Kurdish is spoken by an estimated 30 to 40 million people worldwide, making it one of the largest languages in the world without a state of its own. Despite its size, Kurdish has never had official status in any of the four countries where its speakers are concentrated — Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria — and it has faced active suppression in each of them at various points in recent history. Broadcasting in Kurdish was illegal in Turkey for decades. Education in Kurdish was banned across multiple countries for most of the twentieth century. The language survived because its speakers refused to stop using it.

In the diaspora, that survival is no longer guaranteed by necessity. Children growing up in Nashville or San Diego are surrounded by English and have no external pressure to maintain Kurdish. For many families, the language is already being lost within a single generation. A parent who speaks Kurmanji fluently raises a child who understands it but responds in English, who raises a grandchild who recognizes a few words at most.

This is not a fate — it is a choice, and it can be reversed. But reversing it requires deliberate effort from families, from communities, and from organizations like KASA. Language loss is not inevitable; it is the result of conditions that can be changed.