Armenian Slang & Idioms

[Siamanto]

The ubiquitous "Atchkt louys." (Literally: "light has shone upon your eye" -- is that right, shone? lol.) In practical terms, you tell it to someone when you've heard good news about them. I just used it the other day when my friend became an aunt.

How did I forget that? Thanks! It does not mean "congratulations," but it can be used in many circumstances where "congratulations" can be used!

nunechka, you made my day (or night) with your list of phrases. the problem is, that smtimes WA dont undertand EA because of the differences in barbar.

here, i got some funny ones:

"eres mi arni"- means dont buy a face.lol.(btw who can translate it?)

"dzer es arnum?"- are you buying a hand?(you are lying)

nunechka??? Yet another person questioning/confusing my gender!!! I see a pattern here!

"Yeres dal" and "yeres arnel" are both used in WA.

I've never heard: "Tserk arnel." Thanks!


Some new ones:
"Agantch@ khosi" - when talking about someone who is not present??? dead???
"Atchg@s g@ baghi" - hard to translate: when someone have on his/her mind of another person and considers it as a sign that the person will - of course, it's not even may - show up.

"Tserk@ yergar eh" - person who steals?

[Che_Ka]

Wow, I've never heard "yeres arnel" at all. Learn something new every day. Baron Siamanto, does it have the same meaning as "yeres dal"?

Atchk Baghil -- I love this! We use it when you kind of space out and your eyes keep staring at one spot. It means either the phone is going to ring or someone will ring the doorbell. Atchkt bagher eh! Nayir hima meg@ toor@ bidi zarneh!

[LadySilver]

nunechka??? Yet another person questioning/confusing my gender!!! I see a pattern here!

Lol sweety I don't think Magdalinka meant to call you nunechka. Go to page 5 and well there is a user with the name Nunechka unless I'm blind =P

[One-Way]

nunechka??? Yet another person questioning/confusing my gender!!! I see a pattern here!

Let it be remembered, I was the first.

[Siamanto]

Wow, I've never heard "yeres arnel" at all. Learn something new every day. Baron Siamanto, does it have the same meaning as "yeres dal"?

Baron Che_Ka,
Yeres arnoghin, yeres dvogh bedk eh!

No! They don't mean the same thing! "Yeres dal" is to indulge, "yeres arnel" is to become spoiled.

[Che_Ka]

Jesus, law school must really be getting the best of me. Of course I know what "yeres arnel" means. lol

Shad yeres g'arnegor adiga. Yeres chdas aylevs!

[Siamanto]

nunechka??? Yet another person questioning/confusing my gender!!! I see a pattern here!

Lol sweety I don't think Magdalinka meant to call you nunechka. Go to page 5 and well there is a user with the name Nunechka unless I'm blind =P

You're not blind and you may be right.! But, based on the content of the post, the ambiguity raised some doubts in me! Of course, not about my gender!
I was joking! Thank you for the support!

[Siamanto]

nunechka??? Yet another person questioning/confusing my gender!!! I see a pattern here!

Let it be remembered, I was the first.

I will have to disappoint you. In fact you were either number 4 or 5! Sorry! You can't be the leader in everything!

[nunechka]

diar dants it is sooo obvious that you didnt read my post (or the posts that i was responding to) if you think that i think i am more armenian then you, you are crazy, i never said that... again, you didnt read my previous posts or the posts i was responding to...

[nunechka]

che_ka you say your reasoning about "over claiming" wasn’t what you actually said in your last post? ok...

and YA you bet we moved to Armenia... such as MY FAMILY! I am from MUSA LER! on my dads side and SEBASTIA on my moms side... no documents are available about the types of ways my dads side of the family suffered, but on my moms side, well let me tell you how I feel... my great-grandmother (moms side) had 6 children, the turks, in the most insane ways possible right in front of the parents killed the children (burning, poking out eyes, shooting, beating, etc...) and yes very vivid memories were told... then after a while my great-grandmother and great-grandfather settled somewhere, thinking it was safe and had 3 more and again, they did the same thing... and she even was burned in one eye because they put a sword in the fire then burned her eye out... somehow she got away and so this time they were separated and found each other in Yerevan (by fate) and had 3 more children... my grandmother and her brother and sister... (very nice isn’t it...) you and the western Armenians ARE NOT the ONLY ones... and yes that is your claim in your post... read it again, I was very insulted...

Talk about foreign soil... Armenia was a SOVIET STATE! we were all forced to learn Russian in school and then Armenian... we were forced to watch what the soviet government wanted us to watch... we were forced to use their transportation, our government was run by so-called Armenians (who were actually more soviet Russian then Armenian), educators were exiled or silenced, etc... we were forced to do our Armenian rituals and traditions in private... did you know that in Armenia when I was a child people were not allowed to christen their children at church, YOU COULD BE TAKEN TO JAIL! if you did that... (I am 24 now, so it wasn’t that long ago) and you know what, we did it at home, in private... and other such wonderful things... imagine you didn’t feel comfortable in your own home... YA! that’s better isn’t it?

and you know what else, there is no political effect on our language that is just a stupid lie... we shut our mouths when it was a soviet state, and now that we are independent MORE books were opened, and more things have been discovered about our language, and it is being taught in Armenia and at the schools here in the US (that teach eastern Armenian), they adopted Armenian as the national language of Armenia when we declared intemperance... so stop telling this lie to yourself... as a matter of fact it is MUCH! more logical that the western Armenians living in Arab countries had to do MUCH MUCH MUCH more assimilation then Armenians in Armenia... so me thinks, its the other way around...

the spelling issue:

che_ka And as for Verse 2, line 4 – Apparently your exquisite education in Armenia forgot to mention that in original orthography (spelling), “hnamya” is not spelled like that, but as “hnameay.” Since Western Armenians have kept the original spelling, they spell it “hnameay.”

isn’t that you? yes you did say that it was spelled incorrectly... and no NOT all Armenians follow the grammar that the western Armenians follow... the Armenians from IRAN! spell it like we do...

next item: in fact it is undermining the integrity of the writer... the fact that we don’t change Shakespeare to fit the American way or the English way is the same thing... you DONT CHANGE SOMETHING LIKE THAT! the fact that it is reprinted (with corrections) is ridicules and I AM Offended and so are the people who wrote it and the Armenian people... when I met an Armenian person I NEVER asked where they are from, the first time I met a berutsi they asked ME! and then just like you, attempted to stigmatize me, as if I lack something that they have soooo much of...

I don’t care if you lived in Australia... your accent is one thing and changing Mesrob Mashtots writing is another... I am so offended by this "translation" thing, it is making me sick... we don’t translate anything to eastern Armenian from western Armenian, and as a matter of fact it is the western Armenians that created this divide...

we don’t change the bible to fit western Armenian (and NOOOOO it is not in western Armenian, and it is as distant from it as it is to eastern Armenian) we don’t change it to fit eastern Armenian either... we keep the integrity of the TIME! Location! PEOPLE who wrote it, ALIVE, we make sure that everyone knows that this writer wrote this way because they are from this time, place, etc…. and since we respect them! and their writing, we will NEVER touch in any way, not even a comma, from its original state... that’s how we read Armenian in Armenia... We read Grigor Zohrab the way the man wrote his work... we read Hovhannes Toumanyan the way he wrote his work... etc…

this is insane... you are ok with diminishing the original state of original work for the sake of the ego of the western Armenian speaking people? why not then change everything back to the way the BIBLE was written? why aren’t we speaking Shakespearian? why not go back to the way the Urartians spoke (I don’t know HOW we could do that) but, (according to you) to uphold the "correct" spelling of the REAL Armenian people’s language, shouldn’t we then change all the writing in Armenian to fit the Urartian writing? (again I don’t know how we could actually do that)... but you see how crazy this is?

the western Armenian writing isn’t the original orthography (the turks burned ALL THE BOOKS in western armenia) some people took whatever they could, however to think that it is somehow more original then eastern Armenian is insane... the people in eastern Armenia spoke the way they did before the genocide and they continue to do so after the genocide... the teachers in western Armenia were all killed and the teachers in eastern Armenia weren’t... the same books that existed in western Armenia also existed in eastern Armenia... most of the books in western Armenia were burned, and none of the (same exact) books in eastern Armenia were burned... we still have them and we use them now...

I have NEVER said it is anyone’s fault that they didn’t learn something... I HAVE ONLY SAID that it is insane to change something from its original form to teach in western Armenian schools in LA... or anywhere else for that matter... your accusation is offensive... I NEVER said that... I am never going to say that... and don’t put me in a position to even look like or seem like, or sort of this or that, that I am saying something as stupid as that... SO, if maybe you didn’t exactly have all the correct and full Armenian text books, and you didn’t end up learning something in its most full and correct way, don’t tell the entire country of Armenia that they spell something wrong or they have adopted the incorrect Armenian as their national language... or they say some letter in correctly...

ok let the next generation of hayastantsi people live here for 20 to 30 years... and then what? are they going to come up with their one "correct" spellings? or "correct" pronunciations of letters from their memories of how it was, and then tell the entire country of Armenia that they are wrong for writing something in the news paper the wrong way? well if they do then they are obviously wrong... because in 20 or 30 years from now, Armenia will exist and they will still have Armenian as the national language, they will have been teaching this Armenian in schools, etc... and some guy from LA who has memories of speaking Armenian or has 1 or 2 pages of Armenian text isn’t going to be correct, the country of Armenia is going to be correct...

I don’t understand your mi katil meghr analogy...

what about the children in Armenia, who, from a very young age have learned the letter in a certain way all of a sudden have to change it when they read western Armenian literature? I guess they just do it, teachers don’t spoon feed them... WE JUST DO IT! we read the words the way the people wrote them! we understand them, and if we don’t, we learn very quickly since our grade depends on it...

what’s not good enough? we come here and belong to the same clubs that you do, and if there isn’t one, we make more... if there isn’t a homentmen in a city where 2 Armenians have migrated to, DAMN IT! we call up the club and establish one there too... we love that... and we do it... the problem isn’t that you have a better appreciation... lol! that’s even funny to say... the problem is that the eastern Armenians are satisfied and respect western Armenian (don’t change even a comma in a sentence, they preserve it for the sake of integrity and respect of the writers, etc...) while the western Armenians DONT!

EVERY single western Armenian I have know, and now you through this shenanigan, thinks that it is ok to change literature, thinks eastern Armenian (the language of the country of Armenia) is wrong... it has misspellings... lol! or it isn’t full or complete... or whatever the problem is (why any news has to be translated BAFFELS ME)... that’s the problem... the idea that there is this enormous amount utter disrespect and disregard for the language of that region which has been spoken for as long as it has existed...

that’s my problem... and that is the real issue here... you wrote words like "babam" or "ka"... those are not real Armenian words... but I didn’t say anything but "HEY that’s funny... i know i use those too, i learned them from my berutsi friends... " and when i said something that somehow wasn’t exactly taught at your western Armenian school in Los Angeles, California... OHHHH! no I was wrong... you said "that word sounds Russian... that other word is turkish... blah blah blah... and so we had to go into this entire week long conversation... you see how I WASNT the one that decided to start this up? lol! it was the western Armenian speaking person again... yup! again...

because ka is Armenian… yes… right? I didn’t think so either…