Uh... "Parev! Yes Amerigohee em."...?

[Tali]

Hello!

Name: Tali
What School you attend: Moorpark College
Location: Camarillo, California, USA
Where from originally: *see above*
Age: 20

Other info: I never met any Armenians until I was in college. Now, I'm completely surrounded as I find myself with an Armenian/American boyfriend. I have met a lot of his Armenian side now. I'm attempting to learn Western Armenian. Also, I want to learn more about your culture. I am familiar with the history of the Armenian Genocide. I will not pity you, as you are a strong people with great pride; but I hope to extend a hand in support. I also am very Americanized (b/c I am Mexican American), and do not understand the traditions and roles and so forth. I am hoping to learn a lot so that our children will have an understanding of their father's side too; and hopefully learn the language and develop a sense of Armenian, Mexican, American identity. Any assistance is greatly appreciated!

[Mos]

Re: Uh... "Parev! Yes Amerigohee em."...?

Armenia and Mexico are like two different worlds. Even though we are both Christian, Armenian Christianity is much different from your churches. Armenians in general (at least the Armenians from Armenia; Eastern Armenians) have a lot of connection to Russian/Soviet culture as result of us living under USSR. We feel much closer to ex-Soviet people (aside from few specific groups) than anybody else. When it comes to Western Armenians most tend to be 3rd generation or even 4th, so good amount are rather Americanized. Last, why are you learning Western armenian, learn eastern as more people speak that, and that's the way people speak in Armenia.

[jgk3]

Re: Uh... "Parev! Yes Amerigohee em."...?

She's learning the culture of her western Armenian speaking bf, if he spoke eastern Armenian, she'd learn that.

Well, I'm glad that you're willing to learn the language Tali, I'll give you a small lesson if you'd like. You might enjoy reading it together with your bf. Mos, you might enjoy it too, haha.

Here's a list of basic commonly used words (Armenian form followed by English meaning):

Armenian/English

ayo/yes
voch/no
yev/and
che/means "no" if used by itself, means "not" if used at the end of a phrase

Parev/hello
Kisher pari/Goodnight
Pari Luys/Good morning
Merci (we also say, "Shnorhagal em")/thank you

Now for some basic conjugation, starting with personal subject pronouns:

yes/"I"
tun/"you"
inke*/"him or her"
menk/"we"
touk/"you (pl)"
irenk/"they"

*online we'd write ink@, the @ being the sound made for the letter "u" in English "Supply", the letter "a" in English "About", this is called a schwa sound). We'll write it as Ink@ now too.

Now, like you wrote as the thread's name, Yes Amerigohee em (the correct way is: "Yes Ameriga-tsi em"), you can easily make statements about who someone is in 3 steps:

1. Choose a personal pronoun, e.g. Yes ("I")
2. Add an adjective, e.g. Ourakh ("Happy"), the Ou is pronounced like the o in English "Who", the oo in English "poop" :P The kh is the sound you make for Spanish j in jajaja, Spanish x in Mexico.
3. Add in the verb "to be", conjugated according to the person. These will be written in bold

a) Yes Ourakh em
b) Tun Ourakh es
c) Ink@ Ourakh e
d) Menk Ourakh enk
e) Touk Ourakh ek
f) Irenk Ourakh en

= a) I am happy, b) you are happy, c) he is happy, d) we are happy, e) you (pl) are happy, f) they are happy

If you want to say what country you're from, in step 2, write the name of the country, and add the the suffix -tsi, which means "from", and only exists in suffix form. E.g. Canada-tsi = Canada-from.

a) Yes Canadatsi em
b) Tun Amerigatsi es
c) Ink@ Idalatsi e,
d) Menk Francatsi enk
e) Touk Ankliatsi ek
f) Irenk Chinatsi en

= a) I am Canadian, b) You are American, c) He or she is Italian, d) We are French, e) You (pl.) are English, f) They are Chinese.


Now to conjugate an active verb, there's two things to look out for:

1. These forms combine with verbs that receive a unique suffix according to person, like in Spanish. Luckily enough, we just did all these endings above with the verb "to be". This time, they'll just be stuck onto the verb.

2. There is also a particle "g@" you'll need. It's used in two tenses, present tense (I eat) and imperfect tense (I was eating), but is missing in past tense (I ate) and future tense (I will eat).

Here we go! We're going to use the verb sir-el/To love, the root is sir, the i pronounced like "ea" in English "seat", "heat". In Armenian, the last syllable is stressed, so it's the suffixes that you'll say with more power, I'll write them in bold.

Yes g@ sirem
Tun g@ sires
Ink@ g@ sire
Menk g@ sirenk
Touk g@ sirek
Irenk g@ siren

Now if you want to say "I love you", there's a few things you have to do.

1. say Yes ("I)
2. add g@ sirem, like in the chart
3. kez-i (kez = "you" in the object form of 2nd person singular, + -i*)

"Yes g@ sirem kezi". Like in Spanish, the personal pronoun can drop. so you can say just g@ sirem kezi and it still means "I love you". You're also allowed to put kezi before the verb, so kezi g@ sirem still means "I love you".

*-i is a case ending, which is mostly lost in both Spanish and English, but present in languages like German and Russian for instance). You can ignore it's meaning for now as a beginner.

Hope this helps for now!

[Tali]

Re: Uh... "Parev! Yes Amerigohee em."...?

to Mos:
yes, I'm learning Western Armenian because that's the dialect his family knows. Perhaps if I learn that well enough, I can branch into Eastern =) that'd be awesome!!

to jgk3:
I am using phrasebooks, dictionaries, and software program. You brought up something I was hoping somebody could clarify: which happens to be the thread title. I was told that b/c I'm a female, I have to use "Amerigohee" instead of "Amerigatzi". Is this kinda brushed aside as "proper" but not "every day" use?
Also, "Thank you." I learned it as: shenorhagalootioon. so I should use "merci"?

You see, my reasoning for these variances is much like when I taught myself Spanish. I realized after i was able to converse that a lot of what i'm saying was "School Spanish" vs "People Spanish" ; for instance, read an essay outloud as if it was a conversation versus how we actually speak. Does that apply too in the scenarios i presented?

thank you so much for the lesson! =) I really appreciate it and that helps to clarify things. i see a variety of ways to spell but not sure which people actually use. Thanks again! <3

[jgk3]

Re: Uh... &quot;Parev! Yes Amerigohee em.&quot;...?

I'm glad you're so enthusiastic about learning

I've never heard anyone in my life say Amerigohee before. I realize by your comment that the suffix in question is "ouhi" pronounced oo-hi, which is a feminin suffix used for occupations, but not so much for other categories. It survives in fossilized forms in certain names, like "Armenouhi", being the female name for "Armen" But alas, for saying you're American, Amerigatsi is the form that won't raise eyebrows if you said it to Armenians.

Shnorhagaloutyun means "thanks", and could be used as thank you. Most Armenians just say Merci, and if they want to sound more Armenian, will bother to say Shnorhagal em, or Shnorhagaloutyun. Merci is good enough to me though.

It's always tricky to learn a language according to the book, not only because it requires memorization, but because it's not always what people actually use, as you said!

If you have any other questions, please ask, I'll be happy to help. I can also make more lessons if you'd like.

[Tali]

Re: Uh... &quot;Parev! Yes Amerigohee em.&quot;...?

oh really? would you? pretty pretty please?? what can i do to return the favor??

i noticed other things by going over your lesson;
for instance, my dictionaries spelled a lot of things different than how you just did (most obvious example: shnorhagaloutyun). Also, "voch"; I learned "votch."

Ah! how could i forget? I learned "yev;" which I guess is "and" in the way I say "i'm American and Mexican". However, how do i say "And you?" I know it's a different and, I learned it this way: Isk took?
which i guess should really be touk?

[Davo88]

Re: Uh... &quot;Parev! Yes Amerigohee em.&quot;...?

Welcome to the forum Tali and thanks for wanting to learn more Armenian!
And to answer your last question, "isk toun?" is fine but is barely used in spoken Western Armenian. You could just say "toun?" and the "isk" part is implied.

For example: "Yes Amerigatsi em, toun?"

By reading your post I jus noticed that it's much easier to say for example Armenian Canadian (Canadahye) or Armenian American (Amerigahye) than to say for example Lebanese Canadian (Lipanantsi Canadatsi) or Mexcian American (Mexicatsi Amerigatsi). It's almost like our language implies Armenians can be 2 things at the same time unlike others!

By the way, did you also check out the Armenian alphabet? It wouldn't be a bad idea.

[jgk3]

Re: Uh... &quot;Parev! Yes Amerigohee em.&quot;...?

oh really? would you? pretty pretty please?? what can i do to return the favor??

i noticed other things by going over your lesson;
for instance, my dictionaries spelled a lot of things different than how you just did (most obvious example: shnorhagaloutyun). Also, "voch"; I learned "votch."

Ah! how could i forget? I learned "yev;" which I guess is "and" in the way I say "i'm American and Mexican". However, how do i say "And you?" I know it's a different and, I learned it this way: Isk took?
which i guess should really be touk?

I'm glad I'm able to help, well, if I ever need help in Spanish, maybe I can come to you Maybe you can start a thread explaining Spanish verb conjugation, I know I'll have some questions!

I'll explain first why the spelling tactics using latin letters differs between me and your dictionaries.

Armenian, with it's alphabet, spells Shnorhagaloutyun/Shenorhagalootioon like this: շնորհակալություն

շ = sh
ն = n
ո = "o" if in the middle of a word, "vo" if beginning a word.
ր = r
հ = h
ա = a
կ = g
ա = a
լ = l
ու = ou* (pronounced oo like in poop),
թ = t
յ = "y" (pronounced like "y" in party, or the "i" in pipi) if in the middle of a word, "h" if beginning a word.
ու = ou**
ն = n

* the writing convention for the "oo" sound using the letters "ou" (o+u) came from the Greeks, and adopted by Armenians for orthography, the French did it too, and I'm sure other languages also have.

** if you noticed, I wrote the same ու sound differently in shnorhagaloutyun. The first time I wrote it as "ou", the second time, as "u"... pretty inconsistent eh? Well, it happens, in my mind they refer to the same sound, because "u" in the International Phonetic Alphabet, as well as in a few other standard phonetic alphabets used to transliterate Armenian, is precisely the sound represented by English "oo", and nothing else. I'm used to using both "ou" and "u" to refer to the same sound in the case of Armenian, since Armenian spells that exact sound as "ou".

Now, if your dictionary wrote the first part of the word: shenor, instead of shnor, there's a reason.

It wanted to convey that in Armenian, between the consonants "sh" and "n", there is a schwa sound (like the "a" in about and the "u" in supply), though it's not written in our writing system because it's implicitly known to Armenian speakers, who automatically pronounce a schwa between շն if a word starts with it. You can even make up a word, shngagagagaga, ask an Armenian speaker to pronounce it and you can bet your a$$ they'll pronounce a schwa-like sound after the sh. What's actually happening is that the n, which is normally a consonant, is vocalizing (it's becoming vowel-like), like in the English word "Bitten". In English Orthography, they choose to analyze this situation by adding an "e" between Bitt+n, whereas in Armenian, they don't bother to, it's understood that the transition to the "n" is vocalized to a schwa-like sound.

However, an English speaker might be puzzled when they meet this odd consonant combination of "sh-n", so your dictionary wanted to express that there's an "e"-like vowel to pronounce there, though it's a bit misleading to call it an "e", since e in English is pronounced in many different ways: beer, benign, Battle, grape (where it's not even pronounced), bet, obey, bitten.... Which "e" are you going to pronounce for shenor?

Lets turn to the situation with voch/votch, which in Armenian is spelled ոչ

ո = "o" in the middle of a word, "vo" if beginning a word
չ = "ch" like in Church.

But in English, reading "ch" leads to ambiguities about how to pronounce it, since it appears in English orthography in differently pronounced ways: beach, Bach, Chardonnay. Which one will the Anglophone beginner decide to use if the dictionary wrote "voch"? Writing "votch" instead, seems to reduce the ambiguity, since "tch" should get an English learner to figure out that it's spelled like the "ch" from beach. Remember, to Armenians who know their alphabet, no such ambiguity exists in reading the two letters: ոչ

(Upon re-reading my post, I realize the explanations I give about spelling and pronounciation are quite long and perhaps elaborate, and I hope they don't make it seem like Armenian is hard to learn, it's not. What I'm explaining here applies to languages and their differing orthographic conventions. If you'd like, we can easily return to lessons that deal with conjugation, vocabulary and sentences. But if this discussion was helpful, then I'd be glad to explain any other ambiguities/differences of spelling for Armenian words in English)

By reading your post I jus noticed that it's much easier to say for example Armenian Canadian (Canadahye) or Armenian American (Amerigahye) than to say for example Lebanese Canadian (Lipanantsi Canadatsi) or Mexcian American (Mexicatsi Amerigatsi). It's almost like our language implies Armenians can be 2 things at the same time unlike others!

Perhaps, but Armenian doesn't lend itself very well to saying things like Amerigamexik, or CanadaAnklia, etc... It seems whenever we refer to odars, we stick the -tsi on them :P

[Tali]

Re: Uh... &quot;Parev! Yes Amerigohee em.&quot;...?

Davo88,

I have looked at the alphabet and I downloaded software onto my computer that allows me to type in Armenian (though I have yet to figure out which key means what). My only problem is I have no idea how any of it's pronounced. I'd ask my boyfriend but he doesn't know either. I'm hoping that if I can learn it, he'll get the motivation to learn it (if all else fails i'll make him learn it =P), and I only met the Armenian side of his family on Christmas.


Jgk3,

ahhhh ok! i definitely got quite a bit to learn there! I dedicated an entire notebook to your teachings =) "Merci!"
I'll be sure to come knocking once I feel better. It's really hard for me to focus right now. I've been sick for 3 weeks with 2 different problems haha, but at least that gives me extra time to slow down and focus on details =)

[jgk3]

Re: Uh... &quot;Parev! Yes Amerigohee em.&quot;...?

I hope you feel better soon Tali, 3 weeks is a long time, do you have a flu or something?

It definitely helps to hear how speakers pronounce these words, I'll look out for examples online.