Addis Ababa Univ. extends Persian-language courses

Tehran, Dec 4, IRNA – Persian-language beginner-advanced courses have been extended for another year in Addis Ababa University in the capital of Ethiopia. Iran’s cultural attaché in Ethiopia Seyyed Kazem Mehrnia and the dean of the university’s college of Humanities, language studies, journalism and communication Taye Regassa met on Tuesday and discussed the courses and modern educational methods. During their meeting, Regassa said: “We are willing to expand the center in educational and research fields for which we will indeed require the cooperation of Iran’s cultural attaché office.” “The center is holding Chinese and Korean-language courses since some two years ago. Persian-language has recently been added to the curriculum which is presented to introduce Iran and its culture to foreign students,” he noted. “We need professors to be sent from source countries; accordingly some Iranian professors should be deployed to the university”, Regassa added. Seyyed Kazem Mehrnia, for his part, said that a local professor who is fluent in the language can be employed as an instructor for the courses. Persian (aka Farsi) is the official language of Iran with around 110 million speakers around the world. A language in the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European languages, Farsi has a 32-letter alphabet. It is mainly spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan./end