The grief of not having the right words: Is Western Armenian fading?

I only recently learned that Western Armenian is officially classified as an endangered language. According to UNESCO‘s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, Western Armenian is classified as a “definitely endangered” language. This assessment is based not simply on the total number of people who speak Western Armenian, but on whether the language is being passed naturally from one generation to the next and used fluently in everyday life. 

While an estimated 1.6 million Armenians worldwide speak Western Armenian, the number of active, fluent speakers is believed to be significantly lower — approximately 200,000, according to some estimates — which raises concerns about the language’s long-term vitality.

Scholars and organizations, such as the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Western Armenian Programme, have repeatedly warned that intergenerational transmission is weakening across many diaspora communities.

My immediate reaction is disbelief: How can a language spoken in Armenian homes, schools, churches and community centers across the world be endangered? 

As someone who grew up in the Armenian diaspora in Cyprus, Western Armenian seemed to be everywhere. It was the language of grandparents, community events, church gatherings and childhood classrooms. Its presence felt so natural that I rarely questioned its future.

However, there is a fact that many Western Armenian speakers, including me, can easily forget: Western Armenian is not the official language of any state. 

Eastern Armenian is the official language of the Republic of Armenia, where it enjoys the support of state institutions, public education, government administration and national media. 

Western Armenian, by contrast, exists almost entirely in diaspora communities. Today, it is surviving through families, schools, churches, cultural organizations and the dedication of speakers themselves.

While many diaspora Armenians are fluent in Western Armenian, the question is whether we continue to live in it. A language does not disappear overnight; it fades when it becomes a place we occasionally visit rather than a home we inhabit.

The Armenian school paradox

For many diaspora Armenians, Western Armenian exists within carefully defined spaces. We learn it confidently in Armenian schools, hear it in church, speak it with grandparents and perhaps use it at community gatherings. 

These institutions have done remarkable work preserving our language through generations of displacement and assimilation. 

Yet outside those spaces, life often unfolds in English, French, Arabic, Spanish or another dominant language. We leave Armenian school and return to a world where Armenian is rarely necessary.

This creates what I think of as the “Armenian school paradox.” 

Thousands of students spend years studying Western Armenian, but many find their fluency weakening as adults. I think the issue is not a lack of education, but a lack of opportunity. 

After graduation, where do we use the language? With whom do we speak it regularly? What spaces exist for us to continue developing our vocabulary, discussing contemporary issues or expressing ourselves creatively? 

A language can be taught, but it also needs a life beyond the classroom.

A language without a stage

Part of the challenge Western Armenian speakers face is that the language often lacks a stage on which to perform. Languages thrive when they are used to create, entertain and connect. Yet much of the media consumed by younger diaspora Armenians exists in dominant languages.

We watch films, listen to podcasts and spend hours on social media in those languages. Contemporary Western Armenian content, by contrast, remains limited and often difficult to find.

As an author, I also see this imbalance in publishing. While precise figures vary, most Armenian-language books published today are in Eastern Armenian. 

The publishing center is the Republic of Armenia, where Eastern Armenian is the language of education, government, media and publishing. 

Western Armenian publishing is spread across diaspora communities, producing far fewer contemporary works and fewer opportunities to encounter the language in fiction, journalism, criticism, children’s literature and digital media.

As a result, Western Armenian is often linked to textbooks, history lessons and commemorative events rather than everyday expression. It becomes a language of preservation rather than participation.

People do not sustain languages through obligation alone. They sustain them because those languages are used to live daily life — to joke, to fall in love, to argue, to dream and to create. When a language is absent from those spaces, it becomes harder to keep it alive.

It goes without saying that Western Armenian has a rich literary tradition, from Hagop Oshagan and Zabel Yesayan to Shahan Shahnour and Daniel Varoujan. The challenge is that contemporary production does not yet match the scale or visibility of Eastern Armenian cultural output.

Grieving a language before it is gone

What makes this issue particularly painful is that language loss is deeply personal. Many diaspora Armenians understand more Western Armenian than they can comfortably speak. 

We recognize the words but sometimes struggle to find them ourselves. We understand our grandparents’ stories, yet cannot always respond with the same fluency.

This feeling takes me back to a poem I studied years ago in an English literature class: Sujata Bhatt’s “Search for My Tongue.” In it, Bhatt reflects on the fear of losing her mother tongue, Gujarati, as another language begins to take its place. 

She describes how it can feel as though her “first tongue” is fading before returning again in dreams, alive and deeply rooted. One passage has stayed with me ever since:

“Every time I think I’ve forgotten
I think I’ve lost the mother tongue,
it blossoms out of my mouth.”

There are moments when I feel distant from Western Armenian, only for a phrase, an idiom or a childhood memory to suddenly return and remind me that it is still there.

Alongside that frustration often comes guilt. Western Armenian survived genocide, displacement and exile, and many of us feel a responsibility to carry it forward. 

When fluency fades, we risk losing a direct connection to the language and to the generations who passed it down to us.

Western Armenian survived genocide. Can it survive the diaspora?

Before the genocide, Western Armenian was spoken widely across historical Western Armenia within the Ottoman Empire, in cities and regions such as Van, Erzurum, Bitlis, Harput (Kharpert), Sivas and throughout Cilicia, as well as in Istanbul, a major center of Armenian intellectual, literary and cultural life. 

Soon after, Western Armenian survived one of the greatest attempts at cultural destruction in modern history. It endured because communities fought to preserve it under unimaginably difficult circumstances. 

Our ancestors rebuilt schools, churches and cultural institutions wherever they settled, understanding that preserving the language was essential to preserving Armenian identity itself.

Today, the threat is different. No one is forbidding us from speaking Western Armenian, per se. Instead, the danger comes from disuse. Modern life in host countries leaves little room for Western Armenian to be used regularly. Assimilation is far quieter than persecution, but its effects can be just as lasting.

What would it mean for Western Armenian to thrive?

The statistics about Western Armenian are alarming, but they also make me reflect on my own relationship with the language. 

Part of me knows it isn’t going anywhere, that it will continue to live through the people who speak, teach and pass it on. But another part of me is scared by how fragile it can feel when you look at the numbers and the gradual loss of everyday use.

I, along with many diaspora Armenians, speak it whenever I can with family, friends and other Armenians. I am also grateful that I had the opportunity to attend an Armenian school and learn it from an early age, as I know many diaspora Armenians never had that privilege.

There is still hope for Western Armenian to survive, but that will depend on us. We need to use it, create in it and pass it on. 

For many of us, it carries family stories, humor, memories and a sense of belonging that cannot be fully translated. If it is to survive the diaspora, it must remain more than a language we learn. It must remain a language we live in.