Penzl, Paper Key Figures In 'U' Project

Penzl, Paper Key Figures In 'U' Project
Penzl and Paper are key fig. ures in the University's $245,752 research program into languages of the Near and Middle East-the most extensive ever done in the United States.
Prof. Herbert H. Paper, a Persian language expert in the Department of Near Eastern studies and Herbert Penzl, professor of German whose rare knowledge of Pashto sent him on leave to teach in Afghanistan, have some distinguished colleagues in the
new program. 10. L. Chavarria-Aguilar, assistant professor of Indic languages, teams with Penzl as the only known pair of Americans ever to undertake serious linguistic work in Pashto (spoken in Afghanistan and Pakistan).
Ernest N. McCarus. assistant professor of Near Eastern studies, is one of only two or three Americans who have worked on Kurdish (spoken in Southern Asia and Turkey, Northern Iran and Iraq). Also an expert in Arabic, he will return late this summer from the Near East where he has been on leave from the U-M for two years as director of the Foreign Service Institute Language School in Beirut, Lebanon.
"The stature of these men led the U. S. Office of Education to request the University to undertake the research program in Near and Middle East Languages,” reports Prof. George G. Cameron, head of the U-M department of Near Eastern studies. “There is a serious shortage of instructional materials for training Americans in languages of the Near East and other critical areas."
Under Prof. Cameron's direction, the two-year National Defense Education Act contract is to develop much-needed instructional materials, including the first modern Pashto English dictionary, graded readers in Kurdish, Arabic, Persian and Pashto, translations and other works.