THE MINORITY LANGUAGE SITUATION IN IRAQ (FOCUSING ON 1991 TO PRESENT DAY)
The article is dedicated to understanding the minorities’ language situation in Iraq focusing the period from 1991 to present times. It is shown that the only official language of the country was Arabic since its demarcation by the British mandate in 1920s until 1991 when a new linguistic era for minorities appeared in the northern part of the country. The minorities like the Kurds, Turkmen, Assyrian, Chaldean and Armenian were not happy with the country’s linguistic policy and their languages faced different situations due to ethnic, political, religious, and geographical reasons. This paper aims to describe their language situation with an emphasis on what happened to them in the past. Providing a diachronic view on the issue, it shows the trends of minorities’ languages development in Kurdistan region.