Armenians find faith in words
Detroit Free Press
October 7, 2005
BY DAVID CRUMM, FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
To the untrained eye, these sacred curves are merely cryptic rows of
hooks and notches. But to those who love them, these 38 arches form
the architecture that shelters one of the world’s oldest Christian
cultures.
Starting this weekend, the 38-character Armenian alphabet also is the
focus of a most unusual anniversary: a yearlong celebration of the
creation of this written language 1,600 years ago.
On Wednesday at the Alex and Marie Manoogian charter school in
Southfield, the 347 students were gearing up for the celebration.
Anahit Toumajian taught her fifth-graders a poem to recite at an
upcoming assembly. She reminded the students that, “Armenia never had
great armies to conquer the world, but the letters of our alphabet
were the soldiers that protected our culture.”
Girls and boys recited lines of an ode to the Armenian language that,
in translation, begins, “You give us light. You give us love. You give
us wings to fly.”
There aren’t many elementary school classes that speak so
affectionately about studying languages.
There’s a religious side to this observance, but because the Manoogian
school is a K-12 charter school, those aspects of the story are left
to Armenian churches, including the gold-domed St. John Armenian
Orthodox Church across the parking lot from the school.
These churches, including St. Sarkis Armenian Orthodox Church in
Dearborn, draw members from across the state. In the 2000 census,
15,746 Michigan adults indicated they were Armenian, although a
University of Michigan-Dearborn center for Armenian studies estimates
the population is twice that.
“Ethnic identity, culture, language and religion aren’t separate
threads for us. They are powerfully interwoven to preserve our
identity,” the Rev. Garabed Kochakian, pastor of St. John, said
Wednesday.
The creator of the alphabet was an Armenian priest, the Rev. Mesrob
Mashdotz, who needed a written form of it to spread the Bible among
the native speakers. Armenia proudly identifies itself as the first
nation to embrace Christianity as its state religion, which it did in
the year 301. But, for about 100 years, Armenian remained an oral
language and the country’s churches used copies of the Bible in other
languages.
When Mashdotz finally captured the local tongue with his dozens of
curving characters, the first words he transcribed were from the
Bible’s book of Proverbs: “That people may know wisdom.”
On Wednesday, Kochakian showed journalists as well as a group of
visiting teachers from public schools in metro Detroit through several
historical galleries at the church.
“Look, the alphabet is everywhere in our culture,” he
said. “Inscriptions are woven into our carpets; they’re on our
vestments and carved into wooden doors. And, look at this,” he said,
pointing to a case containing a 200-year-old bowed instrument, a
distant cousin of the violin. The instrument is inlaid with
mother-of-pearl inscriptions in Armenian.
“The language is such a big part of our life,” he said, though he
estimates it is regularly used by less than 20 percent of the several
thousand Armenian-Americans who consider St. John their parish.
Starting Sunday, Armenian churches and cultural organizations will
devote a year to special programs and classes about the language. In
kicking off the celebration, Catholicos Karekin II, head of the church
in Armenia, described the alphabet as so important that “the lush tree
of Armenian culture has grown tall from its gold-seeded root.”
There certainly seems to be fertile ground for this message in
Southfield. In a fourth-grade language class on Wednesday, 9-year-old
Ani Papazian explained to her class why they all must take this
seriously.
“If we don’t speak our language and keep it alive for the future,” she
said, “then it’s like there’s this long chain from Armenia that will
break. And we can’t be the ones to let that chain break.”
TELL US WHAT YOU THINK
THIS WEEK: If you’re Armenian, tell us what your culture means to
you. If you’re not, tell us something about your own family’s cultural
heritage that’s important in your life today. E-mail
[email protected] or call 313-222-1456.
