Personalities

Dr. Michael L. Chyet

Michael L. Chyet was born in 1957 into a Jewish-American family. He has studied more than 30 languages, delving into the marvels of cultural and oral histories with the zeal of an explorer marching into uncharted territory. For the past 18 years, he has labored quietly but passionately to produce a comprehensive Kurdish-English dictionary.

When Chyet was a child, he complained that school was boring, and his father (the late Stanley F. Chyet, poet, historian and rabbi) became concerned. A psychologist suggested that the 6-year-old boy attend a private school where classes were taught in English and Hebrew.

When he was 12, he spent six weeks on vacation in Israel. When he returned home to Cincinnati, Chyet stumbled across a variety of books written in other languages in his attic. The books had once belonged to his grandfather and great uncles, who had immigrated to Boston from western Ukraine at the turn of the century. Within a year, he was reading German, Spanish, Yiddish and French and figuring out Russian. He then attended an Anglican church school to study Arabic.

Michael Chyet has published several articles on folkloristic and Kurdish linguistic topics. He was professor of Kurdish at the University of Paris (2001-2002), senior editor of the Kurdish Service for Voice of America (1995-2001), and worked for the University of California-Berkeley (1991-1995). He holds a doctorate in Middle Eastern languages and folklore from the University of California-Berkeley, where he also earned a Master of Arts. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Arabic language from the University of California-Los Angeles in 1980. He is a 1975 graduate of Walnut Hills High School, in Cincinnati, Ohio.

n 2001, Dr. Chyet taught Kurdish at INALCO (University of Paris) and the Kurdish Institute of Paris. His teaching repertoire includes Kurdish (both North and Central Kurdish dialects), Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew, Aramaic and folklore. Mr. Chyet has developed teaching materials during years as an instructor of Kurmanji and Sorani. His comprehensive Kurmanji-English Dictionary was published by Yale University Press in Nov 2002. This dictionary focuses on modern usage of the Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish, which is spoken in Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq and parts of the former Soviet Union.

Publications

Kurdish Dictionary Kurmanji-English, Chyet, Michael L., Yale University Press, 2002, ISBN: 0300091524