Vanahye7

That will divide our people. We shouldnt sayin such a thing. WE MUST NOT THINK THOUGHTS as it represents the dissolution of our people, counrtry, NATION... Of course, there are fundamental differences between the 2 and they may be difficult to understand for some and makes things complicated, but it is still intelligently mutually understandable for both parties with a short amount of time of being exposted to the other. I speak the Western Dialiect, and yea soemtimes I wish there would be more Armenians where I live that would speak it since after all it is my mother tounge and Im more confrortable speaking and understanding it. But in NOOOO WAYYYYY shape or form do I feel that it should constiture it being a differnet language. That would undermind our language adn nation allthogerther and that would be a direct root of our a dissoultion of Armenians. We cant have Armenians saying there Westtern Armenian and another saying he is Eastern Armenia. I still love both, and love my people.

Beautifulll, we need more churches and communirty involvement like this...

Youir opinion of the Bible bein full of lies, is jus that.. your opinion. Just like mine is my opinion. I dont want to get completely off topic, but everything goes back to its roots in th end with this topic. Are you Christiian before you are Armenian or Armenian before you are Chrisitan? Ive thought bout this alot, and I have alot of pride for my homeland and my Armenian people, but I am Christian before I am Armenian becuase in my opinion there is another calling after Im dead I will have to answer to. Jesus never saidf that life would be fair, because if it were than there would be no test of ones faith in my opinion. Annyways, I do agree with alot of you whom I catregorically disagree with are trying to say. Yes, the church did stab us in the back in some ways, but last time I checked a priest nor a church are the son of God and have many faults in they themselves as so called "Christians". Yes, we do need our diaspora Armenians to come back, and come back soooooon before its too late, and yes I do want ethnic Armenians to come back to the homeland regardless of their religion they claim even the Hamshentas and their belief in Islam, because we have a bigger problem now than the Genocide in my eyes that happened in 1915, and that is the continual assymilation of our Diaspora Armenian people. We will not last very mucj longer if we continie to live in our diaspora countries, and we need as many ppl back to the mothaland as possibne, considering the fact that we have "THE 13 LOWEST AMOUNT OF POPULATION GROWTH IN THE WORLD" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_count...ion_growth_rate The reason why I got so ticked by my initial comment was because I assumed that it meant bringing anyone into the Republic and making it open borders. IM soory my freind but just becasue u live in a foreign land of a different ethinic group doesnt mean u will support it nor die for it. If we open borders and allow everyone to come in, thjat will basically bring in many Muslims being that we are surrounded by them in mist of our borders. And having a decreasing number of birth rates as well as a growing number of not just Diaspora Armenians but an Assymilated number of Diaspora Armenians that are just Armenian by name, presents a hige threat to our existence in my view. What will happen then, when we get outnumbered by not just religion but by ethnicity in Armenia?? Am I thinking too far ahead in your eyes?? Maybe so, but we must consider all threats in great detail before rushing to such vital decisions.

We learn to behave like a nation???? Acknowledge that all nations are made of people of different shapes, and religions??? Yeaa lets just bring all the million Muslims, into our country and welcome them with open arms to have a more densly populated republic. 50 years later, have 10 times more immigrted muslims into our country than ethnic Armenian Chrisitans. Then when the times comes, we will be exported out of what little left of land that we have just like the Ottoman Turks did true our grandparents in former Western Armenia and then truly have nothing. Has history not taught us anything? What planet are you living on?????

I totally diagree with that. Once you have lost the ability to speak your native tounge, you have lost your natinal identity. You are then only a few streps away from full assymilation. What then can I ask you, will become our "new" standard of being Armenian????? Just like we have lowered our morals and values with the desensitization of being Christians, we have also lowered our standards of what it is to being an Armenian. What then is classified as being Armenian????? Just because you have an-ian/yan? Just becuase you know about the Armenian Genocide? (Every1 besides a dirty Turk knows the fact) Just because you know a few words of Armenian here and there???( my Mexican neighbor knows that) Just because you realizee that your parents or grendparents were Armenian?????(like 99% of White America whove come from European Ancesty but now are labeled as Americans) OF COURSE NOT!!! The only way we as Armenians can exist is through unity, and we need to preserve our language in order to be united. Im not say just because you dont know how to speak Armenian your not Armenian anymore, because theres always the possibility of you being educated the language and given new nationalistic feeling towards your country (which is still highly unlikely), but it sure is veryyyy closee to it, and we must NOTTT let that happen. My coiusins coworker who is Armenian and grew up here in the States, was not taught how to speak Armenian. He grew up in N. Carolina and moved to Californoia a few yrs back. He is now married to an "odar" American. What do you think the chances of him marrying an Armenian would have been had he learned how to speak Armenian?? Certainly much higherr right???? And that there, is my point, becasue not knowing how to speak Armenian isolates you being Armenian in the present and possible future events/opportunities in many manyyy waysss. Even more ways that yu cna possibly think of. It is veryyy close to the last breath of assymtilation which basically = the death of Armenia.

I am happy that ar least you have Armenian pride and spirit with you ands still have retained some form of knowing how to speak our beautiful langugaqge, paytz asse shad tgbakht pan ehh. I reside here in L.A. and to me this is soemthing very foreign to me. I guess that is why I am so shocked. I really dont know how it is in France, or Argentina, Turkey, Russia, and other parts of N America where there is a signifivant Armenina populations but here in LA I can tell you this is not the case at least with our current generatoin. Yes the Armenian youth including myself is very Americanized here, but I still can barely point out any new generation youth (18 younger) who dont know how to speak the langugage. The only thing, I can think of is that we here probably dont speak it as much as Montreal Armenians especially when in social settings, but more than 90% still know how to speak our langugage. Now weather or not the next generation will still know how to is anotehr question, but to see and find out that the current generation meaning the age group of up to 25 dont know or know very little Armenian is shock to my ears. I guess this may be attributed to the fact that here in L.A. we have the largest Armenian community, and it may be more difficult in other parts to reatain the language and culture beacuse there isnt as big of an Armenian community. Regardless amenkes bedk ehh hayeren kidnank ev sorvetzooneck mer yerekhaneeron. Because it is the core symbol to preserving out identity.

How realistic do you think that one day we are all going to gather back to our homeland??? It really saddens me that were all dispersed across the globe shad shad tsavely ehh.

Thats such a good point you make, I mean how many really do know how to speak the langugage? Are you considered Armenian solely on the basis if your last name ends in -ian, or if your grandparents were and its in your bloodline? I dont think so, because if youve lost the langugae youve assymiliated and youve lost your heritage in a differnet kind of way. I guess we can never truly find out. A typiucal white American doesnt come from America, his grandparents at one point were from Europe lets just say Germany for example. Now he cxould be German by bloodline, but is he really German if he doesnty know the language and identifies himself as American and speaks English??

Woww, very interseting, thanks for the site Dave. Ive never actually seen a place with actually figures, but for some reason those figurse seem to look veryyyy exagerrated to me.

I see. Well I know that there are alot of Armenians located in Argentina, France, Canada and the United States respectively. But my way of trying to come to a rough conlusion is to find out roughly how many Armenians are located in these regions and how many are western armenian to find out the specefics of the numbers? Does anyone know? And as to my opinion, I wouldnt call someone an Armenian once they have forgotten the language. That may seem kind of harsh, but in my opinon asymilation is another form of genocide of a people only without a war, and is just as bad. For example, there are many Italian Americans living in the eastern part of the U.S. but they all dont know the language nor the history of their people. They may have an Italian flag at home and claim to be Italian by blood but that it all nonsense. All that is left is a few phrases and customes related to food they still have. They have assimilated to being American, and are no longer Italian, in the eyes of many.

Does anyone know what the total population of Western Armenians are around the world compared to Eastern Armenians. Ive always been interested in finding out the number but nowhere does it state that. Only data ive read is the current population of us Armenians in Armenia and Russia.