Armenians of Nakhichevan

[TomServo]

A thread for Armenian history in Nakhichevan (Նախիջեւան, Նախիջևան, Nakhijevan, Nakhitchevan, Nakhchivan, Naxçıvan).

Did you know that the Agulis Armenian dialect was called Zok/Zokeren (meaning Zok language)? Linguist Bert Vaux has published a fascinating essay on this language -- unintelligible to speakers of standard Eastern Armenian! -- which can be accessed here. Fascinating stuff!

Apparently, Zok is "closely related" to the Karabagh dialect. Having encountered speakers of that dialect, I can say that it's almost completely unintelligible to this Western Armenian speaker. A comparable example in English would be the dialect spoken in the British film Kes.

Attached: A picture of Agulis in 1910.

[jgk3]

Re: Armenians of Nakhichevan

Awesome article! I'm enjoying reading the transcriptions and translations.

[TomServo]

Re: Armenians of Nakhichevan

I enjoyed it, too.

[TomServo]

Re: Armenians of Nakhichevan

Who knows the history behind this flag? It features the name of the autonomous republic in both Azerbaijani and Armenian, I'm guessing before the former made the switch to Cyrillic. Why is Nakhichevan spelled Nahçüvan rather than Naxçıvan, which seems to be the preferred spelling by Azerbaijan today?

See the flag here:

[Artashes]

Re: Armenians of Nakhichevan

Does this dialect and/or Karabakh dialect have a closer affinity to Grabbar than say Easter or western contemporary, or is it as distant to Grabbar as well?

[Artashes]

Re: Armenians of Nakhichevan

Does this dialect and/or Karabakh dialect have a closer affinity to Grabbar than say Easter or western contemporary, or is it as distant to Grabbar as well?

Also, what relation/affinity if any to Hemshin dialect?

[bell-the-cat]

Re: Armenians of Nakhichevan

Who knows the history behind this flag? It features the name of the autonomous republic in both Azerbaijani and Armenian, I'm guessing before the former made the switch to Cyrillic. Why is Nakhichevan spelled Nahçüvan rather than Naxçıvan, which seems to be the preferred spelling by Azerbaijan today?

See the flag here:

I don't think it is a real flag. I remember ages ago having a discussion about which flag should be used for the relevant wikipedia page and it was discovered that this ASSR had no flag. A red flag with a hammer and sickle was the standard Soviet era flag, for the assrs and suchlike that did not have a specific flag and for occassions where flags were used they just added the name of the assr to that red flag - but this did not make it into an actual flag for that assr. There are dozens of such "flags" - the only difference between all of them is the place name written under the hammer and sickle. Where has that discussion disappeared to - who knows? Maybe the discussion was on the talk page about another assr, but it applies to Nachchivan anyway.

[TomServo]

Re: Armenians of Nakhichevan

Thanks, bell.

Artashes, I don't think there would be much affinity with Hemshin as the dialects developed in two very different environments. But I'm no linguist -- Vaux would probably give a thorough explanation if you shot him an email.