Dealing with In-Laws (2)

As we said in our last column, the English language deals in an easy way with relatives by the use of “in-law.” This indicates that some of the kinship terms common to Indo-European languages were lost over time, as in other sister languages too.

The Armenian language has a collection of terms for each “in-law” on both sides of the aisle. We previously discussed the in-laws for the case of fathers and mothers. Now we will deal with brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law:

Groom
Brother-in-law (wife’s brother): աներձագ (anertzak)
Brother-in-law (sister’s husband): քեռայր (kerayr)
Sister-in-law (wife’s sister): քենի (keni)
Sister-in-law (brother’s wife): հարս (hars).
Bride
Brother-in-law (husband’s brother): տագր (dakur)
Brother-in-law (sister’s husband): քեռայր (kerayr)
Sister-in-law (husband’s sister): տալ (dal)
Sister-in-law (brother's wife): հարս (hars)
As you will notice, some of these terms are repeated: the sister’s husband (kerayr) and the brother’s wife (hars) are identified in the same way on both sides. The word kerayr is a compound word: քեռ (ker) derives from քոյր (kooyr “sister”) and այր (ayr) means “husband.” On the other hand, hars is the word for “bride,” which probably indicates that the term for “sister-in-law” was lost in the mist of time.

While other terms like keni, dakur, and dal are specific root words, it is not the same for the groom’s brother-in-law. The word anertzak is compound (aner + tzak): it means “father-in-law’s child.”
We can also throw a couple of more terms in the mix:

a) Groom’s sister-in-law’s husband: քենեկալ (kenegal). Etymologically, it refers to the “sister-in-law’s holder” (keni + gal root of the verb galel “to hold”);
b) Bride’s brother-in-law’s (husband’s brother) wife: ներ (ner).

In the other cases, when you refer to the husband of a sister-in-law, you can use kerayr, and if it is the wife of a brother-in-law, then hars.

Of course, it is not as easy as “brother-in-law” and “sister-in-law,” but at least, when you want to refer to one of your in-laws, if you use the proper term, nobody will get confused about who you are talking about…

Dealing with In-Laws (1)

The English language has a very easy way to deal with relatives: it uses “in-law.” You have father-in-law, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and brother-in-law. This shows, in fact, that the language actually lost, over time, the kinship terms that were common to Indo-European languages.

Some of those languages are more conservative than others. Armenian, for instance, mostly maintained all those terms, with the exception of “nephew” and “niece,” where we need to make recourse to artificial words (եղբօրորդի/yeghporortee “brother’s son” and եղբօր աղջիկ/yeghpor aghcheeg “brother’s daughter”) to denote them.

What does Armenian do with the in-laws? It has a collection of terms specifically for each of them, and on both sides!

This time we will only deal with father-in-law and mother-in-law. It turns out that, unlike English, if you are the groom, you call your wife’s parents in a certain way, and if you are the bride, you call your husband’s parents in a different way:

Groom
Father in law: աներ (aner)
Mother-in-law: զոքանչ (zokanch).

Bride
Father-in-law: կեսրայր (gesrayr) or սկեսրայր (usgesrayr)
Mother-in-law: կեսուր (gesoor) or սկեսուր (usgesoor)

Besides mixing one side and the other, there are also mistakes in the use of each term. The most common is the wrong use of aner. We may hear people calling their father-in-law աներ հայր (aner hayr). Since aner means “bride’s father,” then aner hayr would be… “father of the bride’s father”! Even worse, you can hear people using աներ մայր (aner mayr), which is an indescribable cocktail: “mother of the bride’s father”!

The same superfluous use of hayr (“father”) and mayr (“mother”) appears when we go to the bride’s side. We may come across կեսուր հայր (gesoor hayr), which is a corruption of gesrayr, and it would mean “father of the mother-in-law,” and կեսուր մայր (gesoor mayr), where people end saying “mother of the bride’s mother.”

Once you clean up the mess, you will see that is very easy: instead of having one word to designate a father-in-law and one a mother-in-law, you have two. We should assume that you can manage learning four words instead of two, right?

Watermelons in Winter?

In the East Coast, we may be used to having summer fruits during winter time. However, can you imagine that the Armenian Plateau would have watermelons in freezing periods? 
Actually, it did not. This is, nevertheless, something that the facts of language might suggest. 
Let’s start with the name of “winter” in Armenian: ձմեռ (tzumerr). This word has an Indo-European origin and shares it with many languages (for instance, Russian zima “winter”). It was attested from the fifth century A.D. onwards, and like several others, including մուկն (mookn “mouse”), ձուկն (tzookn “fish”), or ամառն (amarrn “summer”), it had a suffix –ն (n) at the end. Such words maintained this suffix in some derivative words like ձմեռնային (tzumerrnayin “winterly”), ձկնորսութիւն (tzugnorsootioon “fishing”), ամառնային (amarrnayin “relative to summer”), and others. On the other hand, a phonetic rule of Classical Armenian established words like tzumerr, amarr, and others, which had a strong r (ռ, like in English “curriculum”) in their roots, were declined with a soft r  (ր, like in English “chores”) and lost their suffix –n in the process. There were also derived words that went through the same rule. This is how we have, for instance, the words ձմերանոց (tzumeranots “winter place”) and ամարանոց (amaranots “summer place”), where the ռ has been replaced by ր. In the same way, we have the Armenian word for “watermelon”: ձմերուկ (tzumeroog). Linguist Hrachia Ajarian, the author of a foremost five-volume etymological dictionary of the Armenian language, suggested that tzumeroog was derived from tzumerr (the suffix oog is a diminutive, like in the word արջուկ/archoog “little bear,” but there are also words formed with this suffix, without necessarily being diminutives; e.g. hեղուկ/heghoog “liquid”). 
How did this happen? Ajarian said the reason for the connection between winter and watermelon was unknown; he assumed that it was because of the refreshing liquid of the fruit, which the villagers may have felt like ice during the hot summers in the Armenian Plateau. Nevertheless, he brought a comparative example: Georgian has the word zamtari (“winter”), from which the word sazamtro (“watermelon”) is derived (the Georgian language forms its words, unlike Indo-European languages, with prefixes). 
Going back to the beginning of this conversation, Armenians did not enjoy watermelons in the winter, but the fruit brought some of the winter cold to their bodies. This was enough to give them the idea for the name.

Don’t Mess With… “With”

How do you cut a melon? Whether in English or in Armenian, you cut it with a knife, of course.
Let’s clarify that “with” is a preposition in English, while its Armenian counterpart hետ (hed) is a postposition, which means that it is used at the end of the sentence.
But…
In English, you employ “with” to indicate various things: being together or involved; belonging; use; feeling; agreement or understanding. However, in Armenian, you only employ hed to indicate being together or involved, and agreement or understanding:
1)      Being together: Ես հոն գացի ամուսինիս հետ (Yes hon katsee amooseenees hed) “I went there with my husband”
2)      Agreement: Ես համաձայն եմ ձեզի հետ (Yes hamatzayn em tsezi hed) “I agree with you”
In all other cases, Armenian declension rules apply. Let’s remember that Armenian nouns are declined; for instance, in the first sentence, we find amooseenees, formed by the combination of the genitive declension of the noun amooseen (ամուսին “husband”), amooseenee, and the possessive s (ս). Conversely, English does not have declension, and it uses the construction “with my husband” (preposition + possessive + noun) to say what Armenian expresses with a single word.
Therefore, in the other three cases, when we want to indicate belonging, use, or feeling in Armenian, we never use the postposition hed, but the instrumental declension ով (ov):
1)      Belonging: Կապոյտ աչքերով աղջիկ մը (Gabooyd achkerov aghcheeg muh “A girl with blue eyes”)
2)      Use: Սեխը դանակով կտրեցի (Sekhuh tanagov gudretsee “I cut the melon with a knife”)
3)      Feeling: Ջերմ համբոյրներով (Cherm hampooyrnerov “With warm kisses”)   
Otherwise, if you said, for instance, « Սեխը դանակ ին հետ կտրեցի » ( Sekhuh tanagin hed   gudretsee ), this would be nothing but English disguised in an Armenian cloak, or, in other words, a bad translation from English.

Of Pants and Panties

Many readers most probably are regular users of trousers or pants. As it happens with other words in the English language, the word “pants” is one of those shortened terms whose origin has been forgotten over time. First used in 1840, it was associated with a silly old man in Italian comedy, Pantaloun, whose name was derived from Italian Pantalone. (The Spanish word for “trousers” is, coincidentally, pantalón or pantalones.).
You may assume that panties is also related to “pants.” Indeed, it is its diminutive. It was a derogatory term used for men’s underpants in the nineteenth century, and took its current meaning of underwear for women or children in the early twentieth century.
Despite their distance, languages sometimes have curious analogies. The case for pants and panties in Armenian is not very far from English. The word վարտիք (vardik), meaning “pants,” was borrowed in Classical Armenian from Pahlavi (the language used by the Parthian dynasty of the Arsacids in Persia, from the third century B.C. to the third century A.D.), where varti meant “pants” and composed the form andarvarti (“outside pants”), which became անդրավարտիք (andravartik, pronounced antravardik in Western Armenian). The ք (k) was, of course, the Classical Armenian plural form (like pant-s). The word was used in both forms antravardik and vardik, and there was also the form անվարտի (anvardi), meaning “pant-less.”
What happened in Modern Armenian? The word antravardik has kept its meaning “pants” in Eastern Armenian until today. However, Western Armenian left it aside and adopted a term of unknown origin, տաբատ (dapad), scantily used in Classical Armenian, meaning “pants.” On the other hand, vardik (without the prefix antr) became “underwear” in both Western and Eastern Armenian, which means that, like in English, pants became the origin for panties. 

You Can Return, but not Again

You probably have heard (or even used) tautologies a million times, but perhaps did not know their actual name. Here is a very common one:

“Let’s all work together, everyone, as a team.”
You will notice here a whole chain of repetitions; the Greek word tautós (ταὐτός) means “identical.” Do you need to put “all” and “everyone” in the same sentence? If you are a group of people, aren’t you a team?

This is why the same idea is accurately conveyed by simply saying “let’s work together.”

Tautologies are also galore in Armenian. One such case is furnished by the use of the prefix վերա (vera “re-”), as in վերադառնալ (veratarnal “to return”). The case is similar to English return “to come or go to a place again.” The prefix re suffices to ensure the repetition embodied by the word “again.” If you have traveled and come back home, you just return, but do not “return again,” which would be a tautology (even though a cursory Internet search revealed five books published between 1940 and 2012 and using “return again” in their titles). 

In Armenian, then, if you have traveled and come back home, the sentence «Ես նորէն Միացեալ Նահանգներ վերադարձայ» (Yes noren Miatsial Nahankner veratartza “I returned again to the United States”) is a tautology, since the word noren is superfluous. You just say Yes Miatsial Nahankner veratartza.

Of course, there are other verbs starting with vera- (“re-”), where the use of “again” (whether noren/նորէն, gurgeen/կրկին, or tartsyal/դարձեալ) is stylistically wrong. If you are a lawyer and you are going through a document you had already read, you cannot say «Ես փաստաթուղթը դարձեալ վերանայեցայ» (Yes pasdatooghtuh tartsyal veranayetsa “I revised again the document”). Նայիլ (nayeel) means “to look” and վերանայիլ (veranayeel) “to revise,” which etymologically is… “to look again.”

The examples can be multiplied. We will leave others for the future.

How the Horse Got Its Shoe?

Some words have their own life until another word comes to replace them for a variety of reasons. The Armenian Highland was well-known for its horses and horse breeding since antiquity, and cavalry was an important component of the Armenian army. 
It is natural, then, that Classical Armenian would have a name for horseshoes. Believe it or not, that was the word loosin (լուսին), which we know to mean “moon.” Those who wanted to shoe a horse used the verb loosnel (լուսնել). Of course, the word loosin for “horseshoe” was inspired by its moon-shaped aspect. 
However, something changed sometime after the seventh century A.D., when the Arabs conquered the Armenian Highland and their language also had an impact on the Armenian language. Apparently, the latter lacked a word for “blacksmith,” which Arabic had: baytar. The word was borrowed sometime during the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia (11th-14th centuries) in Armenian as պայտար (baydar), instead of բայտար, which today Western Armenian would have pronounced paydar. How do we know this? Middle Armenian—a sort of vernacular that came into use during that time—had also borrowed the European word baron and turned it into Armenian պարոն (baron “sir”), instead of the expected paron. 
This did not stop there. The Armenian termination –ar (ար) is linked to the root arar (արար “creator, doer,” as in khoharar/խոհարար “cook”). Generations later, it appears that someone thought in reverse: if the word baydar is used to mean someone who manufactures a horseshoe, and ar means “doer,” then bayd (պայտ) should mean “horseshoe”! The idea of this unknown someone had enough success, and, over time, the old loosin was confined to the sky and replaced by the otherwise inexistent word bayd to designate a horseshoe. It continues to be part of our lexicon until today. 
There is an illustrative and evidence-based anecdote about the use of baydar in Modern Armenian. Ottoman censorship during the reign of Abdul Hamid II (1876-1908) was so asphyxiating that the mention of certain names, including “Hayastan,” was forbidden. Such was also the case of writer Mikayel Nalbandian (1829-1866), the author of several patriotic tracts and poems (including the lyrics of the anthem “Mer Hairenik”). In 1893 researcher Abraham Ayvazian published his three-volume Collection of Armenian Biographies in Constantinople, which included biographies of many cultural figures of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He had to include Nalbandian, and he managed to do it in the second volume (pages 98-143). How did he avoid censorship? Since the word nalband means “blacksmith” in Persian, he simply introduced Nalbandian as… Mikayel Baydarian!