How Gen Z Is Using TikTok to Save Western Armenian

 Ella Chakarian

Anelga Hajjar started posting videos on TikTok feeling the way most people do — like she was just talking into the void. In Chicago, where she works as an actor and writer, Hajjar, 23, said the majority of Armenians around her speak Eastern Armenian. She said she struggles to find other Western Armenian speakers herself. So, she turned to social media.

“I just wanted to have a space where I myself could speak Armenian, because there’s no one here I can speak Armenian [with],” said Hajjar.

Roslin Press Presents Armenian Adaptation of the Animated Series "Treasure Island"

Roslin Press has just announced the first-ever Armenian production of Osamu Dezaki’s anime rendition of the classic swashbuckling adventure, Treasure Island. This is an initiative the likes of which the Diaspora hasn’t seen in over a generation. To capture the spirit of the 21st century Diaspora and Armenia, the 26-episode series features a mix of characters speaking Eastern and Western Armenian. Thanks to the assistance of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, young Armenians from across the globe can now sail the seven seas with Jim Hawkins in his search for buried treasure.

Especially during the pandemic with all of us spending an unprecedented amount of time at home, finding high-quality Armenian entertainment for children has never been more important.

Panel on “Bilingualism: Challenges and Benefits of Learning and Living in Multiple Worlds” at Harvard

A panel discussion entitled “Bilingualism: Challenges and Benefits of Learning and Living in Multiple Worlds,” on Thursday, March 5, 2020, at 7:30 p.m. at Harvard University, Science Center, Auditorium A, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA.

This program is presented by the NAASR/Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Lecture Series on Contemporary Armenian Issues and is co-sponsored by St. Stephen’s Armenian Elementary School and the Harvard Armenian Student Association. It is free and open to the public.

Western Armenian in the 21st Century Panel a Success

Florence Avakian

A Nor’easter with pounding rain and howling winds, did not prevent more than 60 brave souls in attending a fascinating forum on “Western Armenian in the 21st Century: A Dialogue About Challenges and New Approaches.” The panel discussion was held in the Eastern Prelacy of the Armenian Church in New York on October 16. The departing point of the discussion was the recent publication by the SAS of the collective volume Western Armenian in the 21st Century: Challenges and New Approaches, edited by Bedross Der Matossian and Barlow Der Mugrdechian.

You Need Something to Transfer

Western Armenian is always engaged into various types of interactions, be them with different foreign languages or its sister variety, Eastern Armenian.



The latter has gone for a long time, and it became more and more prominent after the fall of the Soviet Union. Each variety borrows words and expressions missing from their core vocabulary. In the case of Western Armenian, the frequent use of information produced in Eastern Armenian brings certain words that become a sort of parasites.

Such is the case of the word փոխանցել (pokhantsel), which literally means “to pass from one to another,” and you translate it as “transfer.” For instance, when you make a money transfer, you call it դրամի փոխանցում (tramee pokhantsoom). You can also transmit information—from one source to the other—and call it տեղեկութեան փոխանցում (deghegootian pokhantsoom)

However, if you say something, you are communicating it. This is called հաղորդել (haghortel). For instance, a radio anchor who reads the news is making a news communication (լուրերու hաղորդում / looreroo haghortoom ).

The problem comes when you use pokhantsel instead of haghortel, something that did not happen decades ago. It is common to hear expressions of the type « Տիկինը փոխանցեց , որ ...» ( Deegeenuh pokhantsets, vor… “The lady transferred that…”), as if you were transferring something, when the actual expression should be « Տիկինը հաղորդեց , որ ...» (Deegeenuh haghortets, vor … “The lady communicated that…”).

This is a calque from Eastern Armenian, where people with deficient knowledge of the language, at their turn, are making a mistranslation from Russian. These days, you can unknowingly learn bits and pieces from a language spoken thousands of miles from you. Who knew?  

Rethinking the Discourse on Armenian Diaspora: Language(s), Culture(s), Affiliation(s)

Vahe Sahakyan

 

The year 2017 was marked by two major diaspora focused events in Armenia, both attracting a fair number of visitors from around the world. Chronologically speaking, the first event, receiving much publicity across the Armenian universe, organized by the government of the Republic of Armenia on September 18-20, 2017, brought together representatives from around the global Armenian diaspora. Around 50 participants from the diaspora were carefully selected to address the public on behalf of their respective organizations, institutions and communities. The second event, somewhat marginal in the Armenian social and political mainstream discourse, organized by Common Purpose in cooperation with UWC Dilijan with the support of Aurora Humanitarian initiatives on October 8-10, 2017, gathered some 60 participants from around the world with diverse backgrounds, cultures and geographies. The “Diaspora Dialogues” intended to provide a forum for an exchange of views and perspectives about the challenges of diaspora leadership.[1]

Reflections on Armenian Language Learning’s Impact on the Armenian-American Experience

Georgi Ann Bargamian-Oshagan

 

I don’t know whether it was a fluke or by design, but the Armenian Weekly’s Aug. 26, 2017 issue included three articles about the role Armenian-language knowledge plays—or doesn’t play—in one’s Armenian identity: Marie Papazian’s “A Generational Question: ‘If You Don’t Speak Armenian, Are You Really Armenian?’”; Garen Yegparian’s “Language vs. Spirit”; and Rupen Janbazian’s “‘Where Are You From?’ and the Huge Pile of Complexes.” Those articles were followed by the Weekly’s Oct. 6, 2017 online posting of Ani Bournazian’s “How Do You Measure Armenian Identity?” I read each with interest, and here I offer my reflections that resulted from those readings.

Peter Guekguezian: Armenian Jeopardy! Champion and Champion of Languages

 Shamiram Barooshian

“On June 17, 1929, this airline’s first passenger flight left Dallas, making stops at Shreveport, Monroe, and Jackson. Thirty seconds, good luck,” says Jeopardy! host, Alex Trebek. Then the music starts: that ubiquitous tune signaling impatience, waiting and mounting pressure.

Peter Guekguezian is one of the contestants on the June 19^th broadcast of the popular game show. Guekguezian is a linguist from Fresno, Calif., and a defending Jeopardy! champion, having won $18,401 on the previous show. This time, he is up against a history instructor from Tucson, Ariz. and a writer from Brooklyn, N.Y., whose score going into Final Jeopardy! is almost double.

Guekguezian feels the pressure and writes, “Southwest.”

The Intellectual Crisis of the Armenian Reality։ A Critical Engagement with Seta B. Dadoyan

Varak Ketsemanian

However we try to define the term and the various dimensions of the 21st century “Armenian Reality,” one aspect remains indubitable, namely, the ongoing political, economic, cultural and social challenges that this reality is facing globally. The one critical feature that is not adequately tackled and is almost non-existent in Armenian public discourse is the “intellectual crisis” that Armenians are facing vis-à-vis the rapid changes they are witnessing both in the Diaspora and Armenia. 

Notwithstanding the lack of a healthy public discourse that accounts for the intellectual crisis, only a few serious works have emerged in recent years addressing the urgent need of revamping, analyzing, and critically engaging with the dominant epistemic categories and historical paradigms that animate this Armenian reality. Among such endeavors, Seta B. Dadoyan’s recent book, “2015: The Armenian Condition in Hindsight and Foresight: A Discourse” is a timely and critical piece of scholarship that sheds light on the intellectual crisis of the 21st century Armenian reality.

Dead Poets and a Cobblestone Path

Khatchig Mouradian

A few weeks ago, I visited Misak Medzarents’ (1886-1908) village, Pingean, near the city of Agn (current name: Kemaliye) in Turkey. As I walked in the narrow, cobblestone streets and alleyways of the village where the beloved poet was born, I kept looking at the century-old houses, wondering: Perhaps he was born behind this door, perhaps he scribbled down his first lines on these stairs, perhaps he first fell in love by this fountain… Yet there was no sign of the great poet in this tiny, remote village. He might as well never have existed.

As we returned to our van, I typed in my phone: “I believe that Medzarents’ memory and legacy will, one day, return to Pingean; and his bust will adorn the little village center where older men are gathered now chatting; and perhaps, just perhaps, a small library in the village will carry his name. No, I do not believe. I know.”

Undoing Denials at the Venice Biennale’s Armenian Pavilion

Neery Melkonian

 

Neery Melkonian, a New York-based art curator and scholar, passed away on July 2, 2016, after battling cancer. She was a gifted scholar with a keen eye for different manifestations of Armenian contemporary art. In her memory, we reproduce the following essay, first published in the catalogue for Armenity, which accompanied the Armenian pavilion of the same name at the 2015 Venice Biennale. The Armenity exhibition won the Golden Lion for best national pavilion at the Biennale last year.

Conference on Western Armenian Held at Oxford

Lusine Abrahamyan

The multidimensional problems related to the vitality of Western Armenian as a language and the search for solutions is a serious concern in recent years. A number of community cultural and educational leaders, activists and experts in the Diaspora, who are concerned about the future of Western Armenian, are engaged in the process of tackling these issues. Indeed, the future of Western Armenian, recently classified as an “endangered language” by UNESCO, has become one of the most critical questions discussed in Armenian society and the media.
Armenian Studies at the University of Oxford (Faculty of Oriental Studies), with the financial support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, held a conference on Jan. 21-23 that addressed the issue.
The conference, entitled “Western Armenian in the 21st Century,” brought together leading writers, intellectuals, experts, publishers, editors, and journalists from the diaspora, as well as from Armenia, who think, write, and publish in Western Armenian. The conference/workshop was conducted entirely in Western Armenian.

A Generation of Silence: Why Armenian Schools Matter

Sevana Panosian

 

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.’ – Ludwig Wittgenstein

 

The Armenian Diaspora is slowly raising a generation of silence.

This statement may come as a shock, but it stems from the philosopher and linguist Ludwig Wittgenstein’s treatise on language where he states, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”

One Nation, How Many Aspects of Culture? Armenian Diversity

Nareg Seferian

 

Not too long ago, I had an “e-mail fight” with someone I don’t know.

To call it a “fight” would be an exaggeration. Rather, we had a heated discussion back and forth via e-mail, having found each other through a mutual acquaintance who wisely slipped out of the conversation.

The issue was Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian – specifically, whether or not there are two separate Armenian languages, or whether they are both versions of one language. There are other possibilities, and it could be the case that one may characterise Eastern and Western Armenian in more than one way at the same time. My correspondent was very confident to insist that there is only one Armenian language. My own position is to refer to the two as “sister languages”.

The Armenian Identity in France in the Grip of Memorialization

Tigran Yegavian

Four generations have succeeded the first wave of refugee survivors of the Genocide who ended up settling along the Paris-Lyon-Marseille axis in the 1920s. Formerly at the forefront of political activism in the Diaspora, the Armenian structures of France are now plagued by a general sclerosis, whose effects became apparent in the mid-1990s.

A Bold New Plan: Interview with Razmik Panossian

 Nanore Barsoumian

As Diasporan Armenian organizations struggle to shift their focus to better accommodate the needs facing Armenians worldwide—both in the independent republics, as well as in communities faced with renewed challenges—the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation recently drafted a bold five-year plan of action that it hopes will “create a viable future for the Armenian people.” Mindful of the challenges ahead, the foundation’s director of Armenian communities, Razmik Panossian, discussed the plan in a Skype interview with the Armenian Weekly.

Armenian Identity in the Diaspora : Between Modernity and Preservation

 Laurence Ritter

The author of a PhD dissertation, Remodelling of Armenian Identities between the Diaspora and Armenia, from Victims to Individuals, French sociologist Laurence Ritter explains the specifities of the Armenian Diaspora formed after the 1915 Genocide. In her view, far from being a monolithic whole, the Diaspora shows different faces according to the countries Armenians emigrated to. Therefore, one should talk about not just one but several Diasporas. Armenia’s access to independence and the wide circulation of information in the digital era have also deeply changed the ways of the traditional Diaspora. Laurence Ritter analyses the various challenges the Diaspora must face in order to step into modernity.

"A Boost to Western Armenian Language and Culture"

In a recent commentary in The Armenian Mirror-Spectator (December 28, 2013), Edmond Y. Azadian talked about the current challenges to Western Armenian, a language which has been sustained by a diaspora spread across a number of continents but with no remaining center.

The Programming Plan of the Armenian Communities Department of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation for the next five years is to reinforce Western Armenian by focusing on education and technology, to ensure that it does not go the way of other languages that have perished after three generations without a sizable, concentrated community. Azadian highlighted the Department's approach and how it is different to that of other diasporan institutions:

Gulbenkian Foundation Publishes Armenian Communities Plan

The new Programming Plan of the Armenian Communities Department (ACD) of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation lays out the key components of its funding priorities and activities for the next five years (2014-2018). Launching in December 2013, it is based on the Department's mission "to create a viable future for the Armenian people in which its culture and language are preserved and valued." The Plan is structured around the four priority areas which are crucial in fulfilling that mission: promoting the preservation of Armenian language and culture through education, supporting Armenia by investing in its youth and civil society, helping to improve Armenian-Turkish relations and preserving Armenian literary heritage.

In Ignorance We Trust

Vartan Matiossian

 

A participant of the Diaspora conference held on April 27 at the University of Southern California shared a savory yet bitter bite with us:

"The 'best' suggestion from the diaspora conference in LA, from an audience member: since western Armenian spelling is difficult, and the Armenian alphabet is not being used on line, why don't we abolish the Armenian alphabet and start using the Latin script, as our neighbor has done... And he was serious....."

We had read a "serious" suggestion along these lines some twenty years ago. To put it mildly, the "suggestion" reeks of lack of seriousness.