Ethnic Language Rights in Iraq
- Details
- Category: English Language and Literature
- Published: Thursday, 19 April 2012 03:00
- Written by Bakir Abdul Al- Hammeed Al-Sammaraie
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Ethnic Language Rights in Iraq
Bakir Abdul Al- Hammeed Al-Sammaraie
Mu'tah university, 2010
Iraq is a country that witnesses ethnic and linguistic diversity crystallized in languages, such as, Arabic, Kurdish, Turkmen and Syriac. This study handles ethnic language rights in Iraq and language identity as a social human demand for any country that has different ethnicity and different spoken languages. Ethnic language identity has a direct social relation with the daily life of the whole society.
The sample of this study consists of two Iraqi ethnic language groups, the first group is the majority languages such as (Arabs and Kurds), and the second group includes the minority languages such as (Turkmens and Syriacs).The aim of this study is to identify Iraqi ethnic language rights by distributing a questionnaire to Iraqi people. It includes items about the attitude of personal language policy rights in Iraq. It also includes items about the recognition of other Iraqi ethnic language rights to reach mutual recognition among all Iraqi ethnic groups, in order to establish a unified future language rights for all Iraqi ethnic groups.
The practical significance of this study is shown by identifying and comparing four main Iraqi ethnic language groups (Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens and Syriacs) by asking them to fill out a questionnaire.
The results show the concept of majority and minority languages among the different Iraqi ethnic language groups. They also show the development of language legislation in Iraqi constitutions that make Arabic the only permitted language for formal matters and education.