Uncle Garabed’s Notebook

Ben Franklin on Humility
To be humble to superiors is duty; to equals, is courtesy; to inferiors,
nobleness.
Personally Speaking
Professor: Can anyone tell me what the greatest achievement was of the
Romans?
Student majoring in language: Learning Latin.

From the Trivia File
Marcus Gabius Apicius was a Roman gourmand of the time of Augustus and
Tiberius, whose income being reduced by his luxurious living to only ten
million sesterces, put an end to his life, to avoid the misery of being obliged
to live on a plain diet.

Mock-Latin Verse
Civile, si ergo,
Fortibus es in ero.
Nobile deus trux.
Vatis inem?
Causan dux.

Translation:
See, Willy, see ‘er go
Forty buses in a row.
No, Billy, dey is trucks.
What is in ‘em?
Cows and ducks.
(Note: It’s got to be pronounced in Classical Latin style, where [v] = [w], vowels have their “European” values, etc.)


From the Word Lab

“To blow your nose” vs. khnchel:
Notice that it takes four words in English and only one in Armenian.


What’s in a Name?

Totoventz/Totovian: Armenian in derivation, identified as a descriptive term, totov is defined as stammering, lisping; stuttering, tongue-tied.

CK Garabed

CK Garabed

Weekly Columnist
C.K. Garabed (a.k.a. Charles Kasbarian) has been active in the Armenian Church and Armenian community organizations all his life. As a writer and editor, he has been a keen observer of, and outspoken commentator on, political and social matters affecting Armenian Americans. He has been a regular contributor to the Armenian Reporter and the AGBU Literary Quarterly, “ARARAT.” For the last 30 years, Garabed has been a regular contributor to the Armenian Weekly. He produces a weekly column called “Uncle Garabed's Notebook,” in which he presents an assortment of tales, anecdotes, poems, riddles, and trivia; for the past 10 years, each column has contained a deconstruction of an Armenian surname. He believes his greatest accomplishment in life, and his contribution to the Armenian nation, has been the espousing of Aghavni, and the begetting of Antranig and Lucine.
CK Garabed

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