Ilam: Literary conference spotlights marginalized Kurdish dialect

Shafaq News/ Iran’s Ilam University has launched the region’s first academic workshop on Kurdish-Ilamic orthography, as part of a new literary conference exploring poetic translation between Persian and Kurdish.

The event, jointly organized by the university’s Comparative Literature Society and the Department of Persian Language and Literature, featured sessions on translating poetry, alongside a primer on Kurdish spelling rules.

Alireza Shohani, a professor of Persian and Kurdish literature at the university, called the workshop “a foundational step toward recognizing Kurdish-Ilamic within formal academic frameworks.”

“Kurdish today suffers from a lack of emotional support at home, with mothers no longer playing an active role in passing on the language,” he noted, according to KurdPress.

Located in western Iran along the Iraqi border, Ilam province is one of the country’s most linguistically and culturally diverse regions.

Feyli Kurds form the demographic majority, and the area boasts a rich literary and folkloric heritage, much of which has long been marginalized under Iran’s official language and cultural policies.

The city of Ilam, the provincial capital, is increasingly seen as a hub for Kurdish academic and cultural activity. Ilam University has recently launched initiatives to support Kurdish language and literature, particularly the local dialect, as part of efforts to preserve and academically legitimize this cultural heritage.