Armenian dialectology

[KanadaHye]

Re: Armenian dialectology

Yes, but my point was it should not be done under the name of Armenian dialects for the language in some of the regions has not gone through a natural evolution but influenced by foreign elements and thus distorted in my opinion.

Isn't that the point? Which language hasn't been influenced due to interaction with other cultures? It's hard to undo something if you can't find out what has been done to it.

[jgk3]

Re: Armenian dialectology

Yes, but my point was it should not be done under the name of Armenian dialects for the language in some of the regions has not gone through a natural evolution but influenced by foreign elements and thus distorted in my opinion.

Lucin, I find it premature to consider that the only things that can be considered as Armenian are modern Western, modern Eastern, Middle Armenian and Grabar.

Those were just standard varieties which were institutionalized by a political center. In reality, they are no different from any other dialect.

If you want to hold a purist position on what Armenian should be like, please empty our language of Aramaic and Iranian loan words. We won't have a complete language anymore and I doubt anyone will want to speak this purist form.

Also, our alphabet is very powerful when it comes to representing phonetic accuracy in speech, so I commend our priests or writers from Van, Mush, Diyarbekir or Artsakh when they wrote their texts 100 years ago because they have passed down a reliable record for how they talked to eachother back then (allowing us to treat their texts as true representations of their dialect). If they all just stuck to the standard through and through, first of all, the locals might have trouble understanding them, and second, we would lose access to how they really spoke.

This second fact in my opinion is most unfortunate when we try to deal with Armenian linguistic history in the first millenium AD/CE, as from what I gather, writers and priests fervishly kept up with the standardized Grabar at the expense of using dialects that were current at the time. The result is that the Armenian language, spoken in the Caucasus and in Anatolia, can only be represented by a single, officialized dialect used nowhere in real life, not even in the palace because the King would probably not understand it. It only existed in the minds of intellectuals and not the general population.

Also, due to the fact that Armenian represents a distinct branch in the Indo-European family, we can reconstruct nothing further from our past than Grabar. This is because we cannot compare Grabar to any other form of Armenian that was current in the first millenium AD. Who knows, maybe there was a form that preserved more Armenian words that Grabar replaced with Iranian and Aramaic ones. But thanks to the feverish conservatism of our writers (which was good politically for Armenian cultural sovereignty in the longrun), we will never know what those words are.

Therefore, I see no reason to repeat the same action again when it comes to observing alternative dialects to the standard in our modern era. We will not hurt ourselves by taking an interest in non-standard dialects, paying attention to what elements of foreign languages were favoured by our bilinguial kughatsis

All in all, language is not a competition. I have noticed a thread where Siamanto, Armenian and yourself have competed in who used the best orthography in Armenian, which supposedly translates into who knows most about the Armenian Language. There is nothing further from the truth you guys... When we talk with family or friends, we don't give a xxxx about how its written. We periodically delete certain letters, add foreign elements, rearrange the "proper order" of a phrase and pronounce our ուs and իւs in a way that you'd get smacked for if you were learning Grabar in the 5th century. And yet, it is we, not the textbooks, that create these languages. Armenian, or any language/dialect (they are technically the same thing) comes from our minds, the speakers, not from textbooks and a mean teacher who reprimands those who don't treat language like mathematics, where there has to be one right answer. This attitude of keeping with the standard during our education is called prescriptive language, and periodically contradicts what you know of your own native language. It is in essence, another language we are learning when we are being corrected in class, and not in fact the "right" or "pure" language that we "should" be speaking.

Languages change, it's natural. Instead of shunning what is "wrong", lets learn what eachother does and enjoy the ride. We'll probably be more cultured (and linguistically savy) as a result of it.

I consider learning standard variety as most useful if you want a cross-community means of communication. However, I consider that it becomes a cultural cancer when it prejudices non-standard varieties and tries to wipe them off the face of the earth, no matter how many loan words, "ungrammatical usages" or "mispronounciations" they may contain.

[Lucin]

Re: Armenian dialectology

J, yes languages change and evolve throughout time but how and under what conditions and by who? There are changes which are natural, complimentary and healthy to any language, but there are also changes which may destroy the essence of the language, there are influences which corrupt our language. We have quite some loan words from Persian for instance which fill a gap in the language and are an integral part of it. Mashdots himself has been influenced by a number of languages. But the changes our language is going through, especially in the Homeland today are corruptive. We see a huge number of Latin and especially English terms/ words invading the media, the newspapers and people's daily conversations, replacing proper Armenian words. Are you going to do a research on it under the name of 'Armenian' dialect of Yerevan and accept it as it is? That is obviously not Armenian nor it is a natural evolution under natural conditions. Likewise, in some of these dialects Vaux has researched, especially in the phonetics field, I noticed vast distorting abusive influence from Turkic languages. There is practically no 'դ'/ 'գ' /'բ'/ 'փ' or the vowels are not being pronounced properly. That is what I call unnatural and under unnecessary foreign influence, which is obviously not enriching the Armenian language in any way. So I wouldn't want to enjoy such a 'ride'

And I'm not against carrying out such researches on various dialects spoken inside and outside Armenia. Actually it says a lot about the state of our language.

[jgk3]

Re: Armenian dialectology

And I'm not against carrying out such researches on various dialects spoken inside and outside Armenia. Actually it says a lot about the state of our language.

I agree, it's always good to monitor this.

However, language is a property of human beings, not of political considerations of what is "Armenian" or what is "English".

I agree that it pays off to keep a conservative form of Armenian active when it comes to the official language, as it is a centralizing force which brings an entire nation together. However, there is nothing inherently wrong with using Turkish loanwords in the house, it is just a relic our ancestors living amongst Turks under Ottoman rule.

We "make" it wrong. Even I make it wrong. My entire family is Bolsahay and they use Turkish words all the time because it is part of their native dialect. I am the only one who questions these things and tries to exclude Turkish elements from my speech, except for the work "Hich/Hitch" which means "votch inch", because I find it faster to say than "votch inch" when my grandmother asks me "Inch ga chiga Jefris imin?"

So to reiterate, our purist attitudes concerning language are just that, attitudes. Why? Because language doesn't exist anywhere outside of our own minds, whether you are reading it, speaking it or hearing it. There is nothing out there in the physical world called "language", in the sense that there are rocks and atomic particles.

Language is something we are genetically configured to acquire, to build a grammar in our heads that decides what works and what doesn't work. And we all acquire this grammar differently, based on our own experience. If you grew up in a household that used the word "oto/auto" instead of "inknasharj" (which seems to be the case for every Armenian I know), you will absolutely NOT say inknasharj, ever! And if some day, in school, you learn about the word inknasharj, you'll only use it in class when your grades are at stake if you don't use it!

Why do we all say "mersi" instead of Shnorhakal em? Maybe it's just more handy? I mean, the fact that ever since we could remember, we've heard Armenians say "mersi" must mean it had a very fertile start among Armenian speakers when it was a brand new acquisition into our language.

What does this tell us about loan words in our colloquial speech Lucin? Whether they are French, Arabic, Turkish, Russian or Persian in origin? Can you provide me a theory that explains why we would be more ready to accomodate a word item like "oto" and "mersi (merci)" than other loanwords? Also, can you explain me the value of taking the effort to say inknasharj and shnorhakal em each time you want to say car or thank you? In my opinion, it's good to know the real Armenian words, but not having to use them as they are so odd sounding in our natural speech!

And sound changes are very normal throughout history. Why do we pronounce Knight in Englist like "nite"? It was historically pronounced [kuh-ni-gut], as its spelling suggests. So what happened to the Anglo-Saxons? Did they lose their edge somewhere down the line? If you look at it from a historical perspective, it appears that the English stopped pronouncing k followed by n sounds, just as in the word knell (a type of bell).

Speaking of the English, I'm sure if you travelled to England before television became easily affordable and don't just stay in London, you will see a situation of the so called "English language" where every region pronounces things differently, much like the situation was in Anatolia among the Armenians. You would find a place called Somerset, where many environments for "s" in standard English were voiced, thus, "z"s, and they called their city Zomerzet, even though the official maps issued by London call it Somerset. Nonetheless, this dialect of English actually is responsible for a loanword to standard English, the word "vat", which is a large container. It has the same etymology of "fat", which historically must've also referred to "big things", but the Zomerzet folk, who like to voice their fricatives before a vowel, sold the Londoners "Vats" as opposed to "Fats" at the marketplace, and so when the Londoners went back home, they called their large containers "vats" too, they way they learned it in Somerset, despite the fact that their official language would not approve, and lo and behold, today the official language has the word vat in it!

I tell you this story because I believe this sheds light on the merit of approach language as a result of dialects interacting together, where certain forms gain currency and others die out, and is not based on racial or political considerations unless we really go out of our way to make it so. I think the reason the situation is so sensitive with Armenian today is because those living in Armenia speak a Russified Eastern Armenian (as do Armenians living inside of Russia) as their standard language while maintaining several kughatsi dialects, while Iranian Armenians cling onto their own preserved variety of Eastern Armenian (despite the fact that they mix in persian words), and Western Armenians, who while preserving a "clean" Armenian for school and official purposes, use god knows how many Turkish loanwords colloqually and even their grammar are flexible in ways that are strikingly similar to Turkish. If we all tried to talk to eachother in our native dialects, we would not understand eachother for quite some time, until we explained ourselves, and so all we have, all we can cling to for any hope to find some sense of similarity, is our official, "pure" Armenian. In my opinion, the value of this is moreso one of practicality than of ethnic honour. If we were looking for honour, maybe we should go learn Grabar

[KanadaHye]

Re: Armenian dialectology

I think J hit the nail on the head with the 'oto' and 'inknacharj' ... it's like using "car" or "automobile". One is more proper but the other is more convenient in conversation. And you don't teach a child to say inknacharj or automobile... oto or car is more appropriate for developing speech.

While on the subject of turkish loan words... is "daha" Armenian? or is it just used improperly instead of "aveli".

[jgk3]

Re: Armenian dialectology

While on the subject of turkish loan words... is "daha" Armenian? or is it just used improperly instead of "aveli".

Good question, I'm pretty sure it's a loan word, and I've asked my mom and grandmother about it already, to which in response they could not identify what word I was asking about, maybe because I don't hear the h when they say it and always ask them, "There, you just said it again, Daa (I just hear a long a sound)!, what does that mean (I already know what it means intuitively, I just wanted them to consider it)?! Is that Turkish?!"

I guess tonight I'll ask again where it comes from.

[KanadaHye]

Re: Armenian dialectology

Yeah, I guess it's more like da-ah

[jgk3]

Re: Armenian dialectology

A possible key to understanding the weird vowels found in Cilician Armenian dialects, a showcase on Marash Armenian. Definitely helps me understand what's going on in the lyrics of the song Hele Hele nina-ye: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~lingpub/misc/bert/vowel.pdf

Thank you Bert!

I like how you finish your paper:

[Federate]

Re: Armenian dialectology

Here Jeff, Armenian dialect from Musa Dagh authored by Bert Vaux with introduction by Franz Werfel (40 days of Musa Dagh) and none other than Levon Ter-Petrossian

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~lingpub/misc/bert/forty.pdf

[jgk3]

Re: Armenian dialectology

awesome find fed, I enjoyed it.