Slavic and Eurasian Languages
Russian
Russian is spoken by upwards of 250 million worldwide, including 144 million in Russia, a country that covers one-eighth of the world’s landmass and spans eleven time zones across Europe and Asia
Ukranian
Ukrainian is an East Slavic language and is part of the larger Indo-European family of languages. It is spoken in Ukraine and in Ukrainian communities in neighboring Belarus, Russia, Poland, and Slovakia.
Bosnian / Croatian / Montenegrin / Serbian (BCMS)
Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian are taught together at KU. Although they have all become official languages of their independent states, they remain mutually understandable.
Czech
Czech is spoken by over 10 million citizens of the Czech Republic and another 2 million people worldwide. Czech is a Slavic language from the West-Slavic group, which also includes Polish and Slovak.
Polish
The Polish language, rich in its history and literature, is spoken by more than 40 million speakers. KU has a long tradition of teaching Polish language and literature.
Persian (Farsi, Tajik)
Persian, an Indo-European language with a rich cultural and literary history, is an official language in three countries: Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan, where it is respectively known as Farsi, Dari, and Tajik.
Slovene
Slovene is spoken in the Republic of Slovenia and neighboring territories in Italy, Austria, and Hungary. Large Slovene-speaking communities can also be found in Argentina, Australia, Canada, and the US. KU is the only major North American university that teaches Slovene at all levels.
Turkish
Turkish is spoken by roughly 150 million people around the world. Like Finnish and Hungarian, Turkish is an agglutinative language, which means that new particles are added to the end of a base form to generate new words. Turkish is also an ideal gateway to study the other Turkic languages of Eurasia, including Azeri, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, and Uzbek.
Uyghur
Living in the crossroads of Central Asia, mostly in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China, the traditionally Muslim Uyghurs have a rich culture of literature, art, music, and dance. Today, Uyghur is geopolitically strategic as the region shares a border with Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Central Asian republics, Russia, and Mongolia.
