Adult students are learning Kurdish in Nashville, Tennessee in a program provided by Nashville State Community College (NSCC) for free, and sponsored by CeLCAR, Indiana University’s Center for Languages of the Central Asian Region. The partnership is funded via CeLCAR’s Language Resource Center grant by Title VI and the U.S. Department of Education. The classes are using language materials developed by CeLCAR at IU, funded also through Title VI. Nashville has the largest community of Kurdish speakers outside of Iraq, the second largest Kurdish community in the world. “If you think about 20,000 people in a couple of zip codes, that's a high concentration. And that is a solid community," explained Dr. Patricia Armstrong, Dean of English Humanities and Creative Technologies at Nashville State Community College. This is an excellent opportunity for residents to learn to communicate better with their Kurdish-speaking neighbors or with their Kurdish-speak relatives. NSCC and CeLCAR also hope to extend the program to local Nashville high schools. The efforts of NSCC and CeLCAR help to support Nashville’s Office of the Mayor in the program supporting “New Americans”. For further details, see these two news links:
https://news.yahoo.com/nashville-state-community-college-offers-114155888.html?guccounter=1