Mark Williamson schrieb: Not for all dialects. For Sorani, there is a de-facto standard. It is the dialect of Sulaymaniya, the main written language since tens of years. There is a lot of publiations in that dialect, also education. It is user in parts of Iraq and Iran. Educated Sorani speakers have less difficulty with Kurmanji, because they know roman letters. The situation is worse for Kurmanji, which is the dialect most of the Kurdish speakers speak. Because most of them are in Turkey they are afflicted by the Turkish state politics which has persecuted the use of the language since the 1930's. Only in the last years there are some publications. The situation is even worse for Zazaki, because there are less speakers. In the south of Iran there are some more dialects (Gorani, Hewremani) which I cannot say a lot about. For Kurmanji there are some standards, like a roman-based alphabet and a lot of grammar rules, which are commonly accepted. But details are still being discussed. These dicussions have often taken place in exile in Europe, which made them even more difficult. Standardization is a main goal and will proceed as the political situation in Turkey improves. But the differences between Kurmanji and Sorani are severe, and a further standardization of Kurmanji, even if there is a tendecy towards closing in, is likely to make these differences permanent. Kurmanji speakers also generally do not know the arabic script so they cannot make use of Sorani effectively. So in short: 1. Kurmanji is most widely used, but not effectively standardized. Latin script, moste speakers. 2. Sorani is second most widely used, has just become official language in Iraq, well standardized, arabic script. 3. Zazaki used by less speakers, poorly standardized. 4. Little convergence of the main dialects. This is how I see it, others may see it differently. For Wikipedia, we take everything as it comes and try to support everything technically. I have switched the Monobook.css to Tahoma, which is ok for all dialects. That is an interesting example how things can be done. If there is one. A real nation-state is not likely to develop. Even if the Iraqi part breaks away from Iraq, that is just a small fraction of Kurdistan (1/6). There will be no language problem, Sorani is standard there. But the Kurmanji problem can only be solved in the north, in Turkish Kurdistan. Kurdish politics are very very difficult. Erdal

Brion wrote: How is that done? I don't know CSS. What we need is this: Non-latin (arabic) script letters should be shown as "Unikurd Web" everywhere, if "Unikurd Web" is not installed, it should be Tahoma (as a second choice). Is there an easy way to do it? Erdal