r/hayeren • u/Whole-Contract-4453 • 26d ago
What do you think 'bout romanization of The Armenian alphabet?
The Armenian alphabet is cool but slow-readable.
I think Latin alphabet usage would be really convenient. What do you think?
4
u/tribxy 26d ago
I could not disagree more, and frankly I'm wondering if you're a troll or have bad intentions. Taking away a script from a culture who is evidently very attached to and proud of it, a culture who has experienced so much threat and attempts to wipe it out, is an extremely dumb move. Replacing it with a script that has already replaced many indigenous scripts, and is used by languages that have wiped out hundreds if not thousands of languages across history thanks to roman colonization and more recent european colonization, and doing this for the sake of convenience? Really? Is the modern world not fast enough already, you don't see a place within it for an alphabet that encourages you to slow down just a little? It's honestly a bit too on the nose for me.
1
1
u/Whole-Contract-4453 25d ago
I really didn't think that such a harmless idea could affect anyone that much 😅
4
u/Dreamin-girl 25d ago
Pretty normal and quick-readable for Armenians. So that's a you issue.
1
u/Whole-Contract-4453 25d ago
My Armenian is c1, so, i just thought about it in theory.
1
u/Dreamin-girl 25d ago
Very bad theory. It's like suggesting Chinese people, the Koreans, the Japanese and so many other people whose scripts are part of their national identity to drop it.
0
u/Whole-Contract-4453 25d ago
Chinese, Korean and Japanese have their own system of romanticization. In Japanese it is called, I think, romaji and is used, as far as I remember, in the same way as hieroglyphs
1
u/Dreamin-girl 25d ago
Japanese don't use Romanji as such. It's used for non-native speakers that are not familiar with either of three systems to read. Japanese don't use romanji for kanjis, they use hiragana and katakana, if they want to know how to read the kanji. So Romanji is used by the foreigners who can't read the script.
0
u/Whole-Contract-4453 25d ago
So we can use Latin as well. I don't talk about completely replacing the Armenian alphabet.
1
u/Dreamin-girl 25d ago
Lol, Latin alphabet doesn't have lots of sounds Armenian alphabet has. The Armenian alphabet is literally structured to fit Armenian sounds. Foreigners can use it while trying to learn, but if anyone wants to learn a language, they should learn the alphabet.
0
u/Whole-Contract-4453 25d ago
At all press conferences, Armenian journalists write three times slower than their colleagues who write in English. (by the way conferences are in Armenian). I just thought that it could be convenient. I didn't think it would offend anyone
0
u/Dreamin-girl 25d ago
So? That's not even a valid point. Plus, Armenian words are longer than English words. It has nothing to do with the script.
0
u/Whole-Contract-4453 25d ago
Yes, but English journalists manage to translate it into English and write it down, while Armenian journalists only write it down. Naturally, I am generalizing, and we can't judge about everyone by the people I met, but in any case it's tendency.
0
u/Dreamin-girl 25d ago
So? That is not a valid point again. It is not a race whose going to finish first. And it's strange that you say your Armenian is c1, yet you are completely ignoring that Armenian and English are different. Armenian language tends to have longer words and the structure is different from English one. There are 59.letters in Բարև, ես սիրում եմ պաղպաղակ ու խաղալ, շնորհակալություն ուշադրության համար։ Now translating that- Hi, I like ice cream and games, thanks for attention. 41 letters. Plus, English has flexible phrasal verbs, yet Armenian doesn't. And again, the job of a journalist is not to race against foreigners in who's going to finish first.
1
0
u/Whole-Contract-4453 25d ago
Let me disagree. When recording an interview, speed is important. The English text is equal in length to the Armenian text due to the large number of service parts (don't forget that Armenian is an agglutinative language, unlike English).
1
u/Dreamin-girl 25d ago edited 25d ago
It is not equal in text. Structurwise is different. And there are convenient ways to record an interview, like video or voice. So, again your suggestion is not valid and comes as ignorant.
Edit: For instance while learning English and translating text to Armenian, the Armenian translation always tends to be longer. And vice versa, when translating into English, it tends to be shorter. That is how our language works. While at uni and writing down the lectures in Armenian, I always used voice recordings and made-up words abbreviations, shortened the words and used simple symbols that replaced the frequently used and longer words. That way I was always caught up with the teacher. And there's a reason why lots of Armenains tend to say mersi or apres instead of shnorhakalutyun or shnorhakal em, because those are shorter and quick.
1
21d ago
It's not slow readable at all, and it's part of our identity. Also Armenian in latin letters is an abomination
1
1
u/iarofey 25d ago
I'm not Armenian, but as a learner I really struggle reading Armenian text in Latin (or Cyrillic) letters, such as some Armenians do when texting. It's really confusing and ambiguous; and while native Armenians are enough knowledgeable to understand texts thusly written despite reflecting badly the language, for learners it's actually way a more inconvenience than a help — pretty much, the laziest way is to quickly learn the alphabet and move on rather than having to do guessings of the romanizations all the time. Do I sometimes confuse letters such as Ջ-Զ or ն-մ? Yes, but it's a little price to pay. Do some letters have shapes that look somewhat clunky along with others, and are maybe not the most eye-friendly? Also true to some extent, but it's still beter to represent the language than any alternative.
It's possible that there maybe exist any other script that fits Armenian properly, but the Latin alphabet in specific doesn't fit it at all. The Armenians would have had knowledge of the Latin script, as they had of Greek, Aramaic, etc. and would have used any of these instead of making their own from 0 if only any worked properly. These are just facts, without addressing the emotional and cultural significance of the alphabet that others have already commented.
And if you want to go for more scientific and systematic transliterations, in my opinion they are just ugly, as well as somewhat weird and unintuitive, like when they use Ł for Ղ. I specially dislike the Թ Փ Ք Ց Չ written as T' P' K' C' Č' or similar things.
Another problem that causes using Latin script is the difference in pronunciation between Eastern and Western varieties, that would force to choose to using letters considering the sounds of one variety like P vs. B, and would make the other variety look like using unintuitive letter-to-sound correspondences. While with Armenian it can't really give that feel. And if you had custom Latin alphabets for Eastern and Western, wouldn't seem to be a good idea since that would divide the communities and make texts in each of them less understandable to the others, in a way the current Traditional vs. Reformed Armenian orthographies’ disagreements don't do much.
1
u/noveldaredevil 24d ago
don't feed the troll
1
u/Whole-Contract-4453 24d ago
I'm not a troll! I didn't think it could cause such an atomic explosion. It is just out of curiosity
9
u/gharadagh 26d ago
Այ թինք վի շուդ յուզ Առմենյան ալֆաբեթ ֆոր ինգլիշ թու