Email a copy of 'Jadrag' to a friend
Loading ...
Garen Yegparian
Asbarez Columnist
Garen Yegparian is a fat, bald guy who has too much to say and do for his own good. So, you know he loves mouthing off weekly about anything he damn well pleases to write about that he can remotely tie in to things Armenian. He's got a checkered past: principal of an Armenian school, project manager on a housing development, ANC-WR Executive Director, AYF Field worker (again on the left coast), Operations Director for a telecom startup, and a City of LA employee most recently (in three different departments so far). Plus, he's got delusions of breaking into electoral politics, meanwhile participating in other aspects of it and making sure to stay in trouble. His is a weekly column that appears originally in Asbarez, but has been republished to the Armenian Weekly for many years.
Latest posts by Garen Yegparian (see all)
- Drones for Armenia - November 15, 2022
- So Sad, Too Far Gone - November 7, 2022
- Pomposity to Mask Ineptitude - October 31, 2022
First, “shakhmat” is not a “Russian intrusion” into the Armenian language. Long before the Russians, Armenians used this version of Persian words shāh and māt, which means, literally, “the king is frozen”. Second, the word “jadrag” (chatrak) is not the authentic word for chess in the Armenian language, but itself a distant borrowing from Sanskrit “chaturaṅga”, literally “four divisions”: infantry, cavalry, elephants, and chariotry, represented by pieces. The game is believed to have originated in India around the seventh century and then spread westward along the Silk Road reaching Persia and the Arabs. In Persia, it was known as “chatrang” and among Arabs as “shatranj”. But in the late medieval Europe the term was replaced by a version of the Persian “shāhmāt” which was adopted by the Russians in the form of “shakhmaty”.
thanks for the analysis of the word john, let us keep jadrag alive and not shakhmat!!!
Both words are borrowings, shahe. One from Sanskrit, the other from Persian. I see no problem with keeping either one alive, or both. The language of our ancestors in Western Armenia was infested with alien Turkish and Kurdish words, but for some reason we don’t see that this fact is labeled as “intrusion”…
Armenian-Americans are responsible for running two of the most active and successful chess clubs in Massachusetts. Mark Kaprielian of Framingham, who spearheads the Metrowest Chess Club in Natick, and George Mirijanian, who is in charge of the Wachusett Chess Club at Fitchburg State University, lead clubs that have the first- and second-best weeknight attendance of any club in the state. They have been involved with “rated chess” for many years. Both their clubs are affiliates of the U.S. Chess Federation in Crossville, Tennessee, the official governing body for chess in the country.