Kurdish Greetings and Basic Phrases in Kurmancî (With Pronunciation)

Quick answer: The first word to learn is Silav — hello. Add Tu çawa yî? (how are you?), Ez baş im (I'm fine), Spas (thank you) and Navê min … e (my name is …), and you can already hold a short, real Kurmancî conversation. This page gives you 28 phrases in the order you actually need them: greeting, small talk, introducing yourself, saying where you are from, and the politeness formulas that matter more in Kurdish than most learners expect.

Everything below is taken from the chapter our own Kurmancî A1 e-book opens the speaking section with — no invented phrases, no machine-translated filler.

Why greetings are the right place to start

In Kurdish culture, greeting is not small talk that you get out of the way. It is a social act that carries respect and warmth, and it is noticed. A learner who says Silav and then switches to English has already done the thing that counts: they have shown up in the language.

There is a practical reason too. Greetings are the only part of a language you are guaranteed to use in every single conversation, which means they are the part you will get the most repetitions on. Twenty-eight well-chosen phrases will carry you through a first phone call with a relative. Twenty-eight well-chosen nouns will not.

The seven greetings

English	Kurmancî
Hello!	Silav!
Welcome!	Bi xêr hatî!
Good morning!	Sibê baş!
Good day!	Roj baş!
Good evening!	Êvar baş!
Bye	Xatirê te!
Goodbye	Bi xatirê te!

Two things worth noticing. First, Silav is often shortened in speech to Slav — you will hear both, and both are correct in conversation. Second, look at Sibê baş, Roj baş, Êvar baş: the pattern is time-of-day + baş (good), the opposite order from English. Learn the pattern once and you have three greetings, not three separate memorisations.

The words you will use in every conversation

English	Kurmancî
How are you?	Tu çawa yî?
I'm fine / I am good	Ez baş im.
Yes	Erê
No	Na
Thank you	Spas
Please / you're welcome	Ji kerema xwe re

Spas is the single highest-value word on this page. It is short, it is unmistakable, and it works in every register from a shop to a family dinner.

There is more than one way to say yes

This is where beginners sound flat, and it is an easy fix. Kurmancî distinguishes between a neutral yes, a confirming yes and a casual yes:

Kurmancî	Meaning	When to use it
erê	yes	neutral, the common default
belê	yes, exactly / that's right	affirming, confirming what was said
baş e / baş	yes, okay / all right	informal, casual agreement
balê	yes	formal, traditional, poetic contexts
na	no	neutral, all situations

Start with erê and na. Add belê as soon as you are comfortable — using it in the right place is one of the fastest ways to stop sounding like a textbook.

Introducing yourself

English	Kurmancî
What is your name?	Navê te çi ye?
My name is …	Navê min … e
Where are you from?	Tu ji ku derê yî?
I come from …	Ez ji … me
I am … (a teacher, a student, Kurdish)	Ez … im

Three of those five are the same small building block: Ez … im — I am something. Ez xwendekar im (I am a student). Ez mamoste im (I am a teacher). Ez Kurd im (I am Kurdish). The ending changes with the person — Tu … î for you, Ew … e for he or she — but at this stage you only need your own.

Saying where you are from — and that you are Kurdish

For a lot of diaspora learners this is the sentence that actually matters, more than any greeting:

• Ez ji Kurdistanê me. — I come from Kurdistan.
• Ez Kurd im. — I am Kurdish.
• Ez bi Kurdî diaxivim. — I speak Kurdish.

And the country and language words you are most likely to need:

English	Country	Language
Kurdistan / Kurdish	Kurdistan	Kurdî
Germany / German	Almanya	Almancî
Turkey / Turkish	Tirkiye	Tirkî
Great Britain / English	Brîtanya	Îngilîzî
Iraq / Arabic	Êraq	Erebî
Iran / Persian	Îran	Farsî

Put together: Ez ji Brîtanya me. Ez bi Îngilîzî diaxivim. — I am from Britain. I speak English.

Politeness: the part learners skip and Kurds notice

Kurdish puts real weight on polite expression, including inside the family, where English would often use nothing at all. These are not decorative:

English	Kurmancî
You're welcome!	Ser çavan!
May God be with you!	Xwedê bi te re be!
Have a nice day!	Rojekê baş!
You have my respect (lit. "you are on my eyes")	Tu ser çavan î.

That last one is worth sitting with. Tu ser çavan î literally means "you are on my eyes," and it is said as a mark of respect and affection. Ser çavan! — the short form — is also how you answer Spas. It is the kind of phrase that no phrasebook ranks highly and every Kurdish household uses.

Your first full conversation

Here is the whole thing assembled, taken from the practice dialogue in our A1 book. Read it out loud twice before you read the translation.

A: Silav! Tu çawa yî?
B: Ez baş im, spas. Tu çi dikî?
A: Ez mamoste im. Navê min Alî ye.
B: Ez xwendekar im. Navê min Zîn e.

A: Hello! How are you?
B: I'm good, thank you. What do you do?
A: I am a teacher. My name is Alî.
B: I am a student. My name is Zîn.

Four lines. Eight of the phrases on this page. That is a complete first exchange, and it is roughly the level at which a Kurdish relative switches from being impressed to being delighted.

How to pronounce all of this

Nine of the phrases above contain a letter English does not have. The good news is that Kurmancî spelling is completely regular — one letter, one sound, nothing silent — so once you know these five you can say every phrase on this page correctly:

Letter	Sound	In a phrase from this page
ç	like ch in church	Tu çawa yî?
ê	long closed e, like ey in they	Êvar baş!
î	long, like ee in see	Tu çawa yî?
ş	like sh in shoe	Ez baş im.
x	a ch from the throat, as in Scottish loch	Bi xêr hatî!

One trap: the hats are not decoration. î is a genuinely longer sound than i, and the length changes the word — min and mîn are not the same. If you shorten the vowel in Tu çawa yî, you have said something else. The full set of 31 letters, with an example word for each, is in our guide to the Kurdish alphabet.

How to practise these 28 phrases so they stick

1. Learn them as exchanges, not as a list. Tu çawa yî? → Ez baş im, spas. Always in pairs. A phrase you have only ever seen alone will not arrive when someone asks you the question.
2. Say them out loud three times each. Not in your head. The muscles are the point, especially for x and ç.
3. Use one in a real message today. Send Silav to a family member instead of hello. The first time is the hard one.
4. Write the diacritics by hand. Copy out ten phrases with the hats and the cedilla. Your hand remembers ê and ş faster than your eyes do.
5. Add the answer before you add new questions. Most learners collect questions and can answer none of them.

If you grew up hearing Kurdish at home and freeze the moment you have to produce it yourself, the bottleneck is not vocabulary — and starting with greetings is exactly the right move, because they are the phrases you have already heard ten thousand times. We wrote about that specific block in why you understand Kurdish but can't speak it.

Do these phrases work in Soranî and Badinî too?

Partly, and it is worth being precise about it, because guessing wrong here wastes months.

• Kurmancî — everything on this page. Spoken by roughly 15 to 17 million people in Turkey, Syria, northern Iraq, northern Iran, Armenia and across the European diaspora.
• Badinî — a regional form of Kurmancî spoken around Duhok, Zaxo and Amêdî. The greetings on this page will be understood; some verb forms differ.
• Soranî — Central Kurdish, mainly Iraq and parts of Iran, normally written in an adapted Arabic script. Kurmancî and Soranî are not mutually intelligible, so these phrases will not carry over directly.

Silav and spas are widely recognised across Kurdish-speaking regions. Full sentences are not. If you have not settled the dialect question yet, do it before you memorise anything: which Kurdish dialect should I learn?.

What comes after greetings

Greetings are chapter 3 of our Kurmancî A1 e-book, and they sit exactly where they should: after the alphabet, and immediately before the present tense — because the moment you can say Ez baş im, you are one small step from Ez çay dixwim (I drink tea) and the whole of everyday speech. The book runs through pronouns, numbers, family, daily routine, the home, food and weather, and finishes with a 100-point test and a certificate of completion.

If you already know you want to get past introductions and into real conversation, the Kurmancî A1 & A2 bundle is the set most learners start with. For the wider picture of where to begin, our guide to learning Kurmancî lays out the order.

Frequently asked questions

How do you say hello in Kurdish?

Silav — often shortened to Slav in speech. It works at any time of day and in any setting. If you want to be more specific, use Sibê baş! (good morning), Roj baş! (good day) or Êvar baş! (good evening). All of these are Kurmancî, the most widely spoken Kurdish dialect.

How do you say thank you in Kurdish?

Spas. One word, easy to pronounce, used everywhere. The reply is Ser çavan! — literally "on my eyes" — which functions like "you're welcome." Ji kerema xwe re covers both "please" and "you're welcome" in more formal use.

How do you say "how are you" in Kurdish?

Tu çawa yî? The answer is Ez baş im — I'm fine. Say them as a pair from the start; that way the answer arrives on its own when someone asks you.

How do you say "my name is" in Kurdish?

Navê min … e. So Navê min Zîn e — my name is Zîn. To ask: Navê te çi ye? — what is your name? Note the e at the end, which is the verb "is" and belongs there.

How do you say "I am Kurdish" in Kurdish?

Ez Kurd im. And to say you speak the language: Ez bi Kurdî diaxivim. If you are still learning, the honest and very useful version is Ez fêr dibim — I am learning — but Ez Kurd im is the sentence most people are actually looking for.

How many Kurdish phrases do I need before I can have a conversation?

Fewer than you think — around 25 to 30 well-chosen ones, of the kind on this page, are enough for a genuine first exchange: greeting, how-are-you, name, where you're from, thank you, goodbye. What matters is that they are the phrases that appear in every conversation rather than a random 200-word vocabulary list. The order is the whole trick, and it is why our complete beginner's guide to learning Kurdish starts where it does.

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Written by The Kurdish Academy · Language reviewed by a native Kurmancî speaker on our team · Last updated 26 September 2026