First textbook in major new series on world and minority languages to publish this week
Posted on 25th November, 2024
UCL Press is delighted to announce the publication of the first book in the open access Textbook of World of Minority Languages series, marking a significant milestone in the teaching of world and minority languages.
Designed to meet the needs of today’s students, the open access series consists of contemporary and accessible beginners’ language textbooks of the world’s less commonly taught languages with an emphasis on Indigenous, regional, minority, and endangered languages, as well as ancient languages.
The first title, Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic, focuses on the native tongue spoken by the Jews of Baghdad and other towns of Southern Iraq, historically one of the oldest and biggest Jewish communities. This textbook is dedicated to spoken Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic and is designed to guide beginners to an advanced level, with the goal of enabling basic conversations. It focuses on common expressions of this unique dialect and opens a window to Baghdad’s historic Jewish culture. The 10 lessons guide readers through a particular topic, such as greetings, family, shopping or cuisine, and consist of sample texts, key vocabulary, grammar points and exercises; it also includes free access to audio files, additional activities and links to the exercises.
The series will continue to highlight languages which presently lack easy-to-use English-medium textbooks, complementing the UCL Press open access series Grammars of World and Minority Languages. The textbooks equip both classroom and independent learners with the knowledge of the language’s basic grammatical structures, high frequency vocabulary, and salient cultural topics. For modern spoken languages emphasis is placed on everyday communicative situations, while for ancient languages the focus is on reading texts.
Dhara Snowden, UCL Press textbook Programme manager, said: ‘I’m thrilled to be publishing this important work from Dr. Bar-Moshe. The teaching and learning of rare and minority languages should be supported and protected and this series aims to do just that, by providing high-quality resources for both academics and students. By publishing OA, we remove all financial barriers to access and ability to reuse (under the CC licence) and hope this text reaches a global audience.’