Central Kurdish (; ) is a group of Kurdish dialects spoken in Iran and Iraq, in a region centered on the neighboring provinces of the Iraqi Sulaymaniyah Governorate and the Iranian Kurdistan Province. Central Kurdish dialects are spoken by an estimated 6–7 million people (out of a total of c. 30 million Kurdish speakers). The term Soranî (), after the name of the former principality of Soran, is used especially to refer to a written, standardized form of Central Kurdish written in an adapted form of the Perso-Arabic script, developed in the 1920s by Sa’íd Sidqi Kaban and Taufiq Wahby. According to David Neil MacKenzie, the present Kurdish written standard is based on the Silêmanî dialect, influenced phonologically by the Píjhdar and Mukrî dialects.
