SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region – English is increasingly becoming a primary requirement to land you a job in Kurdistan Region. This is why a non-profit organization in the region is seizing the opportunity to teach the language to thousands of people online.
The Macos organization distributed 1500 certificates to its online users in an event in the Kurdish city of Sulaimani on Thursday, and to another 2,000 people in Erbil in another similar event.
More Kurds are learning English as a second language in Kurdistan after the arrival of hundreds of international organizations and companies wishing to do business in the relatively safe region, where the population increasingly embraces the lingua franca.
It is becoming an increasingly necessary skill for employment. In many cases job applicants require knowledge of the English language, alongside the official Kurdish language of region as well as, to a lesser degree, Arabic – which is the official language of Iraq and one that is spoken by the newly arrived Internally Displaced People (IDPs) from the rest of Iraq.
In the major Kurdish cities of Duhok, Erbil and Sulaimani English has been leaving its mark through films, music and even media and literature. More often than not, restaurants are making use of English names, whilst road signs invariably have English translations.
English used to be taught in the Kurdish schools from Grade 5. This has changed, English is now taught in the Kurdistan Region from kindergarten.
