Hawrami, The dialect of Hawraman. AVROMANI, the dialect of Avroman, properly Hawrāmi, is the most archaic of the Gōrāni group. All Gōrāni dialects exhibit a number of phonological features which link them with the dialects of central Iran and distinguish them from Kurdish. While the main Gōrāni language area, to the west of Kermānæāh, is an island in a sea of chiefly Kurdish dialects, the Hawrāmān now forms a separate islet to the north. It is clear, however, that the neighboring Kurdish dialects have invaded on a much wider Gōrāni area and have been considerably affected in the process. There has also been much interchange of vocabulary. According to a survey carried out by the Summer Institute of Linguistics in 1996 there were 200,000 speakers of Horami in the world. It is mostly spoken in the Hawraman region, a mountainous region located in western Iran (Iranian Kurdistan) and northeastern Iraq (Iraqi Kurdistan). The key cities of this region are Pawe in Iran and Halabja in Iraq. Generally, the majority of Hawrami speakers can also speak Sorani Kurdish, and Arabic or Persian, in order to communicate with other people in neighboring cities. Source: D. N. MacKenzie, The Dialect of Awroman (Hawrāmān-ī Luhōn), Hist.-Filos. Skr. Dan. Vid. Selsk. 4, no. 3, Copenhagen, 1966 (with earlier literature).