A Language Beehive: Bourj Hammoud ( 1) -Not in front of my father

A translated segment of Armenag Yeghiayan’s sequel (Լեզուական Փեթակ՝ Պուրճ Համուտ -1-). Vahe H Apelian

Courtesy Garo Konyalian

Hrachia Acharian said that the most effective time period for learning a language is the first five-six years of a child's life, after which the momentum of acquisition begins to break down. He emphasizes that any language is accessible to any child at that age, no matter how difficult and complex the grammar of the given language may be. 

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In the middle of the last century, the Armenian children of Bourj Hammoud managed to acquire... three languages. Yes, you did not read it wrong, three languages: literary Armenian, which was especially used by the schoolchildren, Turkish, which was spoken almost as often as Armenian was in many of the Armenian families, and sometimes even much more; and finally, a dialect that was spoken by elderly of the family, who came from a Cilician town or from any other Western Armenian region in central Turkey. They brought with them their local language, you may say, their dialect, and did not learn literary Armenian

The children learned these language without any special effort. The reason was the day-to-day conduct in Bourj Hammoud, which inevitably led to the trilingual situation.

 Probably the most remarkable among them was the use of Turkish.

 On the streets of Bourj Hammoud, Turkish and Armenian were spoken in almost equal frequency. So, that was the situation on the street.

 Generally, the situation was similar in the workshops, which were present in abundance during those years because almost all crafts were still in the hands of the Armenians.  

Workshops that employed many, such as shoemakers, almost only Turkish was spoken, although almost all the craftsmen knew Armenian. I do not know why it was like that. Honestly, I was hesitant to reveal the truth, which was the following. Turkish had become the domineering and the more expressive language in these workshops simply because the shoemakers, for reasons I do not know, felt embarrassed speaking Armenian among themselves.   But there was also the following situation. The elderly master craftsmen spoke Armenian to their young Armenian speaking apprentices, whose ears thus were sufficiently filled with Turkish as well contributing to their learning to speak Turkish.

The situation was also similar in the smaller workshops where the number of the craftsmen was much less. It can be said that the artisan class of Bourj Hammoud was generally Turkish speaking during those days.

 As to families, the following situations arose.

 --There were families where only Turkish was spoken. The young children, who otherwise spoke Armenian at school, thus spoke Turkish at home.

--There were mixed-language families. Some of whose members spoke Turkish, the others partly Armenian. The communication between these two classes would automatically take place in Turkish, since the Turkish-speaking members could not switch the language. 

--There were only Armenian-speaking families, even if some of its members knew Turkish. Our family was among the latter.

My grandmother, my mother and my father knew Turkish very well.  We, sisters, and brothers, five in all, knew Turkish but we only spoke Armenian. It was very rare that my two older sisters, for whatever reason, would secretly exchange a sentence or two in Turkish with my grandmother or my mother, but they consistently avoided speaking Turkish with or in the presence of my father, whom we all addressed only and only in Armenian.

All our games would take place on the street because there was no way to meet friends and do anything at home. Foremost, almost all houses consisted of one room, which was equally a bedroom, a living room, and a sitting room for large families of those days. There was no television, no audio cassettes, no books, no puzzles. In other words, there could be no activity to keep the children at home, especially the boys, who organized their games on the streets. Two different groups, more or less 5–10 years old and 10-15 years old, organized their own games.

It was like the real workshops here too. The younger ones generally communicated in Armenian, while the "big" ones, those on whom whiskers were enviably becoming palpable, spoke in Turkish. Of course, the assortment of games differed to some extent from group to group, but that is another story.

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