On July 25, at a press club linguists Lavrenti Mirzoyan and Artashes Martirosyan spoke on the following topic: whether there is a danger that Russian will become the RA state language, reference was made also to foreign-language billboards.
Lavrenti Mirzoyan is more than convinced that we should always be ready for the “outsourcing” challenges, which according to him, the Republic of Armenia and the State Language Inspectorate face. He noted that the scandalous proposal on recognition of Russian as a state language in Armenia by Russian officials was expected.
“Constitutional amendments should be carried out, and if it becomes a goal, the people should decide whether they want Russian to be the second state language or not … If that’s so, then perhaps Chinese will also say that they are much more and Chinese speakers are more in number, so why don’t you recognise our language as a state language?”, said Lavrenti Mirzoyan suspiciously. In his opinion, at this point the question is fortunately closed.
Lavrenti Mirzoyan emphasized that this type of problems and language preservation problems in general should be regulated by the State Language Inspectorate. “We have serious problems, and this Inspectorate solves a national security problem”.
Linguist Artashes Martirosyan said that he is not concerned with this language issue, because in his opinion, the issue is from the absurdity genre. “What’s the connection of the legitimacy of a driving license with the Russian acquiring a state language status?”, asked the linguist. According to him, the issue was raised, because we are not economically powerful country: “If we are an economically powerful country, we will not receive such proposals, they will talk to us as equals”.
Gohar HAKOBYAN
