Armenian Dialect - Why Is The Older One Wrong?

[imhye]

Hello,

 

I have a question about the Eastern and Western Armenian dialects. I don't want to cause arguments, just please answer my question.

 

According to what I've researched, the Western Armenian alphabet is the same as the old S. Mashtots alphabet, and the Eastern Armenian alphabet is a Russified version to accommodate the Russian language.

 

So my question is, why does older Western Armenian spell and pronounce certain things incorrectly?

 

For example, many languages and dialects of the world know David as David, or Daniel as Daniel, or Ararat as Ararat. What's the reason in Western Armenian, David is Tavit, Daniel is Taniel, and Ararat is Ararad?

 

Even Hayastan is Hayasdan. Everyone knows "-stan" suffix, why is it "sdan"?

 

If there is no special reason for these pronounciations, why wasn't the spelling corrected? For example, instead of spelling Ararat in Western Armenian as Արարատ, why not spell it as Արարադ ?

[Arpa]

Welcome imhye.

 

Those are very good questions.

Please search the “Language” section and see if anyone has answered your questions already as this subject has come up numerous times.

In the same vein, this question is directed to Yervant.

How do you pronounce your name?

Yervant, Yervand, Yerwant, Yerwand, Ervant or Erwand ,the latter being the official transliteration. The reason for that is, in the Armenian your name is written ԵՐՈՒԱՆԴ/Երուանդ. i.e.

E r ou a n d.

There is a method to this madness. The first letter is the equivalent of the Greek epsilon, note that I did not say “Yepsilon”, the diphthong in he middle is “ou”, not V,a dn th last letter is equivalent of the Greek Delta, not Telta. So why are pronouncing the first letter as “YE” the middle as V and the last as T.

Let me repeat something that I have said a million times.

Vee, Arrmenyans sey dat vee don’t hawe de sound of W . Are you sure? Then why do we spell it as

E R OU A N D

If it was meant to be pronounced as Yervant then in the Armenian it would have been

Յ Է Ր Վ Ա Ն Տ

As to why the westerners mispronounce the Mesropian letters, my best guess would that those cursedTurks not only cut our tongue they also deafened our ears. I have said this before, to see how the so-called western Armenians really speak one has to listen how the Marashtsis and Musa Lertsis speak their dialects, not those turkified Stanbulians. I know this first hand, in the Marash dialect it is nor “mart” it is “mard”/man, it is nor “panli” it is “banli”, or better yet- “balank”, it is not “paregentan” it is “bargindan”. (Search and see where “bargindan” comes from. Hint- “bargi-n-gras? Mardi Gras?

Edited March 29, 2006 by Arpa

[Gor-Gor]

While what Arpa said is true, I don't think he answered your question.

 

I think you are confusing 2 separate things. The spelling is a completely different issue from the pronunciation.

 

As you know, Western Armenian and Eastern Armenian differ from each other in several INDEPENDENT respects: Spelling (orthography), Pronunciation, Grammar, and to some extent Vocabulary.

 

Western Armenians have kept the original spelling system, whereas Eastern Armenians (with the exception of those in Iran) use a modified spelling system. It was mandated by the Soviet government, and it attempts to simplify the spelling system. (In my opinion, while it does simplify spelling rules, it makes it more difficult to glean the origin of words and thus robs the language of its history.) Only those Armenians who were under Soviet rule adopted these changes, which is why all Western Armenians and Barsgahays have kept the original spelling.

 

The spelling issue is completely different from the pronunciation issue. While the spelling was changed overnight and within fixed borders (ie, within the Soviet Union), the pronunciation changed gradually over a long period of time and not necessarily in any specific area. I don't think there is any conclusive reason WHY the pronunciation changed, but logic would dictate that the it occurred after several hundred years of contact with the Turkish language. In fact, if you listen to modern Turkish, the SOUNDS sound just like Western Armenian. Even the accent and so forth sound like Western Armenian. The further west Armenians lived across the Anatolian plain, the more the pronunciation had changed. And in the utmost west, in Bolis/Istanbul, that is where the pronunciation had completely changed. In the middle-west (like Arpa mentioned, Marash, Musa Ler, etc), not all of the consonants had changed pronunciations. But anyway, about 100 years ago, a "standard" Western Armenian dialect was CREATED from the Bolis dialect, and this standard dialect was taught across Western Armenia. This is how the pronunciation change was really cemented. The Western Armenian that is spoken today is based, in most part, on the pronunciation and grammar of the Bolis dialect. The regional dialects of Western Armenia, which have almost all been extinct, did not necessarily share the same grammar and pronunication as the Bolis dialect. Note also that in old Western Armenian folk songs, you will notice a grammar that is like a mixture between Eastern and Western. It is helpful to think of the old Armenian regional pronunciations and grammars as a continuum stretching from Bolis in the west to Yerevan and Artsakh to the east, with variations and mixtures in between.

 

There are further questions that I have not been able to answer. For instance, why did the sound of "Բ" change at all? Why couldn't it have remained a "B" sound? I understand that "Պ" changed to "B" since in the original pronunciation, Պ already has an in-between B/P sound, so it's easy to flip that to a plain B sound. But why didn't "Բ" remain B, "Պ" become B, and "Փ" remain P, as it did? Why such a drastic change for Բ? The same goes for Գ, Դ, Ձ, and Ջ.

[Vanetsi]

Note also that in old Western Armenian folk songs, you will notice a grammar that is like a mixture between Eastern and Western.

 

And there you have the Vanetsi dialect. It's a shame its extinct. We've lost such unique phrases as:

 

"Ch'asets Ch'asats (Ջասեդս Ջասադս)"-- Don't say that I didn't say [it, or to you]

(Equivalent to contemporary Western Armenian's "Chu'ses Chu'si).

[Anahit]

Little bit off the topic: MAY I, PLEASE?

 

Few years ago in one of our "armenian gatherings" a Canadian-Armenian woman asked another Armenian woman (she was from RoA):

---Inchpes gutats ek Chinastan@ ?

The woman from Armenia looked at us, felt kind of "uncomfortable" and answered:

---De... Samalyot enk nstel, ekel, eli...

[Armenak]

Because of the absence of ancient dialectal differences, it cannot be determined in what region the classical Armenian was evolved and stabilized. As the language of scholars and the Church, the classic Grabar has remained in use to the present time. It passed gradually out of popular use in the Middle Ages, being replacedamong the people by the modern common vernacular (Ashkharhabar, from Ashkharh, "world," "country") which was in general use in the fifteenth century. It is to be noted that there are a number of phonetic variations between Eastern and Western vernaculars of the modern Armenian, as for example the sonorous labial, guttural and dental letters, b, g, and d, heard in the East, are in the West turned into p, k and t. For example, the word Grabar, so pronounced in the East, would in the West be pronounced Krapar. Sourb Grigor in the East become Sourp Krikor in the West. The Eastern is nearer to the classical Armenian.

 

From "History of Armenia" by Vahan Kurkjian.