Ashot Manucharyan has suggested a very good idea recently the content of which is the following – Armenia needs cultural revolution, which will result in replacing “Bentley” with “Narek”. Truly, what can one expect from a country where even the clergy is focused on wealth and more importantly on displaying it. A question occurs, along with that, which seems naïve and unimportant only at first sight – in what language, in what alphabet should the people in Armenia read “Narek”, Grigor Narekatsi’s “The Book of Lamentations”. Will you perceive Narekatsi’s lines, when they are written like this, “Ete vshteric lqvac, hognabek–mek@ nvaxi, tox amrapndvac harni verstin harachanqneri ays harstaranov – husalov i qez” (If one gets into trouble, let him recover and trust in God)? After reading such a thing, nobody will recover – on the contrary, he will be more disappointed. This is the very case when the content is conditioned by the form. Our language has developed and manifested itself in the signs of Mesrop Mashtots’s alphabet – for example «ը» vowel has been written with the appropriate letter for 15 centuries, what grounds do we have today to replace that letter with @ sign provided for an electronic post.
That problem occurred certainly as a result of writing on the internet with a computer. 5 years ago there were certain technical obstacles for using Armenian letters on the internet, whereas today there are no such obstacles – any modern computer has the device to alter to the Armenian alphabet within 10-15 seconds. However there are people who persistently don’t do that. The reason is probably the longing for appearing more developed, “stylish” or mere laziness.
In recent years, the environmental problems related particularly to the mining industry development have become very urgent in Armenia. However, I think the ecology of the written texts is not less important today. In recent years, anti-hygienic phenomena have already occurred in the printed texts and they have gradually become normal, even “normative”. The development of websites, forums and social networks (which is certainly a positive thing in itself) has caused pollution of language and consequently mental environment, resisting which is the point d’honneur for every intelligent man.
Our website’s customers sometimes try to write using “transliteration”, “Latin-alphabet Armenian”. We have been warning these people so far, but soon we will not publish their comments at all, despite how interesting they are. Because the ultimate priority of our newspaper (website) is developing the culture in the broad sense of that word. And the culture starts with the language.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
