Love Is a Tricky Thing

If you hear the phrase “He married a girl,” you will understand that some man tied the knot with a woman. But what will you get from the literal translation «[Ան] ամուսնացաւ աղջիկ մը» ([An] amoosnatsav aghchig me)? You can only understand that . . . “a girl married”!

This is the risk of thinking in one language when talking or writing in another. Sometimes, you fall into amusing traps. In this case, you can solve it by using the proper expression «[Ան] ամուսնացաւ աղջկան մը հետ» (which literally would be “He married with a girl” in English).

Since we are in the field of sentimental issues, let us remind our readers of another troublemaker:

• “I fell in love with him”
• “I fell in love with her beauty.” 

It does not matter whether it is a physical person or a non-physical quality. In Armenian you don’t fall in love with someone or something. There is no “with” (hed) there: «Ես սիրահարեցայ անոր/իրեն» (Yes siraharetsa anor/iren), «Ես սիրահարեցայ անոր գեղեցկութեան» (Yes siraharetsa anor keghetsgootyan).

But not everything is different.

English love has a direct object: “I love my wife,” “I love my dog,” “I love soccer.” Armenian love is no different; you love someone or something: «[Ես] կը սիրեմ կինս» ([Yes] guh sirem ginus), «Ես կը սիրեմ շունս» ([Yes ] gue sirem shoonus), «[Ես] կը սիրեմ ոտնագնդակը» ([Yes] guh sirem vodnakuntaguh).

But many people are fond of loving to someone or something. For instance, when they want to declare their love, they mistakenly say «Ես քեզի կը սիրեմ» (Yes kezi guh sirem), instead of «Ես քեզ կը սիրեմ» (Yes kez guh sirem). In this case, kezi means “to you.” Do you love “to” her? Or him?

Don’t Sit on a File!

You may have a long sofa without a back, probably with various cushions against the wall. The English language calls that a divan (the same as French and Spanish), and the word comes from Turkish divan. But, indeed, the nomadic Turks had come into the Near East and did not bring the sofa with them: they simply adopted it, as they did with many other things, from the Arabs (diwan), who, in their turn, had borrowed it from the Persians. The Armenian dialects also have the word տիւան (divan), borrowed from Turkish, which is used in colloquial language.

Strangely enough, the two ultimate source words for these words, and for many others spread from the Middle East to the Atlantic Ocean, are dēvān (“archive,” in Middle Persian) and divan (“tribunal, hall, court, council chamber, collection of poems,” in Persian). How did an archive or a tribunal become a cushioned seat? The explanation is quite simple: those seats are found along the wall in Middle Eastern council chambers.

The word divan “Oriental council of state” also entered the English language in the 1580s, but it is not the kind of word that you use on a daily basis. Instead, its counterpart դիւան (tivan, in Western Armenian pronunciation) is of quite common use, although not with that same meaning.

The word entered Classical Armenian from Persian already in the fifth century. Historians Koriun and Movses Khorenatsi used դիւան with the meaning of “school” or “library.” Today, in Modern Armenian, the word is used with the meanings of “archive” and “office.”

In its first meaning, it’s synonymous with արխիւ/arkhiv, a borrowing from German via Russian.

In the second, you may hear it used when you talk about the tivan of an organization, meaning the distribution of the offices in its executive board. It also designates the office of president and secretary of an assembly.

The word is particularly used in compound terms, such as:

• Դիւանագէտ (tivanaked) “diplomat,” hence դիւանագիտութիւն (tivanakidootyoon) “diplomacy”
• Դիւանապետ (tivanabed) “head of office / head of archive”
• Դիւանակալ (tivanagal) “bureaucrat”

As you see, seats and archives are related in Armenian. It is only a matter of being careful and avoid sitting. . . on a file.

Do We Always Go Together?

This is what the final song of the famous musical Grease says: “We Go Together.” However, two quite different languages like Armenian and English do not go always together. This is quite clear in the word... “together.”

The English words “together” and “gather” are somehow related, as their meanings point out, and it is logical to think that together has evolved from the combination of to + gather.

The Armenian equivalent, միասին (miasin), is also a composite word, but has an even deeper meaning. Its origin indicates a closer relationship: two people who have not only come to gather, but have been raised together. The first word, մի (mi), is the Classical and Eastern Armenian form of “one”—մէկ (meg) in Western Armenian—and the root of the word միութիւն (miootioon, “unity”) and the second word, սին (sin), is the result of the substitution of a vocal (this is technically called ablaut) from the original word սուն (sun, “to keep, to feed, to raise,” from which we have սնունդ/sunoont, “food, nourishment”). Thus, in the beginning, to be miasin meant that one had been fed and raised with someone else.

Now, while today miasin always implies “together,” this does not mean than every time we see “together” in English we should automatically think of miasin. Otherwise, we find ourselves in trouble.

One hears, for instance, “They live together.” This is, of course, Անոնք միասին կ՚ապրին (Anonk miasin g’abrin), and there is nothing wrong here. However, when we say “He has come together with his family,” the case is different.

Armenian has something that Latin had and, for instance, German still has, but the English language has lost: noun declination (հոլովում, holovoom). These are the little particles է (e), ի (i), ով (ov), with the particular cases that “torture” us when we learn the paradigms of declination of various nouns.

One of the six cases of noun declination is called “instrumental declination” (գործիական հոլով, kordziagan holov), which applies to the abovementioned sentence. The English with is an indication of instrument, and thus, you should forget “together” when you render the sentence into Armenian. You may either say,

1)Ան իր ընտանիքին հետ եկած է (An ir undanikin hed yegadz e = He has come with his family),

or

2) Ան իր ընտանիքով եկած է (An ir undanikov yegadz e = He has come with his family)

As we said in the beginning, yes, languages go together, but not always.

A Comic Word

For those of our readers who are into comics, particularly the series X-Men, there is a female character called Jubilee in them, whose actual name is Jubilation Lee. How do the English words jubilee and jubilation relate?

We do not know for sure. Jubilation comes from the Latin verb iūbilō (“shout for joy”). Hebrew yovel (= English jubilee) marked the year at the end of seven cycles of sabbatical years, which had a special impact on the regulations of property and management of land in the land of Israel, according to the Bible. The Latin translation of the Bible (Vulgata) translated the word as iobeleus, while the Greek translation (Septuaginta) rendered it as “a trumpet-blast of liberty.” The reason for the latter was that the Jubilee year was announced by a blast on a shofar (Armenian շեփոր, shepor), an instrument made from a ram’s horn (Hebrew yobhel “ram”).

The Armenian word յոբելեան (hopelian), which today means “birthday” or “anniversary feast,” is used to mark an anniversary of any kind (for instance, 2013 was the 95th hopelian of the creation of the Republic of Armenia on May 28, 1918), whereas the English jubilee is most commonly used to mark a twenty-fifth (“silver”) or a fiftieth (“golden”) anniversary. The Armenian word derives from Greek yobelos, where the Greek suffix –os was replaced by the Armenian եան (ian), which means “belonging to.”

However, there is an alternative explanation, after all. It has been suggested that Latin jubilo and Ancient Greek iuzo (“shout”) both come from a common Indo-European root *yu- (shout for joy) that predates the Bible. (There is also the Modern English word yowl.) If such were the case, then the Hebrew word yovel would be a borrowing from a neighboring Indo-European language rather than a derivation from another Hebrew word. And then the Greek yobelos, Armenian hopelian, and English jubilee would have an ultimate Indo-European origin, even if kept by the Bible.

Words can be fun and mysterious.

How Do You Call Him?

You call someone. This means that you tell someone to come to your side, you give an invitation to someone, or you name someone.

These three meanings of the English word call are all covered by its Armenian equivalent կանչել (ganchel).

There is a fourth meaning, very common in English American usage, as a synonym of “to telephone.” Thus, if we mean to say “I called my brother” in Armenian, we should simply say «Ես եղբայրս կանչեցի» (Yes yeghpayrs ganchetsi) and end of the story.

It sounds perfectly right: English call, Armenian ganchel. But it is perfectly... wrong.

Why? The English word is the shortened version of “to call over the phone,” but we do not have this expression in Armenian: we do not say հեռաձայնով կանչել (herratzaynov ganchel), but ... հեռաձայնել (herratzaynel “to telephone/to phone”). This being the case, we are not allowed to shorten an inexistent expression in Armenian (herratzaynov ganchel) and turn it into... ganchel.

You will find yourself before amusing, and confusing, situations. For instance, someone might say in reference to a friend who has been missing for a long time:

«Թիւը գտիր ու կանչէ, խօսինք» (Tivuh kdir oo gancheh, khosink, “Find the number and call him to talk”)

How would you understand this gancheh? Would you phone him to talk or . . . invite him to come to talk? If your interlocutor had said հեռաձայնէ (heratzayneh) instead of gancheh, there would be no confusion.

Some people may think that this mistaken usage is only common in Armenian American speech, but, in fact, the same fourth meaning exists in other languages (French appeler, Spanish llamar, for instance). Therefore, you may find ganchel inaccurately used in many other corners of the Diaspora. Don’t think that because someone knows Armenian better than you, that then he necessarily speaks better than you.

Sweet in Every Language

There are words that have an ultimate common source from another language, but have found their way through different itineraries. Such is the case of the word sugar.

The sugarcane was originally from India. The soldiers of Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great, after reaching India in the fourth century B.C., brought back to Europe “honey bearing reeds” that produced a product called sharkara (“ground sugar”) in Sanskrit, which they transcribed as ζάκχαρι (sacchari). The Indian product spread to different Asian regions and reached Iran, where it was called shakar. The word was borrowed straightforwardly from Persian into Armenian, where it first appeared in the seventh-century Atlas ascribed to Anania Shirakatsi as շաքար (shakar). Another Iranian language, Kurdish, borrowed it as sheker, which is the likely source for the Turkish word sheker.

However, the actual expansion of the sweet substance to the West occurred when Arabs began to cultivate it in Sicily and Spain, while the Crusaders did their part too. The Arabic word sukkar entered Europe and spread through various languages: Medieval Latin succarum, French sucre, Spanish azucar, Portuguese açúcar, Italian zucchero, and German Zucker. The ultimate source for English sugre > sugar was, most probably, the French language.

One of the many Voskeporik (Ոսկեփորիկ, “Miscellanea”), collections of useful and not-so- useful material of various origins compiled during the Middle Ages, included  the following phrase quoted by the most important dictionary of Classical Armenian, the New Haigazian Dictionary of 1836-1837 published by the Mekhitarist Fathers: «Յիմաստուն ձեռացս ի՛նչ առնուս՝ շաքար է». Whether said in Classical Armenian or in Modern Armenian («Ինչ որ առնես իմաստուն ձեռքերուդ մէջ՝ շաքար է»), the phrase has not lost its eternal meaning: “Whatever you take in your wise hands, is sugar.” Sweetness comes with wisdom, at all times.

Why Is She the Queen of the House?

In Armenian the word “woman” has various meanings; կին (gin, pronounced kin in Classical and Eastern Armenian), can be used to mean either “woman” (հայ կին, hay gin “Armenian woman”) or, by extension, “wife” (կինս, gins “my wife”). It has the same double meaning as the Greek word γυνή/gyné (“a woman, a wife”), and both have a common origin: the Proto-Indo-European root *gwen (“wife, woman”).

By now, you may have intuitively grasped that gin/kin is related to the English word gynecologist and all other words compounded with gyn. But perhaps more unexpectedly, it also comes out that the Armenian gin has the same source as the English queen, derived from Old English cwen “queen, female ruler of a state, woman, wife,” which of course has its ultimate origin in the same Proto-Indo-European root. Thus, when they talk of the “queen of the house,” it is not only an honorific title, but also a literal meaning.

For those who are familiar with the intricacies of Armenian grammar, the word gin has an irregular declension (հոլովում, holovoom), which has its origin in Classical Armenian: nominative/accusative կին (gin, “woman/wife”), genitive/dative կնոջ (gnoch, “to the woman/wife”), ablative կնոջմէ (gnochme, “from the woman/wife”), instrumental կնոջմով (gnochmov, “with the woman/wife”).

This reminder is important, because colloquial Armenian has a very common word, կնիկ (gnig), which means “married woman” and “wife.” It comes from the combination of կին and the diminutive/affective suffix իկ (ik). The word was also used in most Armenian dialects. However, it is strongly advised not to use it in literary Armenian (Armenian writers have always used the word for literary reasons, not because of grammatical accuracy), as it has a certain derogatory flavor, and above all, it is incorrect to use the genitive/dative կնիկին (gnigin) or կնկան (gngan) in sentences like Ես կնիկին ըսի (Yes gnigin esi, “I told the woman”), instead of the accurate form: Ես կնոջ ըսի (Yes gnoch esi, “I told the woman”).