Literary Armenian needs special endearment today – publicist
11:42 * 21.02.15
Today marks the International Mother Language Day, an observance held
annually worldwide to promote multilingualism and cultural diversity.
On this occasion, Tert.am talked to Vachagan Sargsyan, an Armenian
writer, publicist, translator and editor who shared his ideas and
concerns over the general attitude towards the Armenian language
today. He noted with regret that the literary language, as a valuable
heritage bequeathed by ancestors, does not receive the necessary
attention and care nowadays.
Sargsyan said it is surprising to him that the local television
channels do not have any special broadcasts devoted to the Armenian
language, with no wealthy businessman or benefactor ever seeming to
think about funding such a project.
“What we received from our grandfathers is a wonderful heritage, the
literary Armenian, which is a brilliant language arousing the world’s
biggest nations’ envy. So it is the biggest omission today that there
is no state care, no endearment and reverence. Let us not forget that
the literary language is the bridge uniting us; Once it is seized from
our mouths, we will start quarreling with one another. We do not feel
the literary language’s unifying potential which makes everybody an
Armenian. It’s a very important thing,” he noted.
Sargsyan, who is the author of an Armenian ABC book for secondary
schools, stresses the importance of dedicated efforts to enrich the
language every day instead of making allegations that it has detached
itself from our lives.
“And it is important to be in contact with, and enrich, the living
language instead of reading its obituaries. We have never had
compassionateness, never preserved what we have created. We had a
motherland but did not manage to preserve it, handing it over to
others because of internal wrangles,” the publicist noted.
He further criticized the frequently occurring habit of sharing
transliterated messages in Latin letters, considering the practice
tantamount to “engraving scripts on a mound”.
In the meantime he noted that foreign nations are often perplexed by
the design and graphics of the Armenian letters.
“The Armenian letters live in the God’s heart; they were born from a
divine spirit, from the stone and from pomegranate corns,” he said,
also highly valuing the Armenian alphabets’ sound perfection.
As for the language in legislative drafting, Sargsyan said he finds it
neither good nor bad, with the State Language Inspection never issuing
special recommendation to legislators to encourage them to build a
linguistically correct language. Sargsyan said he regrets that
coarsened language traditions today do not leave room for such
recommendations or corrections.