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Georgi Bargamian

Georgi Bargamian

Georgi Bargamian is a former editor of the Armenian Weekly. After 10 years working in community journalism, she attended law school and is an attorney, but she remains committed to her first love journalism by writing for the Armenian Weekly.

4 Comments

  1. Hi, I’m neither Armenian nor of Armenian descent and during my first visit in 2001, used my basic/limited Russian, as no-one outside of Yerevan seemed to know any English. I liked the country and its people, and after several annual visits spent one winter in London learning Armenian every day whilst commuting on the train. The next year, I told my friends (in Armenian) that I no longer wanted to use Russian, and it went up a notch from there.
    OK – it’s not brilliant, but I could hold a conversation with a taxi driver, for example, on a 4 hour journey to reach a monastery, which was the main idea – communication. I ended up writing my first book in 2012, which is 70% about Armenia and NKR – ” The Last of the Argonauts” by John Brenson, published a few years ago.(available on Amazon if you’re interested!!!)
    I’m really worried about forgetting my Armenian, as I haven’t been there for 4 years, but thanks to the internet and satellite tv I still have the opportunity to read and hear the language.

    I might also add that I seemed to “click” with local Armenians more than some of the Armenian speaking Americans arriving in Yerevan for the first time. I guess it’s because I learnt my Armenian in Armenia and my travels around the country made me aware of those little idiosyncrasies that help to form a nation or a people. I was often asked if I had Armenian heritage, which they presumed, and when I responded in the negative they were either impressed or sometimes even a bit wary!

    John Brenson
    Richmond, Surrey

  2. Thank you, Georgi-Ann, for articulating a lifetime’s worth of experience. I too am the third generation in the US … if we count the survivors who came to the US in their teens.

    On one hand, I recall in the 1970s how non-Armenian speaking classmates were given a class of their own with which to learn Western Armenian as a second language. The majority did not wish to be marginalized in this way and would have preferred staying with the Armenian-speaking students — but only if the unified class could be held in English for everyone! Thus began a schism in which this American-born Armenian student felt far more at home with the foreign-born Armenian students…culturally as well as linguistically.

    On the other hand, I vividly recall many learned adults, the parent of a close friend included, angrily and exasperatedly correcting my grammar with every sentence I uttered, effectively silencing me. We have to let our young make their mistakes or we will lose them.

    Language immersion is a method that should be more widely employed. Anyone interested can look up the Concordia Language Villages to learn more. There is no reason why we cannot create such “villages” in a summer camp or throughout the year in 3+ week stretches.

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