This is excellent, thank you. Lots of Assyrian Aramaic-speaking Christians in Australia. Iraq is definitely on my bucket list but I will probably never be able to visit. Thank you for allowing me to travel there from my home.
Interesting that the post cards are in English. I guess English floated in to the Middle East through the British Empire - not German. Curious what the motivation was to teach English language skills in European cities and when that began. Was it the effect of the British Empire? The USA was a far away land, of little consequence until WWII and The Cold War.
Why would German be used in the Middle East? Iraq had been a British "protectorate" since the First World War, and I do think the use of English was the effect of this.
These postcards date from around 1960, which also indicates that the US was playing a considerable role in the Middle East at that time (and this quite certainly influenced the situation, too).
This is excellent, thank you. Lots of Assyrian Aramaic-speaking Christians in Australia. Iraq is definitely on my bucket list but I will probably never be able to visit. Thank you for allowing me to travel there from my home.
Cheers!
Fascinating.
Interesting that the post cards are in English. I guess English floated in to the Middle East through the British Empire - not German. Curious what the motivation was to teach English language skills in European cities and when that began. Was it the effect of the British Empire? The USA was a far away land, of little consequence until WWII and The Cold War.
Why would German be used in the Middle East? Iraq had been a British "protectorate" since the First World War, and I do think the use of English was the effect of this.
These postcards date from around 1960, which also indicates that the US was playing a considerable role in the Middle East at that time (and this quite certainly influenced the situation, too).
I found some more postcards rom Iraq to Vienna, and it turns out that you were right: some Iraqis were actually learning German…
These are great
Yep, esp. the ancient Lion of Babylon (note that today, it rests on a different pedestal).