Kurdish speaking countries
Kurdish is no official language in any country, but is spoken as a mother tongue in five countries by a minor part of the population. The Kurdish language (native name: Kurdî, کوردی) has its roots in the Indo-European language family.With 8.99 million native speakers, Kurdish has the highest prevalence in Turkey. As a percentage of the total population, the largest share of around 19 percent is in Iraq. A total of about 27.2 million people worldwide speak Kurdish as their mother tongue.
| Country | Region | Official language | Distribution | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Turkey | Western Asia | no | 10.6 % | 8,986,000 |
| Iraq | Western Asia | no | 19.0 % | 8,271,000 |
| Iran | South Asia | no | 9.1 % | 8,001,000 |
| Syria | Western Asia | no | 9.0 % | 1,919,000 |
| Armenia | Western Asia | no | 1.0 % | 28,000 |
Unless otherwise described in the text, this page is about native speakers — not the total number of speakers. How many people understand or speak Kurdish as a subsequently learned language is not the subject of this page. Countries where native speakers make up only a few thousand, or even a few hundred people, or countries with a percentage well below 1% are unlikely to be listed here.