“THIS CONFERENCE WOULD BE DEDICATED TO PROBLEMS OF TEACHING ARMENIAN
LANGUAGE,” ART CRITIC HENRIK HOVHANNISIAN STATES
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 14, NOYAN TAPAN. Participants of the conference
dedicated to the 1600th anniversary of the creation of the Armenian
letters started on September 13 at the RA National Academy of Science,
among a numer of problems of the Armenian language and Armenian
studies, expressed opinions concerning unification of two
orthographies as well.
Azat Yeghiazarian, the Director of the RA NAS Literature Institute,
finds that the issue of the two orthographies shouldn’t be made
political. According to him, this issue was present still early in the
19th century, and the insistings that the Eastern Armenian is a
language obliged by Bolsheviks, are baseless. A.Yeghiazarian mentioned
that at present, 90% of the Eastern Armenians speaks and writes by the
new orthography, and a huge literature has been created by that
orthography during decades. “If even it’s a bad orthography, we used
to it, and one may not make a revolution at once,” the Director of the
Literature Institute stated.
Richard Hovhannisian, a professor, historian of the California
University of Los Angeles expressed almost the same opinion concerning
the issue. According to him, it isn’t bad to return the classic
orthography, but we shouldn’t hurry. “All those should be done
gradually, as a strict passing to the classic orthography may obstacle
development of science and culture,” R.Hovhannisian mentioned.
According to the estimation of Henrik Hovhannisian, a Art Studies’
Doctor, “the Armenian language is in extremely poor state: everywhere,
every day and every moment language mistakes are made.” According to
him, in these conditions, one should think only of teaching literate
Armenian. “Before anniversaries, sittings and conferences one should
think what bases has teaching of the Armenian language in our
education system and in what state it is,” H.Hovhannisian mentioned,
adding that this conference would by dedicated not to the 16th
anniversary of the invention of the Armenian letters but to problems
of teaching the Armenian language.