Biggest Shark Ever Recorded

My buddy Mesrop Mashtots


"The system of the Armenian alphabet, as everyone knows, is a masterpiece. Each phoneme phonetics of Armenian is noted by a sign clean, and the system is so well established that provided the Armenian nation a definitive expression of phonetics, a term that has continued until now without undergoing any change, without needing to obtain an improvement, because it was perfect from the start. " (A. Meillet, 1936).


Of all the definitions searched the Internet to characterize the Armenian alphabet, none can match the one I found What about this obscure site Wikipedia: " The Armenian alphabet is the alphabet used to write Armenian." Both insight and erudition tinged simplicity can be confusing, I agree. A quick post will not be too many. Let y


The Armenian alphabet has 38 letters ... neither more nor less.
He was created by a torturer ( for us, not Armenian speakers, I hear ) named Mesrop Mashtots , an Armenian monk born in 362. Assume that it has created this alphabet between 393 and 406, but nothing is certain. Originally it was intended to translate the Bible, the liturgy and patristic texts known (it to say the life, work and doctrine of singer Patrice ... OK, I get out of ... Church Fathers , see ). This new script will allow to replace the Greek and Syriac liturgy used in practice, the Iranian and Aramaic in the administration, but also to translate the works of world culture which the originals have disappeared.

So if you're lucky, like me, you get to Matenadaran in Yerevan and to pay you a visit Women with a personal guide who speaks French perfectly ( but suspected to have memorized his speeches ... Education Soviet forces ... ), you can admire some of the texts of more capital to our civilization ( recipe for REAL Armenian Tarama, the unauthorized biography of Charles Aznavour and other ancient Bibles without interest to you, dear readers of my blog ) . Texts including access, I recall, we is allowed only through the existence of the Armenian alphabet.


In addition, this great invention has enabled the production of a true " literature and historiography of national guarantor of identity and memory . As we said Claire Mouradian, author of What Do I Know? Armenia and on which I will reproduce without permission no part here:
"Towards 443, the first original work, the Life of Mashtots Korioume , focuses less to describe the technical aspect of the creation of the alphabet that s moral, religious and political. This is the beginning of an unbroken series of historical chronicles that will educate the national consciousness by emphasizing its Christian character. When Armenia was losing its political independence ( and she lost a bunch of times ), by the invention of the alphabet, the Church gives him the means to avoid cultural absorption by its powerful neighbors. " Source: What do I know? Armenia, Claire Mouradian, Puf, Paris, 2002

Over 1600 years later, here I am attempting the impossible, ie learn this alphabet and language that goes with it. So I was delighted last week to learn that the Armenian is considered the third most difficult language to learn in the whole world ... However, I do not how to thank my father for having had the wonderful idea of being English and my mother give me birth in this paradise of the strikers is France ... because, dear reader, some sounds strangely similar to the language of Julio Iglesias and Florent Pagny ... Real thing. Thus, far from discouraging me, I continue to persevere. To do this, I use a manual Armenian dating from 1994, but that seems straight out of a time gone ... I'll let you guess which one.

For the story: Sometimes, my teacher, Lucina, I am translating words that neither she nor I will use in our short lives. ; Some things such as, for example, this Obscure Object needed to knit or that other indispensable tool for woodworking (but nobody knows the name), no longer exist or are no longer used at all today ... Worse, sometimes the Armenian word is not used and preferred his Russian name ... A real scandal that language.

Mesrop Thank, thank you from my heart ...