How “Salt” and Agh Are the Same Word?

The custom of offering bread and salt to guests is common to many Eastern European, but also Middle Eastern people, as well as to Armenians (աղ ու հաց agh oo hats “salt and bread”), although its meaning may have variations from country to country. It is also a figure of speech, since you share bread and salt every time you sit to have a meal with a guest.

You also share something more: the common origin of “salt” in both English and Armenian. The word salt comes from Old English sealt, derived from Proto-Germanic *saltom (German salz comes from here, hence the name of  the hometown of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Salzburg). This word common to Germanic languages, at its turn, comes from the common Proto-Indo-European language, where it has been reconstructed as *sal- . This is why we have, for instance, Latin sal, from which we are familiar with Spanish sal and French sel.

Armenian is an Indo-European language, but what does agh have to do with *sal-?

Unlike their Indo-European sister languages, Armenian agh and Greek ἅλς (‘als, pronounced hals) also come from *sal, but did not keep the initial *s, which fell on the way and was replaced either by an aspiration, in the case of Greek, or just by nothing, in the case of Armenian.

The letter ghad (ղատ), that is, gh (ղ), was derived from the Proto-Indo-European sound *l. You may remember that this letter was not pronounced gh in the fifth century, but as a variant of the sound l (լ); for this reason, աղ sounded close, but not exactly the same, to al (the exact scientific transliteration is ał). The letter ghad was the counterpart to the Greek letter lambda (l / λ). We have, for instance, the Biblical name Ghugas (Ղուկաս), which is the Greek Λουκάς (Loukas) or the English Luke.

The result of this inquiry is that:

Proto-Indo-European *sal ð Armenian agh

Proto-Indo-European *sal ð Latin sal ð Spanish sal

Proto Indo-European *sal ð Proto-Germanic *saltom ð English salt

Interestingly, salt-y and its Armenian translation agh­-i (աղի) also share the same sound i to create the adjective. Therefore, look over your health: don’t eat too salty! Or, if you want to say it in Armenian, shad aghi mi oodek (շատ աղի մի՛ ուտէք). 

Virgins Do Not Take Sides

The calendar of Holy Week in the Armenian Apostolic Church includes a special service that enacts the parable of the Foolish and Wise Virgins (Matthew 25:1-13). The translation of “virgin” in Armenian is gooys (կոյս); this word is also used, indeed, as the name of the sign of Virgo (Gooys / Կոյս) and as an adjective (e.g. “virgin forest” = gooys andarr / կոյս անտառ). Its origin is still unknown.

The service is celebrated “in the memory of the Ten Virgins” (Dasuh Goosanats hishadageen / Տասը Կուսանաց յիշատակին). The word goosanats is a Classical Armenian declination of the plural of gooys (= goosank / կուսանք), while its Modern Armenian equivalent would be gooyseroo/ կոյսերու. Now, the existence of goosank / goosanats indicates that the root gooys becomes goos(կուս) in Modern Armenian, except in plural (gooys > gooyser). A grammar rule establishes that the diphthong ooy (ոյ) becomes oo (ու) when words are derived or compounded. We have, for instance, the words goosagan(կուսական) “virginal” and goosagron (կուսակրօն) “celibate.”

Some curious mind would like to ask: “What about goosagtsootyoon / կուսակցութիւն”? Is there any connection with gooys?”

Yes, there is. But before you start smiling, we should add that the relation is with another gooys. Virgins and parties (goosagtsootyoon) have nothing to do with each other.

As a matter of fact, the other word gooys (կոյս), meaning “side,” comes from an Iranian source and is not used today in Modern Armenian. However, it is the root for several words of current use, such as goosagtsootyoon, which is a compound word that means “group [of people] associated [with one] side” (gooys-a-g[i]ts-ootyoon), namely, “party,” whether political or not.

Another interesting compound word is megoosi (մեկուսի) “isolated.” It is composed of the words mi(մի “one”) and gooys. They are linked by the connective a (mi-a-gooys-i > megoosi). It is a grammatical rule of Armenian that the combination of i and a (ի + ա) in compound words turns intoe (ե, not է).

Since we mentioned the termination goosi, let us finish with a third word: karragoosi (քառակուսի). At this point, the reader will probably surmise that it is the combination of karr and gooys. However, karr (քառ) has nothing to do either with carr (գառ “lamb”) or kar (քար “stone”). Likegooys, karr is another word from Classical Armenian that has only remained as a root in the modern language. It means “four,” but you do not say meg, yergoo, yerek, karr (մէկ, երկու, երեք, քառ), but meg, yergoo, yerek, chors (մէկ, երկու, երեք, չորս). As you may have guessed,karragoosi literally means “four-sided,” namely, “square,” as in a square room (karragoosi senyag / քառակուսի սենեակ).

No Except-ions

The verb “to open” is irregular in Armenian. The infinitive is panal (բանալ), which becomes yes patsi (ես բացի) when you want to say “I opened.” You also have the word patsi (բացի) with the same spelling, but with a meaning that seems to be unrelated (“except”), as well as various words like patsarrootioon (բացառութիւն “exception”) and patsadrootioon (բացատրութիւն “explanation”).

Actually, the meanings of both patsis are not totally unrelated. If you are in a room, you open a door and you get... out of it. The word was pats i (բաց ի) in Classical Armenian (the two words became one in the modern language), meaning “out of,” with equivalents in Latin ex and Greek ex, from which today we have English ex (only with the meaning “out of,” as in excellent).

As the reader should know, Armenian nouns have kept declension (khonarhoom / խոնարհում), like in the German language. The case of patsi requires that the word be used with the noun in the ablative mode, which is coincidentally called patsarragan (բացառական) and consists in the addition of eh (է) at the end of the noun: for instance, kirkeh (գիրքէ), tooghteh (թուղթէ). We also add a n (ն) when we need to use an article (e.g. kirkehn “of the book”). For example, patsi kirkeh me (բացի գիրքէ մը / “except for a book”) or patsi kirkehn (բացի գիրքէն / “except for the book”).

We use patsi as a preposition, in the same way that we use “except” in English, but the flexibility of Armenian allows bringing the book behind the noun and turning it into a postposition: tooghteh me patsi (թուղթէ մը բացի “except a paper”).

Strangely enough, people tend to make mistakes when using patsi. They do not decline the word, as in the following sentence:

Pan me chem hisher, patsi poghotsin anoone (Բան մը չեմ յիշեր, բացի փողոցին անունը) “I don’t remember anything, except for the name of the street.”

This may be or may be not influenced by English grammar, but in any case the correct use should be:

Pan me chem hisher, patsi poghotsin anoonehn (Բան մը չեմ յիշեր, բացի փողոցին անունէն).

The rule has no exceptions. The meaning in English remains the same, but the accuracy of the Armenian original improves a lot.

Speaking about Movies

As in every language, the idea of pictures that moved was originally backed with a Greek word, and this is how cinematography was born in 1896 (Greek kinema movement, from Greek kinein “to move” + graphein “to write”). Afterwards, the word was cut short to cinema.

These words are reserved to the art of making what we today call “movie,” “motion picture,” “moving picture,” or “film.” How do you say it in Armenian?

We first have sharzhanegar (շարժանկար), which is the Armenian calque of “motion picture” (sharzh / շարժ > sharzhum / շարժում “movement”+ negar / նկար “picture”). You can also say sharzhanegari srah (շարժանկարի սրահ “movie theater”), if you wish.

If you want to say “cinematography,” you can use a slightly different word: sharzhabadger (շարժապատկեր), which also literally means “motion picture.” It is the combination of sharzh and badger (պատկեր “image”).

Let’s add that the word sinema (սինեմա) is colloquially used with both meanings of “movie theater” and “cinematography.” In the 1920s a periodical called Haygagan sinema («Հայկական սինեմա») was published in Cairo, edited by writer Yervant Odian (1869-1926). However, it was not about movies, but a satirical periodical (the editor was himself one of the best Armenian satirical writers).

However, since (Western) Armenian is a language that does not like borrowings from other languages, you are not going to find sinema in dictionaries.

But you will find film (ֆիլմ), which is currently used with the same meaning as in English.

Don’t Do It Back, Do It Again

We have all probably heard people who are not English native speakers and who sometimes speak in a way that sounds like Armenian translated into English. Many who know Armenian enough to make the distinction have probably heard sentences that sound like... English translated into Armenian.

How do you correct this issue? First of all, you pay attention to what you say. Secondly, you should note that not everything that you think and say in one language necessarily makes the same sense in the other. Thirdly, you should learn and, most importantly, apply what you learn to correct your own speech. In the end, the most important thing is communication, but quality of communication is even more important.

Such cases have been discussed in this column. Another example is, for instance, the sentence: “I went back to sleep.” It is a perfectly normal English sentence. However, the problem starts when you try to make it into a “perfectly normal” Armenian sentence:

Katsee yed knanaloo (Գացի ետ քնանալու).

Rest assured that this is not “normal” Armenian, and not only the sentence sounds wrong, but it is wrong. The idea that you try to convey is that, after your sleep was interrupted, you went to sleep again. When you translate a sentence, you do not translate only the words, but also the meaning, and thus you do not make literal translations when the words are not their exact equivalent (meaning included) in the other language.

In this case, you translate the meaning “again” and not the word “back,” because katsee yed knanaloo sounds like “I fell back to sleep.” The result should be:

Katsee noren knanaloo (Գացի նորէն քնանալու).

Of Assemblies and Spellings

The Greek word ekklesia (“assembly”) is the root of the word ecclesiastic in English and has become the word for “church” in a few Latin languages like French, Spanish, and Portuguese, as well as in Armenian: yegeghetsi (եկեղեցի).

The Greek word has its Armenian counterpart, joghov (ժողով “assembly, gathering; meeting”), and this is why the title of the Book of Ecclesiastes (Ekklesiastes means “Gatherer” in Greek) has been translated in Armenian as Kirk Joghovoghi (Գիրք Ժողովողի).

The word joghov, which is the source for joghovurt (ժողովուրդ “people”), has also been used by Evangelical Armenians to denominate their temples as joghovaran (ժողովարան), even though they have retained the word “church” in English.

If you wanted to gather people for any purpose, the verb to use would be joghvel (ժողվել), where popular use in Western Armenian has left aside the second o of the root joghov. Eastern Armenian uses the standard form joghovel (ժողովել).

The spelling of the verb joghvel, with վ instead of ու, represents an exception to the orthographic rule establishing that the sound v after a consonant and before a vowel is always spelled with the diphthong ու (u), which sounds v (e.g. arvesd – արուեստ “art”; badvel – պատուել “to honor”). This is why you cannot write joghuel (ժողուել), because the root of the word is joghov (ժողով) and not joghu (ժողու)!

Diplomats May Also Know about Couches

The English language has borrowed two words from Turkish within the meaning of “couch.” One is sofa, and the other, divan. Of course, neither of them is Turkish. The Turkic waves of invasion that flooded the Middle East from the 11th-15th centuries were composed by nomad peoples that, usually, did not sit down on sofas or divans, but adopted those objects and their names from Arabic (suffah and diwan).

The interesting point is that the origin of divan is Iranian. The Pahlavi word devan originally meant “archive,” and an archive included rolls of documents, bundles of written sheets, and collections of law, poetry, records, etcetera. The place where they were kept was also called devan, and the name also extended to the courts, where such records were also maintained. This is how the word went into Armenian as tivan (դիւան, pronounced divan in Classical Armenian), which meant “hall,” “court of justice,” “school,” and “archive,” in the Bible and among writers of the fifth century like Goriun and Movses Khorenatsi. The same word was also used, much later, with the meaning “collection of poems.”

The Armenian language did not content itself by borrowing tivan, but also created compound words like tivanabed (դիւանապետ “chief of the archive, chancellor”).

Now, Middle Eastern council chambers and courts had long cushioned seats along their walls, which by extension were called divan, and the word entered various languages (Russian, French, Spanish, and English) with that meaning. It also entered Armenian.

What is the relation between a diplomat and a couch? The fact is that the word “diplomacy” was translated into Armenian as tivanakidootioon (դիւանագիտութիւն), which literally means “science of the archives/office” (tivan = archive/office, kidootioon = science) and a diplomat, be it an ambassador, a consul or a chargé of affairs, is first of all a tivanaked (դիւանագէտ). As such, the word by definition shows him or her not only as knowledgeable on archives and offices, but also... on couches, particularly those called divan /դիւան...