Bosnian, Albanian to join language syllabus in Turkey

By Selma Kasap

ANKARA (AA) - Students will be offered the chance to learn Bosnian and Albanian from the next academic year, an Education Ministry official said Thursday.

The languages will be added to the middle school syllabus on an elective basis from September, the official said on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on talking to the media.

Pupils aged 13-16 will be able to learn Bosnian and Albanian as part of the Living Languages and Dialects course, under which they can already learn languages spoken in Turkey and neighboring countries, such as the Kurdish dialects Kurmanji and Sorani, Laz, Abkhazian and Georgian.

From the age of seven to 18, students are taught compulsory English, as well as being able to choose to study German and French.

Under a 2015 agreement between Turkey and Bosnia-Herzegovina, Turkish is taught in more than 80 schools across Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Bosnian, a variety of Serbo-Croat, is spoken by about 2.2 million people, mostly in Bosnia-Herzegovina but also in other former Yugoslav states. Around 5 million people in Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia and Greece speak Albanian.