The destiny of the Armenian language in the United States
Monday, November 30, -1Armenian language is in imminent danger of disappearing in America. At this point we must ask ourselves what can be done to prevent the disappearance of the language. Before answering this question, though, we must ask ourselves a more important question: should the Armenian language be maintained in the United States.
Members of the Armenian community in America take two opposing positions on the issue of maintaining Armenian in the United States.
On one side, those Armenians who are older and speak the language well, are of the opinion that connection between language and ethnicity is vital—it is the essence of identity, authenticity, and uniqueness.
The other side is occupied by American Armenians or Americanized Armenians. They think that languages are merely means of communication and it is possible to remain Armenian without speaking the language.
A big concern that young Armenians have with learning the Armenian language is that it will prevent them from fitting in the social life. Children want to be as “normal” as possible, and language plays a central role in establishing normal relations between people. Not only does a child have to speak the same language as his peers, but he also must master the particular intonations, idioms, and quirks of pronunciation that distinguish the speech of his peer group from that of older kids, parents, and outsiders. This means that English has to be the first language of Armenian children in the US so that they feel comfortable going to schools, colleges, etc. They do not want to be looked upon as “different”.
The family is the key to the survival of Armenian in the United States. The first step is obviously convincing the parents to speak exclusively in Armenian with their children. This crucially must start at an early age, when children are able to learn several languages with no effort and no schooling. Each year that we postpone exposing our children to Armenian makes it significantly harder for them to learn the language, and no amount of schooling will be able to fix this.
Armenian-speaking parents must make a commitment to speaking Armenian to their children at all times, even after they have learned the language; if they let their children start speaking English, the battle is lost.
ArmenianBD.com News