Peter Guekguezian: Armenian Jeopardy! Champion and Champion of Languages

 Shamiram Barooshian

“On June 17, 1929, this airline’s first passenger flight left Dallas, making stops at Shreveport, Monroe, and Jackson. Thirty seconds, good luck,” says Jeopardy! host, Alex Trebek. Then the music starts: that ubiquitous tune signaling impatience, waiting and mounting pressure.

Peter Guekguezian is one of the contestants on the June 19^th broadcast of the popular game show. Guekguezian is a linguist from Fresno, Calif., and a defending Jeopardy! champion, having won $18,401 on the previous show. This time, he is up against a history instructor from Tucson, Ariz. and a writer from Brooklyn, N.Y., whose score going into Final Jeopardy! is almost double.

Guekguezian feels the pressure and writes, “Southwest.”

For Turkey's youngest Jews, ancestral tongue fading away

Nazlan Ertan

 

For the young generation of Sephardic Jews in Turkey, their ancestral tongue, Ladino, is just a few words for Grandma's cuisine, a line or two from old songs and some snappy insults.

UNESCO considers Ladino, also known as Judeo-Spanish or Judezmo, a severely endangered language. In Turkey, it is spoken by only about 10,000 people, mostly around Istanbul and Izmir. Other Ladino-speaking communities in Greece and North Africa have also diminished, according to the Unesco Atlas. Israel has declared Ladino endangered as well, and has established a National Authority for the Ladino language and culture.