The Hantibum (Face to Face) festival runs until the end of March

The Hantibum (Face to Face) festival runs until the end of March

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Once spoken by two million people across the Ottoman Empire, Turkish Armenian has shrunk to the point of becoming an endangered language following a century marked by massacres and mass emigration.

Yet defenders of Western Armenian, a language essentially spoken only by Turkey's now-miniscule Armenian minority, are refusing to let their native tongue become a historical curiosity. 

Originally published on doc.afp.com, part of the BLOX Digital Content Exchange.

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