Introduction to Zazaki

Zazaki has one of the most beautiful sounding names that I know of. It is an Iranian language found in Central Turkey, often considered to be related to Kurdish and thus included in maps of an independent Kurdistan, but it is actually from a completely different branch of Iranian languages. As can be seen in this image, both Zazaki and the Kurdish languages are part of the North-Western group -unlike Persian-, but Zazaki splits from Kurdish along with the extinct Parthian and Median.

Review of Swahili

Swahili is possibly the most famous of the Sub-Saharan languages (ignoring English and French) and is also the most widely spoken with up to 140 million speakers, although the number of native speakers is significantly less. It is spoken to varying degrees in 8 different countries (Map). It is a member of the Bantu sub-family (Map - in pale green) which itself is part of the huge Niger-Congo family (Map - purple).

Questioning the obvious

A news report from Afghanistan appeared last week which probably didn't shock many people. As you can see here, a law forbidding violence against women, among other things, which had been in effect since 2009 as a presidential decree, was brought to parliament in order for it to be consolidated and to make sure that it could not be reversed by any future presidents. Unfortunately religious-minded MPs have a lot of power in the Afghan parliament and brought the whole procedure to a halt claiming that the law was un-Islamic and thus invalid.