You Need Something to Transfer

Western Armenian is always engaged into various types of interactions, be them with different foreign languages or its sister variety, Eastern Armenian.



The latter has gone for a long time, and it became more and more prominent after the fall of the Soviet Union. Each variety borrows words and expressions missing from their core vocabulary. In the case of Western Armenian, the frequent use of information produced in Eastern Armenian brings certain words that become a sort of parasites.

Such is the case of the word փոխանցել (pokhantsel), which literally means “to pass from one to another,” and you translate it as “transfer.” For instance, when you make a money transfer, you call it դրամի փոխանցում (tramee pokhantsoom). You can also transmit information—from one source to the other—and call it տեղեկութեան փոխանցում (deghegootian pokhantsoom)

However, if you say something, you are communicating it. This is called հաղորդել (haghortel). For instance, a radio anchor who reads the news is making a news communication (լուրերու hաղորդում / looreroo haghortoom ).

The problem comes when you use pokhantsel instead of haghortel, something that did not happen decades ago. It is common to hear expressions of the type « Տիկինը փոխանցեց, որ ...» (Deegeenuh pokhantsets, vor… “The lady transferred that…”), as if you were transferring something, when the actual expression should be «Տիկինը հաղորդեց , որ ...» (Deegeenuh haghortets, vor … “The lady communicated that…”).

This is a calque from Eastern Armenian, where people with deficient knowledge of the language, at their turn, are making a mistranslation from Russian. These days, you can unknowingly learn bits and pieces from a language spoken thousands of miles from you. Who knew?  

Egg Hunting

Everybody knows that it is a guy in the United States and a chap in England, or an elevator here and a lift across the pond. So, it should not come as a surprise that we have the same situation in Western and Eastern Armenian. Of course, it goes without them that the differences between the two of them are greater than in the case of the English language. However, we will focus on a pair of different names for “egg” in Armenia and elsewhere.

Authors of the fifth century A.D. already recorded the word “egg” as ձու (Classical/Eastern Armenian dzoo, Western Armenian tzoo). This use of the word entered many Eastern Armenian dialects, both in the Caucasus and Iran, and has continued in literary Eastern Armenian to this day. The word tzoo has generated various compound words, such as ձուածեղ (tzuvadzegh “omelette”), ձուաձեւ (tzuvatzev “oval”), ձուարան (tzuvaran “ovaries”). These words are equally used today in Western and Eastern Armenian; the word tzuvadzegh, for instance, was used in dialects from Yerevan to Constantinople and beyond, only with differences in pronunciation.

It is not the same case for the word tzoo itself. Western Armenian dialects opted for a compound word, հաւկիթ (havgeet); հաւ (hav) was the generic name for birds in Classical Armenian, but took the meaning “hen” in Modern Armenian, and կիթ (geet) means “animal product” (1). Therefore, havgeet became the product from a hen, namely, an egg, and later was extended to eggs of any kind. Thus, while the compound words with tzoo have remained in use in literary Western Armenian, the root itself was displaced by the dialectal form havgeet.  

Where does tzoo come from? Most Indo-European languages have a common word for “egg.” The original word was *o(u)i-om (pronounce o(v)iom) in Proto-Indo-European, which derived into different variants: *oyom/ovom in Western languages and *aya in Eastern ones. The word “egg” comes from *oyom, the same as the words that represent the concept, but borrowed from Latin ovum (such as “oval” or “ovaries”). Now, in the case of the Armenian language, it is hard to account for the origin of tz. Some linguists have come to the conclusion that the original word *oiom evolved to *ioiom, and the initial *i turned into tz (they give the analogy of the word tzavar “bulgur wheat,” which comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *ieuo “cereal”). Thus, in the end, “egg” and tzoo would become distant cousins.     

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(1) The verb կթել (gutel) means “to produce from an animal.” Thus, while կով կթել (gov gutel) means “to milk a cow,” this does not imply that gutel has any relation with կաթ (gat “milk”). We translate it as “to milk” because the product is milk.

Old Words that Took a New Life

From the sixth century B.C. to the beginning of the nineteenth century, Armenia was under Iranian domination for lengthy periods of its history. The kingdom of Armenia even had a dynasty of Iranian origin, the Arshakuni or Arsacids, for almost four centuries (I-V centuries A.D.). Therefore, it is not casual that Armenian vocabulary conserved many words of Iranian origin from different periods of its history, both in written and colloquial language.

Some of those words reached our times and took new meanings. One such case is that of the word նախարար (nakharar). During ancient and medieval times, it designated a hereditary title of highest rank given to members of the nobility. Its source was an Iranian term, nāfaδāra, meaning “chief or head of the clan.” The Iranian f would give h in Armenian, and thus, the Armenian term should have been նահարար (naharar). However, sometimes people think of words as having a different meaning than the one existing in dictionaries or established knowledge. Sometimes, that different meaning imposes itself. The word naharar was confused with nakharar and thought to have the meaning of “first of assets or properties.” This happened because the word nakh, another loan from an Iranian source, means “first, original.” In the end, nakharar imposed itself.

The interesting point is that nakharar took a new life in modern times, when Armenian nobility had disappeared. It adopted the meaning “minister,” as in տնտեսութեան նախարար (dundesootian nakharar “minister of Economy”). However, this meaning was disputed in Eastern Armenian, where the loanword from Russian մինիստր (ministr) was used until the end of the Soviet Union. After the new independence of Armenia, nakharar displaced the foreign word and now it is used everywhere in Armenia. This also includes the word նախարարութիւն (nakhararootioon), which was մինիստրութիւն (ministrootioon) in the past.

The word nakh is frequently used in Armenian for many compound words, like նախագահ (nakhakah), which literally means “first seat” or “first throne.” This word also comes from Classical Armenian and in modern times it took a new meaning: “president.” It also became the basis for the verb նախագահել (nakhakahel “to preside”), which does not necessarily mean to have the functions of a president. However, the meaning of the word was again disputed in Eastern Armenian, which adopted the loanword պրեզիդենտ (prezident) from Russian. [1] Like nakharar, also nakhakah made a came back after the end of the Soviet Union, and since 1991 we have had several nakhakah in the newly-independent Republic of Armenia.

[1] Much of Russian specialized vocabulary derives from Western European languages, especially French, and that’s why you see words like minister or president with a look very similar to the English word.

Chess: Armenian Has Two Names for Everything

Most scholars agree that chess originated in India during the first centuries of the Christian era with the name chaturanga, which translates as “four divisions (of the military),” today symbolized by the pawn, knight, bishop, and rook.

The game went to Persia, where the name became chatrang and they started calling shah (“king”) when attacking the opponent’s king, and shah mat (“the king is helpless”) when the king could not escape from an attack. The call became known worldwide, and today we say “check” and “check mate” in English.

But how did “chess” and “check” come into English? Arabs took up the game everywhere, including the calls, and the word shah entered Medieval Latin as scaccus . It went from here to Old French eschec, which meant both “game of chess” and “checkmate,” and its plural eschés (in Modern French, “chess” is échecs , in plural, while the singular word échec means “defeat”). As it happened with most English vocabulary, both Old French words entered Middle English: the plural eschés became “chess,” and the singular eschec became chek, chekke, and then “check.” While in most of Europe the name of the game came from shah, the Persian name chatrang, modified after the Islamic conquest of Persia as shatranj, went to North Africa, where the Moors turned it into shaterej. The word entered Spanish (ajedrez ), Portuguese (xadrez ), and Greek (zatrikion ).

What happened in Armenian? Here, of course, because of Persian influence, the route was much straightforward. The word chatrang became ճատրակ (chatrak in Classical Armenian), and this is how we call it in Western Armenian (pronounced jadrag) to this day. Interestingly, St. Krikor Datevatsi (fifteenth century) had the word սատրիճ (satrij), which was derived from Arabic shatranj, but this did not enter the literary language and remained in some dialects as satrinj .



Armenians have revealed themselves, as we know, brilliant chess players since the twentieth century. Suffice it to mention the names of Tigran Petrosian and Garry Kasparov. It is an intriguing fact that the name of the game in Eastern Armenian went on a completely different road. A Russian-Eastern Armenian dictionary published in Tiflis (1876) listed jadrag and satrinj as translation for the Russian word shakhmat (“chess game,” which also means “chessboard”) , which was a borrowing from German Schachmatt (“checkmate”). However, it appears that in the twentieth century the loanword from Russian շախմատ ( shakhmat “chess game”) totally overtook jadrag, becoming the term of choice in Eastern Armenian to this day. Even if Armenian modern dictionaries list jadrag and shakhmat as synonyms, Western Armenians consider jadrag an authentic Armenian word and shakhmat a loanword, which is not far from the truth, since the former, despite being also a foreign word, entered the Armenian language a thousand years ago or so.