We’ve been waiting for the school to be remodeled for a long time. We were supposed, at first, to move in on the first of September 2008; this was quickly adjusted to 1 Sept. 2009. Knowledge day1 came and went and the building was still not ready. The director clenched and fretted in her tiny makeshift office, but the workmen could not or would not hurry things along. The date changed to October first, then November, and finally in December they said, well, maybe in February. But then on the second trucks came ’round to the temporary building2 and all the male teachers and the oldest male students started packing furniture to take over to the remodeled school.
The remodeling was, finally, nearly complete. The school needed to be cleaned, of course, and everyone had a different idea how this cleaning was to be done. Some said the parents should do it; some said the female students; and finally everyone agreed it would be best to hire some women from the town to do it. Which they did, during an impromptu break given by the Ministry of Science & Education due to an outbreak of seasonal flu.3
The new school is large and airy and bright, and almost every subject has its own room.4 I was quite pleased because moving into the new building meant that the foreign language centre5 for which I had written a grant could finally be assembled in some sort of usable form. And the heaters work! Definite cause for celebration and congratulation.
After the last of the teachers’ meetings before the winter break, I brought in a carefully wrapped Armenian translation of Black Garden and gave it to my director to congratulate her on the completion of the remodeling. It’s the first time in eighteen months that I’ve ever seen her look entirely pleased at anything. I’d forgotten to inscribe it, though.6 So the director called me in the next day and made me inscribe it, in Armenian, for her amusement. I had been afraid that she would be offended by the book, as it is not uncritical of Armenia, but she didn’t seem to mind at all, and thought it rather sweet that I would give her a history book, since she is a history ‘specialist’.7
The teacher with whom I regularly worked was a bit worried when she heard that the director wanted to see me so urgently, and when she heard that I had given her a book she wasn’t at first sure why. For Christmas? For New Year’s? When I told her, though, she relaxed and laughed and said that I had շնորհք (shnorhq) which is one of those untranslatable words that means something like aptitude or talent, but also means a gift for doing the right thing at a given moment. Shnorhq and a new English room. It’s been a good year.
The new English room.
…in the course of the years the study of foreign languages had become almost a mania with Chwostik, indeed a sort of collector’s mania (as exemplified by his acquiring Armenian as a particularly exquisite ‘piece’)…
– Heimito von Doderer
(The Waterfalls of Slunj, p. 144)
This is how we spent our morning: sitting on the floor next to the heater, poring canonically through our grammar books, finding here a rule and there an exception, and in yet another place something as yet incomprehensible. Of late, I have been particularly enjoying Armenian verbs1. For one thing, they are relatively simple to form, and for the most part extremely regular, with two conjugations and a few oddities. For another, they have these infixes that seem so minute (a letter or two) and yet change the meaning entirely, making this intransitive verb transitive, or that other one reflexive or passive; this seems to me, for reasons I cannot quite fathom, an economical and elegant way of putting together a language.
Take, for instance, the verb ‘to learn’: սովորել(soverel); add the causative infix -ցն (tsn) and you have ‘to teach’: սովորեցնել (soveretsnel).2 The way the infix creates associates between actions which one may or may not think of as connected is quite pleasing. To remember հիշել (hishel) can become to remind հիշեցնել (hishetsnel), to be happy ուրախանալ (urakhanal), to make happy ուրախացբել (urakhatsnel). That’s one thing.
Then there’s the reflexive or passive or medio-passive or the whatever you want to call it -վ (v) infix.3 So one has ‘to write’ գրել (grel) and ‘to be written’ գրվել (grvel), to read կարդալ (kardal) and ‘to be read’ կարդացվել (kardatsvel); ‘to shave’ սափրել (sap’rel), ‘to shave oneself’ սափրվել (sap’rvel). For -el conjugation verbs, one can also combine the causative and -v infixes for even more amusement and confusion.4 So ‘to make someone shave’ սափրեցնել (sap’retsnel) and ‘to make someone shave themselves’ սափրեցվել (sap’retsvel). I should here mention that this last is, although grammatically possible, not something that I’ve actually heard, and so one might say that it is not actually Armenian, but if it’s not Armenian, then what is it? I don’t know.
You reach a point in learning a language – usually sometime shortly after you can successfully ask and understand the way to the lavatory – when one word, usually a little word, will trip you up in supposed subtleties, tumble you into an ecstasy of confusion out of all proportion to its importance in actual use.1 The mention of this word in conversation, the delicate proportions of its appearance on the page, you greet with perturbation mingled with inexpressible2 delight. Oh these little words, of clear and unclear meaning, these adverbs, these prepositions, these postpositions, these nebulous, numinous specks upon the (in)certitude of syntax!
The current irritating particle is the Armenian էլի (eli), which one dictionary helpfully glosses as ‘adv. 1) again. 2) more.’3 A more helpful dictionary observed that eli also means ‘again, anew, more, some more, still, now, well’.4 This is not the half of it. For instance, when someone asks you what you’re eating, you can say: կաբտռֆիլ էլի (kartofil eli) which doesn’t mean just ‘more potatoes’ or ‘potatoes again’, but seems to mean something more like, ‘potatoes of course, as you can see by looking at my plate, numbskull’. գնում ես էլի (gnûm es eli) which isn’t ‘you’re going again’ but is rather ‘you’re going aren’t you’ or ‘so you’re going, huh’. One speaker seemed to use eli in every sentence, much as an English speaker might say ‘like’, ‘well’ or ‘y’know’. Between the dictionary and what I was hearing I became a bit confused, so I looked in our textbook and found the following:
The ‘colloquial հա էլի (ha eli)expression is translated into English as Oh, yes, that’s right. The particle էլի softens the tone of the speech especially in the imperative sentences and could be translated with the word please. It has some other meanings, too. The expression լավ էլի makes a request stronger.5
This was a step in the right direction. I also checked A.V. Gevorkian’s East Armenian Course, but as it has no index and my Armenian browsing skills aren’t particularly good, I couldn’t find an entry on eli, though I did find several pages on էլ (el), which set me to thinking about the stress of eli. Most Armenian words (or all, depending on who you ask or what dialect you’re dealing with) are stressed on the ultima (unless the final syllable is a written or unwritten schwa), but eli is stressed on the penult. This might mean nothing at all, but it could also mean that eli was formed from el i, with the friendly modal word el meaning ‘also, too, as well’ and i being an archaic form of ‘to be’. It’s a comfort to speculate, anyhow.
Frankly I don’t know anything at all about eli and do not have sufficient language to ask the question and understand the answer even if I did know someone who would be able to answer.6 Someday I am sure I shall understand it, and be able to use it correctly and instinctively. For now, though, the Armenian I speak will sound a little odd, eli.
::
ego hoc feci mm–mmx
© 2000–10 M.F.C.