In his books, Explorations in Bible Lands During the 19th Century and The Hittites, German-American Assyriologist and archaeologist Hermann Volrath Hilprecht asserts that the Hittites indeed spoke Armenian in it’s purer ancient form, today known as krapar or of a dialect akin to it.
It turned out that there are so many Armenians in Monaco that the porters of the casinos have learnt Armenian. They recognize the Armenians immediately and give a broad grin and say “hey, boss” in Armenian. Funny enough, the official numbers stated in the Diaspora directory are 200. Perhaps the rich 1% of the country make the casinos in Monaco earn their money’s worth?
source: http://www.aysor.am/en/news/2012/08/25/hraparak1/
Hagop Martaryan, born May 22, 1895, was a specialist in the Turkish languages and thus called upon by Ataturk to help cleanse it of Persian and Arabic influences. He was appointed to the First Turkish Language Convention and his surname changed to Dilicar, literally meaning “language opener”. He was known as Agop Dilicar, or A Dilicar after his death when his Armenian origins were concealed from the public.
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Hagop Martayan, a philologist and an expert in the science of encyclopedia, was born in Istanbul in 1895. A graduate of the American Robert College, he dedicated his entire life to the study of languages and was an expert in the Turkish language. He studied the etymology of Turkish words, meticulously tracing their origins since their earliest recorded coinage, their transmissions from one language to another, analyzing the words into their component parts, identifying their cognates in other languages, and tracing them to a common ancestral root.
Later, Mr. Martayan became an instructor and an administrator at the Robert College. He participated in World War I as a reserve officer. Then he lived in Europe for a while. In 1932, Ataturk was impassioned with a project to give back the Turkish language its true identity, and clear it from the shadow of Ottoman Turkish. He was aware of the expressive power of Turkish and he had a burning desire to liberate it from the shackles of Arabic and Persian influence. He himself an admirer and a master in using the Turkish, when learned about Hagop Martayan, who was at that time in Bulgaria, invited him to Turkey, and he became impressed with the knowledge and expertise of Mr. Martayan. He appointed him to the First Turkish Language Convention (Türk Dil Kurultayi). Around that time, a law making the surnames mandatory was at the legislature. Ataturk suggested that Mr. Martayan take the last name DILACAR, meaning “tongue opener”, which Martayan graciously accepted.
After the Turkish Language Convention, Mr. Dilacar became the Head Expert in the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu). Later, he taught languages at the universities and high schools. Starting in 1936, he taught for fifteen years The History of Linguistics, and General Linguistics at the Philology Department of the Language, History & Geography Department (Dil,Tarih & Cografya Fakultesi) of the University of Ankara. He was the advisor to the Turkish Encyclopedia, and later he became its chief editor. Mr. Dilacar passed away on September 12, 1979 in Istanbul.
Hagop Martayan Dilacar contributed enormously to the enrichment of the Turkish language and culture. He worked tirelessly to elevate and refine the Turkish.
(source: http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2009/06/2892-hagop-martayan-dilacar-tribute-to.html)
Ayhan Ozer, From….. THE TURKISH TIMES January 15, 1996
Agop Martayan Dilaçar (May 22, 1895 – September 12, 1979) was an Armenian-Turkish linguist who specialized in Turkic languages and the first Secretary General and head specialist of the Turkish Language Association.
Biography
Agop Dilaçar was born in İstanbul, as Agop Martayan, in 1895. He graduated from the Robert College in 1915. In addition to Armenian and Turkish, he knew English, Greek, Spanish, Latin, German, Russian and Bulgarian. He worked as a lecturer of the English language at the Robert College, and of Ottoman Turkish and ancient East languages at Sofia University in Sofia, Bulgaria.
He was invited on September 22, 1932, as a linguistics specialist to the First Turkish Language Congress held in Dolmabahçe Palace supervised by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey, together with two other linguists of Armenian ethnicity, İstepan Gurdikyan and Kevork Simkeşyan. He continued his work and research on the Turkish language as the head specialist and Secretary General of the newly founded Turkish Language Association in Ankara. Following the issue of the Law on Family Names in 1934, Atatürk suggested him the surname Dilaçar (literally meaning language opener), which he gladly accepted.
He taught history and language at Ankara University between 1936 and 1951. He also was the head advisor of the Türk Ansiklopedisi (Turkish Encyclopedia), between 1942 and 1960. He held his position and continued his research in linguistics at the Turkish Language Association until his death in 1979.
Publications
* Les bases Bio-Psychologiques de la Theorie Güneş Dil (1936)
* Azeri Türkçesi (Azerbaijani Turkish, 1950)
* Batı Türkçesi (Western Turkish, 1953)
* Lehçelerin Yazılma Tarzı (Writing Style of Dialects)
* Türk Dil ve Lehçelerinin Tasnifi Meselesi (Classification Issue of the Turkish Languages and Dialects, 1954)
* Devlet Dili Olarak Türkçe (Turkish as a State Language, 1962)
* Wilhelm Thomsen ve Orhon Yazıtlarının Çözülüşü (Wilhelm Thomson and Encoding of the Orkhon Inscriptions, 1963)
* Türk Diline Genel Bir Bakış (A General Look at the Turkish Language, 1964)
* Türkiye’de Dil Özleşmesi (Language Purification in Turkey, 1965)
* Dil, Diller ve Dilcilik (Language, Languages and Linguistics, 1968)
* Kutadgu Bilig İncelemesi (Research of the Kutadgu Bilig, 1972)
* Anadili İlkeleri ve Türkiye Dışındaki Uygulamalar (Native Language Principles and Applications Outside Turkey, 1978)
Scholars have placed the number of dialects in the Armenian language between 2 and 120. Most Armenians will refer to 2 dialects, whereas many more exist that are equally as different. These include the Agulis dialect from Nakhichevan called Zokeren, meaning the Zok language, as well as the Syrian Armenian dialect known as Khistinek lezou (Christian Language). A general consensus by prominent scholars is the existence of 36 main dialects, falling into Eastern and Western categories.
36 main Armenian dialects mentioned in “Phonology of Armenian” by Bert Vaux
Western Armenian dialects can be found in: Agn, Amasia, Arabgir, Cilicia, Crimea Erzerum, Eudokia, Hamshen, Istanbul, Malatia, Mush, Nicomedia, Ordu, Transylvania, Robosto, Sepastya, Shabin-Karahisar, Smyrna, Syria, Tigranakert, Trabizon, Van. Kharpert, Erzngan, Khodorjur
Eastern Armenian dialects can be found in: Agulis, Aresh, Artvin, Astrakhan, Yerevan, Julfa, Karabakh, Meghri, Maragha, Shamakhi, Tiflis, Khoy
In the 8th century, under threat from Arab invasions, the Armenian Prince Shabuh and his son Hamam Amadouni leave their lands in Northern Vaspuragan and head up the Khatchkar Mountains on the Black Sea. Upon reaching the destroyed city of Tambour, Prince Hamam has it rebuilt and named Hamamshen, later to be shortened to Hamshen in Armenian and Hemshin in Turkish. The princes and their men settle in the valley overlooked by Hamamshen, known as the Firtina Valley. Over the next few centuries, the people would spread around the Black Sea, such as Trabzon, Samson, Sakarya, etc. The Hamshen Princedom survived and thrived between the 8th and 14th centuries, the people now known as the Hemshinli who spoke a dialect of Armenian called Hemshintsi (Homshetsna).
The Princes of Hamshen include:
The city of Hamshen was destroyed in 1489 by the invading Ottoman armies, sending Prince Tavit into exile. The people were forced to convert to Islam under Ottoman rule. It is said that the Firtina river ran red with the blood of those who had refused to give up their Christianity. The Churches were converted into mosques, surnames were changed to their Turkish counterparts, . Many were deemed heroes as they fought off the Ottoman influence and desperately clung to their own beliefs, refusing the dictations of a foreign army. Der Garabed Hamshentsi from the Toroslu village was one such hero.
The 1800′s saw another threat that forced the people to flee, settling into areas where they were free to speak their own language and remain Christian. Samson, Ordu, Krasnodar and Abkhazya became safe havens and the people were now known as the Northern Hamshenlis. Those who fled to the Artvin province of Turkey were forced to convert to Islam, even though they were able to retain their language. These are known as the Hopa-Hemshinlis (Eastern Hamshenlis). Those who stayed on their lands in the Rize province in Turkey lost both language and religion, though they speak hemshinji, a Turkish dialect with many Armenian words. They are known as the Western Hamshenlis, the Bash Hemshinli.
1895 saw the Trabzon Hamshenlis massacred. In 1915, the last Christian Hamshenlis from Ordu, Samson, and Trabzon were massacred. Those who managed to survive joined their Northern brothers in Krasnodar and Abkhazya. Bands of survivors also joined in the fedayee movement and took to the mountains. The converted hamshenlis were not spared either and many fled to Batumi in Georgia. In 1944, they were exiled from Batumi and sent to Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.
Currently, the Northern, Western and Eastern groups still exist. Upt to 750,000 are estimated to be living on the black sea coast. In the 1980′s a group moved into Armenia and are currently full citizens of the state.
Famous artists include:
A lovely blog about Hamshen Armenians can be found here: http://sanahine.wordpress.com/hamshen-armenians/
As Armenians, we should not let the memory and the very reality of the Hamshen Armenians be forgotten, but instead offer a hand and embrace them as the family they are. They are as Armenian as we. Their story should not simply gather dust in long forgotten pages of history.
This is in tribute to the hundreds of thousands of Armenians that are hidden or lost through the turbulent history of the descendants of the Hamshen Princedom.
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