Author: Dabaghian Diana

presstelegram.com
Article Published: Friday, March 11, 2005 – 11:01:01 AM PST

Tongues tied to diversity

L.A. County has some of the most exotic languages in nation.

By Jason Kosareff
Staff writer

Looking for a conversation in Efik? How about Wu? Want to chat over
coffee in the language of Ladino or Frisian?

Good luck finding conversationalists in these exotic languages spoken
by less than 80 people each in Los Angeles County.

There are 135 languages spoken in the county, which ranks first in
the nation for diversity of tongues, according to a study released
this week.

While California has 11.97 percent of the American population, the
state has a majority of the country’s Armenian, Cantonese, Mandarin,
Samoan, Spanish and Tagalog speakers, according to the study by
the U.S. English Foundation, a Washington, D.C.,-based nonpartisan
interest group. A total of 207 languages were counted in the state.

Many of the languages are spoken in the Long Beach area, including
Khmer spoken by Cambodians, Tagalog spoken by Filipinos, and dialects
of India.

Using Census data, researchers counted 321 languages spoken across
the nation.

Rex Chang of Monterey Park speaks Hakka, the 108th most common language
in the county. For the Hakka, anyone who comes from somewhere else
is a part of their culture. They are a people fond of traveling and
the name Hakka simply means “guest,’ Chang said.

The Hakka diaspora reaches around the globe, Chang said. What keeps
everyone on the same page is the language, which originates from
China’s earliest dynasties in the Yellow River region.

“I don’t know about other families, but my family still forces everyone
to learn to speak Hakka,’ Chang said.

The most obscure language in the region is Pennsylvania Dutch, with
just 20 speakers, according to the study. Other exotic languages
include Cajun with 25 speakers, Hopi with 25 speakers, Palau with 30
speakers, while Keres, Ojibwa and Melanesian round out some of the
rarest of tongues here.

WATERTOWNTAB

Volunteer opportunities
Friday, March 11, 2005

Project SAVE interviewers

Project SAVE Armenian Photograph Archives, recipient of funding from
the Watertown/Harvard Community Enrichment and Watertown/O’Neill Properties
Charitable Funds, is beginning to interview elder Armenians for the purpose
of collecting and documenting their photographs. Project SAVE’s grant
project includes an effort to involve community historians of all ages and
ethnicities in learning the techniques of interviewing people and
documenting their photographs.

This training is essential for all types of community preservation
efforts. If you love history, especially people/social history, and love
photographs for what they can tell us about the past and teach us about
ourselves, think about becoming a volunteer. You will have first-hand
experience visiting with people, learning documenting procedures, using the
tape recorder, preparing paperwork for accessioning and archiving
photographs, and making discoveries of long forgotten people and places.

If you are intrigued by this work, and have four to eight hours a month
to devote to it, whether you are a high school student (with parents’
permission), a senior citizen or somewhere in between, please contact Ruth
Thomasian, executive director, at Project SAVE Archives, 617-923-4542, or
[email protected].

Zaman, Turkey
March 11 2005

Faithful Nation

Uncle Kevork was the only grocer selling alcoholic beverages in our
neighborhood. Hence, my late grandfather wouldn’t go his store for
shopping; however, Uncle Kevork never sold the beverages openly. You
could never see the beverages on the shelves. He used to sell them
under the counter, wrapping them with paper. I cannot recall his
spouse’s name well; but I can still remember that she used to prepare
the traditional dishes of Malatya [an Eastern Turkish city], like
“sour meatballs” and “analý kýzý” (translated literally as “with
mother and daughter”) very well.

She used to serve the soup with yogurt cold. Having that soup cold
was traditional, too. Since there were no refrigerators in those
days, yogurt used to turn sour and become the elusive joy of the
summer days with its soda-like taste. We had two Armenian friends in
my school: Lucie and Arusyak. I think they also experienced the most
beautiful days of their childhood and youth in Malatya.

Aysegul Sonmez of Milliyet [a Turkish daily], had written about an
incident on June 8, 2001 that our photography editor Selahattin Sevi
witnessed, while he was working for the same paper: 150 Americans of
Armenian origin, following the footsteps of Gregorian, arrived in
Kayseri [a city in Central Turkey], yesterday. The aim of the group,
which couldn’t have a good night sleep due to enthusiasm, was to find
where their families used to live and re-live in the past. Mariyen
Sanag is one of them. Mariyen, 42, becomes impatient on seeing her
birthplace. Walking, we try to find her house in Bahcebasi. While
walking in the narrowest streets of Kayseri, someone shouts,
“Mariyen.” This is Aunt Sabiha, who is the daughter of “Butcher” Ali.
She is elderly in her 70s. Mariyen’s mirrored eyeglasses do not
prevent us from seeing the tears she could not control after the
encounter. When Mariyen found her house, she was as devastated as her
house was. Her house she left 32 years ago is now in ruins. She
points at the house, saying: “I used to drink hand-made sour cherry
juice during the hot afternoons. Here is my bedroom.” Some frescos on
the walls still attract attention. Matiyen sighs and says, “Our house
was beautiful, very beautiful.”

In fact, the Ottomans called them the “faithful nation.” We lived on
the same lands for centuries. Nowhere in the world has people of two
different religions been so close to one another. Is there any place,
anywhere where members of two different religions feed from the same
culture, eat the same foods and sing the same songs? I don’t know.

It was towards the end of the Ottoman era. On, one side, a state
collapsing, a nation sending its sons to one front after another, and
on the other side, there was another a community taking part in the
Russian provocation. Russia had occupied our eastern provinces,
taking some nationalist Armenians to its side. Nationalism, Russia
and the Union and Progress Party split two communities, which had
been living together for hundreds of years. Mutual afflictions,
sorrows and troubles occurred after that… Looking at the issue from
the point of “Your losses are less than ours” is a complete mistake.
War and chaos bring equal grief to all.

Even 70 years after experiencing this grief, Uncle Kevork, Lucie, and
Arusyak were part of our lives in Malatya. We shared life in the same
high school and same neighborhood. We miss the humanitarian dimension
of the Armenian issue. The leading Diaspora Armenians bring the
political dimension of the issue to the agenda, not the humanitarian,
and try to make gains out of it. This is the mentality between us and
the Armenians.

All Armenians living in Anatolia did not emigrate from these lands.
Professor Salim Cohce, the head of the History Department at Inonu
University, said only in Malatya, there are 3,500 families of
Armenian origin and they have continued to live there by changing
their names.

Not only the Armenians experienced all the hardships on these lands.
At least the Turks also suffered as much as the Armenians did. I do
not know if there is greater grief than losing an anchient friend.

March 10, 2005

–Boundary_(ID_I937y+ju5GQLQCBgkBa4bg)–

BPNews.Net
Baptist Press

Today is Thursday, Mar 10, 2005

2 tragic anniversaries mark Week of Prayer for Kurds
Mar 9, 2005
By Staff

Memorial garden
The memorial cemetery at Halabja, Iraq, is for victims of the gas attack by
Iraqi troops. The attack of March 16, 1988, on the village has become the
symbol of Saddam Hussein~Rs attempt to exterminate the Kurds from Iraq.
Multiple names on tombstones record family members who died in the attack.

RICHMOND, Va. (BP)–Two tragic anniversaries will fall on the week of March
15-21, marking events that men intended for evil — but that God is using
for good.

One year ago on March 15, anonymous gunmen attacked five Southern Baptist
humanitarian workers near Mosul in northern Iraq. Larry and Jean Elliott,
David McDonnall and Karen Watson died. Carrie McDonnall continues to recover
from multiple wounds.

Seventeen years ago, on March 16, 1988, more than 5,000 men, women and
children were killed in a chemical attack by Saddam Hussein’s regime on
Halabja, also in northern Iraq. It became known as “Black Friday” — the
most infamous of many attacks that destroyed or damaged thousands of
villages in the region and killed more than 100,000 people.

The connection: Both incidents involved the Kurds, the world’s largest
people group without their own homeland. Overwhelmingly Muslim, about 30
million Kurds live in Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Armenia and other nations
in the region.

The Southern Baptist workers who died last year were trying to help Kurds in
Iraq rebuild their lives, gain access to clean water — and discover that
God deeply loves them.

This March 15-21, Southern Baptists can honor the service of their slain
workers — and help carry it forward — by participating in a Week of Prayer
for the Kurds. Free resources that will help churches or small groups
effectively pray for the Kurds can be downloaded at ,
including: a seven-day prayer guide; a video featuring International Mission
Board President Jerry Rankin; a video tribute to the fallen Southern Baptist
workers featuring a message from Carrie McDonnall; and a PowerPoint “virtual
prayerwalk.”

“This is an important season of the year as we focus on North American
missions and our responsibility to reach our own nation for the Lord,”
Rankin said. “I encourage you to give generously to the Annie Armstrong
Offering that supports the work of our North American Mission Board. But
would you pause and through this week join us in also praying for the Kurds?
As they observe a day of infamy and tragedy in their own history, and as we
remember those of our own mission family who gave their lives, let us pray
that the Kurds might join us in God’s eternal Kingdom and through faith in
Jesus Christ become a part of His family.”

The Kurdish people are the fourth-largest ethnic group in Central Asia and
the Middle East. Only the Arabs, the Persians and the Turks outnumber them.
Yet they have lived a life of conflict and turmoil across the ages. Not
having a country of their own, they have struggled for a sense of identity
and belonging. They have been dominated by the giants of Turkey, Iran, Iraq
and Syria — and subjected to many abuses. “The Kurds have no friends but
the mountains,” a famous Kurdish proverb asserts.

But the Kurds do have a friend: The Lord of the mountains, the God who sent
His Son, Jesus Christ, to free all peoples from their spiritual chains: “…
not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” (2 Peter
3:9b).

The majority of the Kurds have little access to the Gospel. High illiteracy
rates and different Kurdish dialects create additional obstacles. But
Christian workers are creating audio and visual materials to communicate the
Good News to them. As a new wind of spiritual openness sweeps through the
region, small but growing numbers of Kurds are discovering the giver of true
freedom — Jesus Christ – and sharing Him with others.

One young survivor of Saddam’s 1988 chemical attack on the Kurds of Halabja
has become a follower of Jesus. The Southern Baptist workers who were killed
last year befriended him. In an interview soon after their deaths, he
expressed the special relationship he had with them. Tearfully, he told how
the day before their deaths, Larry Elliott hugged him and said, “You are my
son,” while David McDonnall had been “like a brother” to him.

“As you pray, thank God for those who gave their lives in the hope that
these people would one day know our Lord Jesus Christ,” Rankin said. “Pray
especially for the Kurdish people — neglected, oppressed and lost. Christ
died for them as He did for all the peoples of the world, and He desires
that they too have an opportunity to know Him.”

NATIONAL EDUCATION INSTITUTE TO OPEN BRANCHES ACROSS ARMENIA AND IN STEPANAKERT

   YEREVAN, MARCH 9, ARMENPRESS: A senior official of the Armenian
education ministry said branches of the National Education Institute,
an affiliate of the ministry, will open in all Armenian regions and
Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno Karabagh.
   Viktor Martirosian, the Institute director, said branches will be
mainly dealing with teachers training and delivering methodological
support. He said new centers will be instrumental in implementing a
major secondary school teachers’ training program across Armenia in
the next three years.
   The first in the line are teachers of Mathematics and Armenian
language. The training will be conducted in view of a radical change
in the education system that will introduce a12-year secondary
education instead of the current 10-year. He said training models and
manuals were prepared with the help of the UNICEF.

–Boundary_(ID_k7SmpSQmiUtT0jtgQEoKBw)–

The Aghassi of our times
By Hovhannes Yeranian

Yerki/arm
March 04, 2005

On March 1, in the Writers Union in an atmosphere of concealed
emotions and speechless admiration, the 50th birthday of Samvel
Shahmuradian was celebrated.

Shahmuradian was a member of the Writers Union, a Supreme Council
deputy, writer, journalist and publicist who went to the war and was
martyred. The school on Tsarav Aghbyur street that has been renamed
after Samvel Shahmuradian serves as the house-museum of the
writerâ~@~Ys literary and military biography.

On the same day Shahmuradianâ~@~Ys collection of articles titled Our
Sweet Land was presented to the public. Editor of the collection
Grigor Janikian called the author â~@~a soldier of his
homelandâ~@~]. â~@~What remains is the land and the people who live
on that land,â~@~] Shahmuradian once wrote.

This is why president of the Writers Union Levon Ananian called the
Homeland as the best place for commemoration of the writer. Alice
Hovhannissian called the collection of articles â~@~a book of
soldier ascetismâ~@~]. â~@~We would like to see the
soldier-writerâ~@~Ys frontline chronicles published,â~@~]
Hovhannissian added.

Shahmuradianâ~@~Ys unpublished diaries are currently being edited for
publication. Publicist Margo Ghukassian emphasized the modern
resonance of Samvel Shahmuradianâ~@~Ys articles. â~@~Whatever he
wrote, he wrote it for the modern timesâ~@~].

Academic Vladimir Barkhudarian described the writerâ~@~Ys life as a
brilliant example of healthy attitude towards the dictate of the
homeland. He should have been the hero of our times, and he will be
the hero, and the writerâ~@~Ys colleagues and critics agreed in this.
And this is why the patriot writer was called Aghassi of our times.

Theater critic Khachatur Avagian and writer Hrachya Matevossian
emphasized the importance of naming one of the streets in Yerevan
after Samvel Shahmuradian. Alice Hovhannissian noted that
Shahmuradianâ~@~Ys biography should be included in the literature
textbooks studied at schools as an example of unconditional devotion
to the homeland to be transferred to the next generations.

The commitment to remember the writer and soldier born on the first
day of spring, to tell about him and emphasize the importance of the
heritage he left unified many people that attended the celebration
and all of them wanted to share words of consolation and
glorification with Shahmuradianâ~@~Ys mother, his wife and children.

–Boundary_(ID_SHXEXtBK9WhemfzfzRLtDQ)–

BEHAVE YOURSELF OR WE WILL OPEN ARCHIVES OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

Azg/arm
8 March 05

According to Alexan Kirakosian, the US got offended from Turkey
recently. This is explained by profound reasons. In Iraq the Sunnies
were at power, while the majority of the population is Shiites. The
Turks are dissatisfied, as the power of the Sunnies fell down and
the Shiites came to rule the country.

They stated that the US committed a genocide in Iraq. The American
got angry with them for this statement and threatened the Turks that
if they donâ~@~Yt behave themselves they will open the archives
of Wilson and Morgenthau. “These archives arenâ~@~Yt fully open,
today. There is the real picture of the Armenian genocide there,
particularly, all the documents concerning Versailles and the Sevres,”
Alexan Kirakosian said.

By Karine Danielian

–Boundary_(ID_rHE8voLa/Xw3fXhmNgcZYA)–

Top Azeri official labels homeland a “powder-keg” for disasters

Agence France Presse — English
March 7, 2005 Monday 1:33 PM GMT

BAKU, March 7 2005 — Azerbaijan’s deputy prime minister called
the former Soviet republic a “powder-keg” for natural and man-made
disasters at a seminar devoted to emergency issues on Monday.

“Everyone knows Azerbaijan is sitting on a powder-keg,” Deputy Prime
Minister Abid Sharifov told a seminar hosted by the French embassy in
Baku before listing a number of high risk areas in the oil-rich region.

“All parts of Azerbaijan are considered to be seismically active …
there is a risk of landslides in many zones and any moment can turn
into a tragedy,” Sharifov said adding that 50 percent of the nation’s
territory is at high flood risk.

In the oil boom that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union the
Azeri capital has become home to a multitude of high-rise buildings,
raising concerns that shoddy workmanship and poor land survey could
lead to their collapse in an earthquake or a land slide.

Many of the buildings had not been built when a medium level earthquake
struck the city in 2000, causing the destruction of a number of
older buildings.

Earlier this year a neighborhood on a ridge in Baku had to be evacuated
when large cracks in the asphalt showed that it had begun sliding
down a precipice.

Azerbaijan is also in danger of terrorist attacks at the hands of its
neighbor Armenia – with which it is still technically at war over the
Nagorno-Karabakh enclave – targeting the US-backed BTC oil pipeline
scheduled to go online later this year, Sharifov said.

“With such a neighbor we are constantly under threat of terrorist
attack,” Sharifov said.

The Caspian nation is unprepared for a chemical disaster too, in case
of an accident or an attack “all we have are gas masks,” Sharifov said.

No single body coordinates disaster emergency efforts in Azerbaijan,
prompting Sharifov to call for the creation of an emergency situations
ministry or agency.

Haykakan Zhamanak (from Internews)
01.03.2005

Kentron TV company changed its director

Yesterday Kentron TV company again changed its director. Petros
Ghazaryan was dismissed form the position of director and Meruzhan
Sarkissian, who was the director of `Lraber’ (News) at H2 TV company,
will be assigned in his place.
In the interview given to our correspondent, Petros Ghazaryan
mentioned that he asked the owner of the TV company to decline from
him all administrative responsibilities and leave only creative ones.
Thus, Ghazaryan will continue his author’s program `Urvagits’ and
will begin also a Sunday analytical program.

WE GO ON THE WAY OF DEVELOPMENT

Azat Artsakh – Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR)
03 March 05

Last year on December 16 at the republic consultation NKR president
Arkady Ghukassian announced that he would visit Artsakh State
University. On February 27 the visit took place. The NKR president was
accompanied by the minister of education, culture and sport A. Ghulian
and other members of the government. Opening the meeting the rector
of the university H. Grigorian thanked the NKR government for
attending to the university. In his turn A. Ghukassian stressed the
importance of getting mutual benefit from similar meetings on the way
of democratization of the country. The main point of meeting with the
people is for the government to clarify their line of activity, feel
the developments in the country and take them into account during
their work. According to the president, the place of the meeting was
not accidental as it is here that the youth is prepared for carrying
on their shoulders the future of Karabakh. According to him, our main
achievement is that we created an international image for our country,
which differs from other unrecognized countries. The president thinks
this is an important circumstance as unrecognized countries are far
more vulnerable than the recognized ones. We managed to lay the
foundations of democracy. The president mentioned that it is early to
say that we have established a democratic state but we have achieved
considerable success. It is the imperative of life to build a
democratic state because only in this way is it possible to adopt the
values accepted in Europe and civilized countries, although there is
no guarantee that this will result in the recognition of NKR. But it
is the only way. It is evident that the world cannot recognize a
totalitarian Nagorni Karabakh. Both the people who are democratic
inherently and those who have nothing to do with democracy must
realize that we have no alternative;we must become a democratic
country and appear to the world as a state which lives in accordance
with international standards. Then the head of state touched upon the
achievements of the country in the sphere of economy. None of the
former members of the USSR is able to develop without the aid of the
international community in the form of loans, subsidies and
investments. We had to solve a very important problem: provide
conditions for investments that would attract both local and foreign
businessmen. A country must have a rich economy and be able to solve
social and economic problems in order to be considered a rich
country. This was much more difficult in the sense that the country
was to overcome the post-war syndrome. A. Ghukassian mentioned that we
have achieved progress in the sphere of investments. Presently
investors from the USA, France, Australia, Switzerland, Italy, Spain,
Russia, Armenia and other countries work in NKR. It was difficult to
come to this because with the present geopolitical developments making
investments in Karabakh is risky. Business based on mere patriotism
cannot be productive. The aim was set to create conditions in which
the investor would be sure that his activity would be protected by
law. According to the NKR president, we managed to prove to foreign
investors that their guarantor is the law and not a person, as it once
used to be the reality in Karabakh. By maintaining 5 per cent
taxation, which is the lowest in the post-Soviet territory, the danger
of tax avoidance was eliminated. Owing tothis budget revenues exceeded
the level when the taxes were higher. A. Ghukassian mentioned that the
present budget of NKR cannot be compared to that of the past five
years and even the previous year. Perhaps this is the reason why
Azerbaijan has become more aggressive. From the point of view of
Azerbaijan Karabakh with decayed economy will one day creep to
Azerbaijan asking for help. However, day by day they become convinced
that the rates of economic growth in Karabakh do not fall back from
Azerbaijan which is far richer in resources. The president mentioned
that we must be able to prove to the world that we have the right for
being an independent and civilized country because we are economically
self-sufficient and are able to live in accordance with the law,
building democracy. These are the standards of the international
community. The NKR president also touched upon the talks for the
settlement of the Karabakh conflict. Karabakh was left out of the
negotiations though mediators continue visiting Karabakh, because
everybody understands that without regarding the opinion of the people
and authorities of Karabakh it is impossible to achieve the settlement
of the Karabakh conflict. It is Azerbaijan’s fault that the
negotiation process is not going on within the framework of the Minsk
Group, as Azerbaijan refuses to negotiate with Karabakh. And if the
talks are resumed, the president of the country assured that they will
not go on without Karabakh. A. Ghukassian mentioned that we are
interested in the rapid settlement of the problem because innumerable
problems get accumulated in the country which is not recognized. On
the other hand, we understand that the problem cannot be solved at
just any price. We must do everything to prevent another war on this
land. And in this question the international community is on our
side. He denied rumours about returning territories. The people of
Karabakh know the standpoint of the government in reference to the
Karabakh problem. The NKR president stated that it will not change
because they got this mandate from the people. A. Ghukassian ensured
that they will not take steps which may harm the interests of
people. He stated, `We shall not accept unilateral compromise and will
not give up our independence.’ As to the home political life, the head
of the country stressed the importance of pursuing the way of
democracy, which is irrevocable. Opposition and free press is
developing in the country. Fortunately, we do not have the hatred
existing in other countries. In this reference he is hopeful that we
shall not get over the barrier. It is another thing that the
authorities want the opposition to be constructive, and problems to be
solved in an atmosphere of mutual understanding and not hostile
moods. `Home political stability is very important for us,’ said
A. Ghukassian, `and naturally we shall not allow any attempt of
destabilizing the country.’ In the second part of the meeting the head
of the country answered the questions of the professors and students
referring to the foreign and home policies, social and economic state
of the country and the problems of the university.

SVETLANA KHACHATRIAN.
03-03-2005