Words are considered as one of the most important components of language. There are some strategies by which new lexical items are formed in each language. In this article we try to discuss different word formation processes used in Ilami as a dialect of Kurdish. Then we will compare our results with those of English to see if there are any similarities or differences in word formation processes in these two languages. In order to arrive at this goal, we will examine such morphological strategies as “derivation”, “compounding”, “blending”, “abbreviation” and so forth. By analyzing our data, we found that Kurdish frequently (not as much as English) enjoys compounding in its word-formation. Derivation takes the latter position in Ilami word formation. The other ways of new word creations are rarely (or never) used in this dialect. It is believed that Kurdish (as a whole and Ilami as a dialect of it) unlike English does not have a written form and is not an official language; these factors remarkably decrease the level of word-formation productivity in this language (and dialect).

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