jgm1975

My opinion: There is no black and white, only shades of gray. Only in extreme cases is something very close to white or very close to black. For example, if we were to take randomly 100 persons, I would say that about 96 of them would be some shade of gray. The other 4 could be considered extremely close to "white" (people like Mother Teresa) or to "black" (people like Hitler). This brings another subject. People look at the world and are truly depressed that God is allowing so much bad things to happen. Well, if God who is 100% "white" (no racial undertones here), were to intervene for people who are shades of gray, where do we draw the line to separate those who would deserve God's assistance, and those who would not? Would you have to be 30% gray, 40% gray, 50% gray? Also, those who seek to "institutionalize" good and evil through religion are themselves classic examples of being shades of gray. I believe that one of the most fundamental pillars of "good" is humility. Yet many religious figures demonstrate a lack of humility when claiming that they hold the proper definition of what is "good". But of course there are some religious figures who are OK and open to others, since nothing is black or white.

Good posts Sasun. One can be a nationalist, without being an extremist. Some Armenians claim that they are "better" Armenians than others, yet they use the same hateful and extremist language towards fellow Armenians who do not agree with them as some Turks use against us. Listening to those Armenian "nationalists" reminds me of the same language that the perpetrators of the genocide used against Armenians. History has shown that such hate-mongering extremists like Hitler, Talaat and others end us bringing the destruction of their own nation. Patriotic duty implies that one can disagree with a fellow compatriot without questioning his loyalty to the nation. When a nationalist starts to question the loyalty of his fellow countrymen, just because they disagree with his extremist propaganda, that person stops being a nationalist, and becomes instead a hate-worshipping fascist that advances unrealistic racist theories.

Thank you. Here are a few other things I forgot to add in my previous posts: All languages have dialects, and they are a source of wealth, diversity and originality. I know of many different French dialects. But all the French write Daniel as "Daniel", while among Armenians, we have "Daniel" and "Taniel". It is as if some English-speaking people referred to a "nav" as "boat", while others referred to it as a "poad". There are dozens of Italian dialects, yet all Italians write the name Marc as "Marco", while among Armenians there is "Markos" and "Margos". The Western Armenian and Eastern Armenian division is a result of the Armenian language having been influenced by foreign powers bent on eliminating the originality of the Armenian language. While now it may not be seen as a significant problem, compared to the significant economic problems affecting Armenia, it is something that can create further divisions among Armenians, divisions that a small nation can not afford. Many countries have been torn on the issue of language (Canada, Belgium), while others have been united as a result of a common language (Italy, Germany). Today we have de-facto two Armenian languages, both with inaccuracies compared to the original language. This is fueling the "Hayastantsis vs. others" mentality. We already have divisions among Diaspora Armenians (Beyrutsis vs. Halesbtsis vs. Bolsetsis), let's not make things worse. The Jews reformed the Hebrew language in the 19th century when they realized that it was drifting apart due to foreign influences on the language, while the Turks adopted the Latin alphabet in the 20s to make the language more modern. So language reform, to build cohesion, retain or regain the purity of the language and give generations to come a solid foundation of their identity, is a process already seen. I think that this is more than a mere dialect issue, it is a question of saving the sanctity of the Armenian language, and language is the most important element of a culture. It is not difficult to reconcile both variants to have a single language. The division of Western Armenian and Eastern Armenian is not a natural evolution, which is normal in all languages. Rather, it is a result of the attempts by foreign powers to assimilate Armenians. For people to say "yes" to the status quo is like saying "yes" to the attempts by foreigners throughout the ages to culturally assimilate Armenians. Armenians are unfortunately notorious for petty in-fighting and counter-productive factionalism, even abroad, and this language difference is not helping. One less barrier, one less source of division, is already a step in the right direction, especially when it comes to language which is at the core of any culture.

I did reflect on this issue. Here is a link you can go to: http://www.geocities.com/jgm1975/Language.htm In summary, Eastern Armenian consonants are more accurate phonetically, while Western Armenian vowels (such as -ian in Manoukian, “ü” in spürk, and so), as well as the script (as per Mesrop Mashtots) are more accurate. So to answer your question, both Eastern and Western have deviated from traditional Armenian. This is a result of political and cultural pressures. The Soviets wanted to eventually assimilate Armenians, so the first step was to eliminate all the particularities of the Armenian language to make it like Russian. For example, Russian does not have the sound "ü". They have the sound "yu". So the sound “ü” in Armenia was replaced by “yu” (Gyugh instead of Gügh). For Western Armenian, Greek and practically all other Western languages have two types of consonants: voiced (B, D, V, G) and voiceless (P, T, F, K). Traditional and Eastern Armenian have three types of consonants: voiced, voiceless, and "soft voiceless" (like a "T" that sounds almost like a "D"). In Western Armenian, they did away with that characteristic, because it became hard to translate Armenian in other languages that only have two types of consonants. I speak Western Armenian. I am 100% Diaspora with all my family and extended family being from the Diaspora as well. But when a foreigner asks me how we say "Strawberry" in Armenian, I answer "Yelak", and not "Yelag", to be accurate. And if someone asks me to write "Bob" with Armenian letters, I use the second letter of the Alphabet for the "B" ("Ben" or "Pen"), not the 26th letter ("pe" or "be").

My post was not directed at you. In fact it was directed at no one. I was simply curious whether there were other ways of saying "hadjis". I am in favour of eliminating the Eastern Armenian - Western Armenian dichotomy in order to have a single stream that takes the pronunciation of the Eastern Armenian consonants (i.e. Daniel and David, not Taniel and Taniel), but the Western Armenian script and vowels (i.e. Manoukian and Büzantian, not Manoukyan and Byouzantyan). That is why this subject caught my attention. Just curiosity...

If Hadjis may not be Armenian, what is the Armenian "please"? What do they use in Armenia? I never came across another word for "please" other than hadjis.

Damian is the name of a Christian saint: http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/saintd06.htm So it is a common name among non-Armenians. Also, I checked in the Montreal Armenian phone book and there is not a single Damian. My philosophy is that if there is a reasonable doubt that someone may not be Armenian, than that person is not an Armenian. As a child, I would hear these wild tales from older people about this or that person being Armenian. Naturally I would repeat it with pride to my non-Armenian friends, only to notice later as an adult that such and such was not Armenian. So since then I am quite conservative about these things. Of course that changes if the person in question admits that he or she is Armenian.

I am not sure about the Romanian Georgeta Damian. There are a lot of names that end in -ian that are not necessarily Armenian. In Latin languages, you also have the -ien or similar endings (e.g. "Parisien","Italiano"). Plus Georgeta is not an Armenian first name.

Actually I never did claim to “know” anything. As mentioned, I only give opinions. Only God owns the truth. So I may be about 80% right, 90% right, or even 100% wrong. Also, I will argue that you do know about this being as well. When you feel connected to other humans because of an affection that you have for them, you are letting the divine spark in you be in contact with the divine spark in others. When you hesitate to do something because you feel that it might be morally or ethically wrong, you are experiencing the Divine Spirit. You might not realize it, but you know God as much as I do. And this applies to everyone, unless of course someone is filled with hate.

I'll try to answer this question based on my opinion. First, the Buddha is not a "God". In fact, Buddhism is more of a philosophy than a religion. According to Buddhism, everyone can attain the status of a Buddha through enlightened. Next, the "Christian" God and "Allah" are nothing but human concepts and inventions, an attempt to place human attributes on the spiritual world. God is not some being sitting somewhere in the clouds. God is a form of substance/energy/force that is omnipotent and omnipresent. It is everywhere at the same time, including inside human beings. But it is invisible. I prefer to use the term "Divine Spirit" rather than "God", but that is just my opinion. Ultimately though, nametags mean nothing. God is greater than any linguistic designations. So I would say that we have the same "God" everywhere.

Actually, while Armenia got no medals, individual Armenians got 5 medals (1 gold, 1 silver and 3 bronzes) for Russia, Sweden, Greece, Kazakhstan and Bulgaria.

The problem with the question "God exists?" is that people often confuse spirituality and religion. As a personal opinion, I always considered religion as a caricature of spirituality, as man's definition of God. Religion tries to put human attributes to the divine realm. So naturally when religion is discredited and exposed for what it is, namely a collection of unreal myths, dogma and pointless rituals, people also assume that God is fake as well. The fact is that both religion and atheism, in my view, have serious flaws. People often lose sight of the third way, namely a simple and basic belief in that unknown and invisible force/energy/substance that regulates the endless cycle of life and death and is there to explain things that sometimes science can not explain. For example, the Earth is nothing but a tiny grain of sand in the endless expanses of the universe. Yet life developed here for some reason. Certainly the big bang had something to do with, but who created the big bang? Also, if the Earth's axis was tilted just a fraction towards the equator or towards the poles, life would be impossible because winters would be too cold and summers too hot. Yet somehow the Earth is tailored-made to sustain life. And in my opinion, I do not think that all of this is the result of a 1 in a gazillion coincidence. I have reflected more on this and you can read more of it if you want: http://www.geocities.com/jgm1975/Spirit.htm Keep in mind that these are only opinions. I do not claim to possess the truth. Only God owns the truth.

Yes I agree. Words like Yerusaghem and Catoghicos are weird when you have GH instead of L. Traditional Armenian in fact had two "L"s. The normal "L" that we have today in words such as Yelak or lolik, and also a "guttural" L that is pronounced by placing the tongue a little further back than the spot from which a normal "L" is pronounced. This "L" was exactly like the way the English today say "L" in "well". I guess the ancient Armenians had difficulty in pronouncing this sound and it came out as GH, just as the French sometimes have difficulty pronouncing the sound "th" which comes across as "z".

Thank you. I must admit that sometimes it gets difficult to follow. Since I do other things during the week and week-end, by the time I have time to post, there have already been many posts in many topics and I have diffculty following. Yes I agree. The problem though for linguistic scholars is the further you go in the past, the more difficult it becomes to classify words. To show you how difficult their job is, up until the end of the 19th century, scholars were still considering Armenian as a dialect of Persian because of the many Persian loan words. So it is only until recently that they established the independent nature of the Armenian branch. The Armenians are derived from the Thraco-Phrygian branch of the Indo-European family. But not much is know about that branch, other than its languages, all now extinct except for Armenian, were spoken in ancient Western Anatolia and the Balkans of Antiquity. Some think that the native Macedonian language of Alexander the Great and his peers may have been a member of that branch. For the Urartu words, it is still very difficult to identify the exact words. Scholars know well which words are of Non-Indo-European origin. They simply see that there is no pattern with other Indo-European words, and that's it. But the next step, identifying the origin of the words, is difficult. Since it is a known historical fact that Armenians and the Urartu people merged with one another, at least we know that Urartu words indeed came into the language. But it is very hard to establish which words are of Hurrian, Luwian, Hayasa-Azzis, or Hittite origin, even though probably such words indeed made their way in Armenian As for "native" Armenian words, well I would say that the language spoken by the Armenians before they came in contact with the Urartu is probably the one that contains them, since this language was 100% Indo-European and had no loan words from Persian. But this is just an opinion. This language was a member of the Thraco-Phrygian branch.

I have two memories of April 24th rallies as a child that I did not forget. 1) In Armenian school in Montreal, we naturally had April 24th off. The teachers would always insist (if not coerce) that the students go to the April 24th rally in Ottawa. Yet the teachers would not show up. Instead they would take the opportunity to take the day off. Talk about hypocrisy. 2) In Paris in 1987, Armenians were gathering around the Place the l'Étoile to march towards the Turkish embassy. One thing that struck me was that all Armenians were not assembling at the same spot. There were 2-3 separate and distinct gathering spots. I asked my mother why that was the case and was told that "the Armenians over here are Dashnaks while the Armenians over there are Ramkavars". My reaction was a sarcastic and cynical "wow". Needless to say, I have not been to any April 24th rally since 1989. Yelling "Echec Millet Turk Millet" in the streets of a major Western capital will not feed a single hungry child in Armenia.

The greatest threat to Armenia is the migration issue. Prior to independence, there was a population of 3.5 million. Now it is around 2 million, maybe a little more. The danger is that Azerbaijan, at 8 million, might think that it has an advantage and resume hostilities. Instead of building Churches in Armenia, we should build factories that produce jobs.

Armenian words are of three origin: - Loan words (or borrowed), i.e. Arabic, Persian, Russian, Turkish and other words that made their way into the Armenian language. This is an entirely normal phenomenon. For example English borrowed a lot from French after the Norman invasion of 1066. - Indo-European, i.e. words derived from the common Indo-European root of the Armenian language with other Indo-European languages, such as Persian and Greek. A lot of words in Armenian resemble Persian words, not because one borrowed words from the other, but because the two are related. Even for the word Father you can see the phenomenon. Father in Latin is Pater. If you "evolve" the consonants, you get the Armenian version: Pater-> Phather-> hather-> Hayer-> Hayr - Urartu, i.e. a lot a Armenian words are of non-Indo-European origin and are a result of the assimilation of the Urartu people and language by the Armenians. One theory is that Urartu is related to Georgian and to the other languages of the Caucasus, which is probably the case since Historians have not classified the Urartu people as Indo-Europeans or Semites, the two most populous ethnic families at that time.