Lord’s Prayer in Northern Kurdish published from 1787 until 2019. Attention is given to the development of different orthographies and literary standards for Northern Kurdish as well as to the evolution of certain vocabulary as illustrated by the use of ‘key terms’ in the Lord’s Prayer. Both lexical evolution and orthographic development are shown to reflect aspects of Kurdish identity. The discussion also touches on parts of the Prayer that tend to be opaque or misunderstood by Kurdish readers even when the vocabulary and orthography are otherwise described as “intelligible” or “standard”.