A Generation of Silence: Why Armenian Schools Matter

Sevana Panosian

 

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. – Ludwig Wittgenstein

The Armenian diaspora is slowly raising a generation of silence.

This statement may come as a shock, but it stems from the philosopher and linguist Ludwig Wittgenstein’s treatise on language where he states “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”

I remember learning about his theories in graduate school while studying other linguistic theorists like Mikhael Bakhtin, but these words entered the “where are they now” files of my musings and memory until I heard my older daughter correct my younger daughter as she spoke about the importance of being Armenian and her pride in balancing her ability to code switch not only between English and Armenian, but also between Western and Eastern Armenian.

Bilingual Brains Are More Healthy

Old habits die hard. Such is the case with the old assumption, still in currency among many Armenian parents (even educated ones), that learning Armenian does not have benefits. For those who continue to tout the "benefits" of being monolingual (e.g. English-speaking), the Canadian neuroscientist Ellen Bialystok has recently made some startling findings: looking at Alzheimer's patients, she found that people who speak two or more languages cope significantly better with the disease. An interview by Kilian Fox in "The Guardian" (London) on June 12, 2011 gives more clues about this intriguing issue.  

Problems of Bilingualism in Armenia

Background
It is widely known that nowadays most of the world’s population is bilingual and multilingual; this is especially evident for regions, where inhabitants have different ethnic background. Bilingualism is evidenced as a kind of cross-cultural communication. As Ter-Minasova (2000) noted, bilingualism is “communication of people presenting different cultures.” A pure bilingual person is two native speakers or monolinguals in one, according to Vereschagin (1969). Such a person can speak, understand, read and write in two languages, i.e., bilingual is an individual able to function, at some level, in more than one language. Halliday et al. (1970) consider that this person is not necessarily an ambilingual (a individual with native competency in two languages). Some bilinguals possess very high levels of proficiency in both languages in the written and the oral modes. Such bilingualism is considered as “coordinative bilingual” (Weinreich, 1953). Others display varying proficiencies in comprehension and/or speaking skills depending on the immediate area of experience in which they are called upon to use their two languages. The term “subordinate bilingualism” is used to define such a level (Weinreich, 1953, 1974).