For the first time at an American university, a course devoted entirely to the Tuvan language has been conducted. David Harrison, who is assistant professor at the Linguistics Department & Cognitive Science Program of Swarthmore College, USA and post-doctoral researcher at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany taught the seminar past semester at Swarthmore College and had 13 students enrolled. Mr. Harrison told Tuva-Online that the course was a success. During seminars group covered the basic structures of Tuvan grammar and also read several literary genres, including songs, aphorisms, riddles, "durgen chugaa" and part of an epic tale "Boktu-Kirish, Bora-Sheelei".
The students have begun to build a Tuvan language web site but due to some
font problems, the work is not over yet.
The course will be taught again next Spring (2006) and will be a regular part of the curriculum at Swarthmore College, located near Philadelphia, PA.
Foundation of this work was provided by support from Tuvan Institute for Humanitarian Researches, which hosted course's author David Harrison during his stay in Tuva in 1998.