Free Republic

In April, the language-learning app Duolingo added its 40th language to its program arsenal: Yiddish. A couple of decades ago, it would have been unthinkable for a mainstream non-Jewish language program to offer an expansive, comprehensive course in Yiddish. But Duolingo’s Yiddish addition only serves to reflect the increased global interest in learning a language that once had as many as 12 million speakers. Ladino, a Romance language of Sephardic Jews still spoken by hundreds of thousands worldwide, has also garnered much interest in recent years. Ladino classes, both online and in-person, are widely available to prospective learners. But while...

Several northwestern cities in Iran have recently been rocked by demonstrations and riots by ethnic Azerbaijani citizens. They were protesting a cartoon published in an official government newspaper that depicted the Azerbaijani minority as a cockroach and instructed people to deny it food until it learns to speak Persian. Last Sunday, thousands of Iranian Azerbaijanis gathered outside Parliament in Tehran to chant in their native Turkic language and demand the rights to operate schools in their own language. As his police forces heavy-handedly dispersed the demonstrators, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, praised the loyalty of the Azerbaijani citizens...

Coin discovery sheds light on Turkic civilization Thursday, March 10, 2005 Göktürk find refutes claims that the Turkic peoples were merely plunderers and barbarians ANKARA - Turkish Daily News Ancient coins from the first known Turkic culture, the Göktürks, have been discovered during archeological excavations in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, reported the Doðan News Agency. Associate Professor Yavuz Daloðlu, an instructor at Dokuz Eylül University who presented the findings of historian Dr. Babayar Gaybullah to the public, stated that claims asserting that the Göktürk people did not have any structure of governance have been proven wrong by this discovery. He...

On September 11, as al-Qa‘ida cells prepared to launch their assaults on Washington and New York, a remarkable event was taking place half a world away. In New Delhi, Israeli defense and intelligence officials, led by National Security Advisor Uzi Dayan, were meeting with their Indian counterparts to discuss the common threats facing their two countries. When pressed on the issue, a spokesman from India's ministry of external affairs described the talks as routine, part of a larger, ongoing "strategic dialogue" with Israel on topics ranging from Afghan terrorism to Iranian missile development.[1] Yet, the meeting was anything but routine....