The Missing Word
I spent some days in Spitak catching up with some friends, but mainly to celebrate the birthdays of my Armenian "nephews" Tigran and Armen. Tigran turned 9 on Sunday, Armen 8 on Monday. They are my best friends' nephews (her brother's children). Both kids are crazy about me (the feeling is mutual :-) ), and by now they have started calling me aunt. But because we couldn't find a suitable Armenian word for aunt, they are using the Russian word tyotya. Like the English word aunt (and as far as I know its equivalent in all other languages) , tyotya doesn't specify the origin of the 'aunt-ness', whereas the available Armenian words for aunt all express the origin of the relationship. Horaqujr literally means father's sister and is obviously only used for the aunts of father's side. Moraqujr in the same way means mother's sister and is used accordingly.
So despite Armenian being such a rich language, there is one word missing (or maybe two, the one for a biologically unrelated uncle-like person as well). Does anyone know of an Armenian word that could be used in such circumstances, to express that someone is considered as a relative without biologically being one? For my friend's parents (Tigran and Armen's grandparents) it is easy, they just call me their youngest daughter, for my friend I am her sister, but for the kids we haven't found an (Armenian) solution yet.
posted by Myrthe at 12:22 PM
3 Comments:
good point voiced. i think about it all the time and not sure how to handle it. i dont want my son (he is 3 years old) to use those russion words even though they are so integrated into our dayly language, and the 'horaqujrs' and "moraqujrs" do not work for mea either. so i found my own way - i teach my son to call people by thier first names... many people do not like it, but that's their problem, at least my son does not get used to 'tyotyas' and 'dyadyas'...
Ummm... It might be a Western Armenian thing entirely, but I call people with whom I have that kind of non-parental link "tantig" (female) and "ammo" (male). Now, I don't know what the origins of these words are--they might be more appalling than Russian, I suppose--but I've always used them, and have never heard anyone complain. Of course, it might not fly in Armenia, where Western Armenian idiomatic uniquities sound as familiarly foreign as do Eastern Armenian ones to me.
Varant, my boyfriend (who is Lebanese-Armenian) also suggested "tantik" as he says it is what he would use in similar situations. According to him it comes from the French word for aunt - "tante" (which, incidentally, is also the Dutch and the German word for aunt).
Arsen, I am also perfectly fine with the kids calling me only by my first name - it is actually what they used to do and still do when they don't call me "tyotya". As for them calling me "tyotya", in this case it is not really much of a problem for me either, as Tigran, Armen and I communicate in a mixture of Russian and Armenian anyway (my Armenian isn't good enough yet to express everything I want to say).
So I guess we have found a workable solution, but it would have been nice if there were an easy and common Eastern-Armenian solution.
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