Western Armenian Renaissance – Update 2.1

This is for these who look down their collective nose on the Hayastan or Eastern Armenian phonetics and language. There is no doubt that Arevmtahays in “western” cultural centers (even in Istanbul, though it was not considered part of the West for most of its history) were able to preserve and develop Armenian cultural, literary and even religious heritage through centuries of Armenian “dark ages” when we did not have a statehood. And this is not to diminish the contributions of Armenian communities in Tbilisi, India, Iran, etc. however, what Western Armenians don’t realize is that Mesrop Mashtots worked in the court of King Khosrov IV, whose capital was Vagharshapat, the seat of the Armenian church, not somewhere in western Armenia. At the time, Mashtots, was a court scribe and translator in Greek and Persian languages, when he was tasked by that king to study the “relevant” languages of the time and come up with an alphabet for his country. Since the King and his court were from, based in and spoke in what is today called Eastern Armenia(n), obviously, the new alphabet would be designed to reflect the “Eastern” phonetics of the King’s court, i.e. the official language of the land, not a provincial western, which at the time was under Greek influence, or any other local dialects – Mush, Artsakh, etc. Now, it appears that in 1600 years our Western half have not figured out (or refuse to admit) that Mashtots, himself a tsur Mshetsi like my grandfather, did not invent an alphabet with two letters intended to sound like P, as it does in Western Armenian phonetics (parev/barev and pigh), or two letters that sound like K (Kevork/Gevork and kit), or two T’s (Tavit/David and trchun). They don’t seem to ask themselves why invent the hard ‘T (‘toon-house) if he meant to pronounce it as Doon, or the hard ‘K (‘kin-woman), if he meant to pronounce it as Geen. This only shows the resilience and hastakoghutiun of our nation. It’s probably why we have survived this far, for it wasn’t for our diplomatic skills, for sure.

I thought we had put this debate to rest, but I guess not. Again, this article was not meant to criticize any form of spoken Armenian. The author’s intent was to highlight a small renaissance in Western Armenian.

Languages evolve in many ways; Armenian is no exception. This evolution in language should be respected and celebrated. Instead the tone and verbiage of many of the comments beneath this article have been negative and sometimes down right offensive.

1) No one should claim superiority in their manner of speech. And no one should look down on someone else for their way they speaking. This is rude and inconsiderate. All Armenians should respect each other. In fact, all humans should respect one another. Remember the Towel of Babel?

2) All forms of vernacular Armenian have borrowed vocabulary and syntax from other languages. This is inevitable. Yes, the spoken Armenian in the Republic of Armenia has a some Russian, Turkish and Persian. Also, Western Armenian has borrowed from Turkish, Arabic, Greek, English, French, etc. So what?

3) Eastern Armenian has stayed more true in pronunciation. Western Armenian has lost some sounds. So what? Accept it and move on. I say “tram” — you say “dram” or “pogh” — big deal! Who cares? Give me a t, td, or d — I can figure it out! In fact the T-D, K-G, P-B sound shifts (among others like F-P) are extremely common in many other languages. Parsi VS Farsi. Father vs Padre, Mother vs Madre etc etc etc…

4) Armenian has and always will evolve. I don’t see any of us speaking Grapar anymore… In fact, let’s investigate some common Armenian words. Take “nav” (boat) for example… “Nav” is 100% Latin (think NAVigation,etc). The word for mirror (hyli) is 100% Greek. “Bagh” (cold) is also Greek. I could go on for ever with this…My point is, language is and should be free to evolve in its own way. English is a massive amalgam of Latin, French, Greek, etc…but you don’t see anyone arguing of this. I don’t see English speakers bickering over the English of the USA, England, Wales, Scotland, Australia, South Africa,etc… Maybe the acceptance of evolution in the English language is part of its WORLDWIDE success and (unfortunate) dominance.

5) Compare the Spanish (Castellano) of Spain and other Latin American countries. Each country has its own manner of speech. This is inevitable as populations separate through time and space. Also compare, the Korean in North and South Korea. North Korea has more Chinese and Russian — South Korea uses more English and Japanese. Kurdish in Turkey is very different from Kurdish in Iraq. Etc etc etc ….

In closing, this comment section has gotten a bit out of hand. So much so that maybe someone should write an article about 1) The evolution of modern vernacular Armenian and 2) Prejudices, biases and misconceptions among specific subsets of our community. Also, if you decide to post anything remotely derogatory on this page again I suggest you earn a degree in Linguistics first.