zayend

Northern Kurdish

Etymology

A calque of English gender, from the verb zan (“to be born (animal)”); from za (“was born”) +‎ -end (“-ant, -ing”), which comes with phonetic and linguistic problems because of how it was fashioned against the nature of Kurdish languages. Made up in Northern Kurdistan around the 90s and does not appear in public speech. In other Kurdish languages regez and it's cognates are used, which is a cognate of Northern Kurdish reh (“root”).

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /zɑːˈjɛnd/

Noun

zayend f

sex (gender)