A few strategies that have helped me include extensive reading and learning vocabulary in context. Learning vocabulary is still something that I struggle with, but I am slowly improving. On the other hand, English and Armenian have less than 1% of common roots, which means that learners have to do a lot more memorisation! When an English speaker attempts to learn French, they will be pleasantly surprised to find that the two languages share around 50% of roots for core vocabulary, which makes recognising and learning new words relatively easy. One of the greatest challenges in this respect, particularly for English speakers, is its vocabulary – in particular, its lack of crossover with, or borrowings from, the Romance and Germanic languages. This uniqueness gives Armenian its beautiful sound and alphabet, but also makes the language more challenging than many other European languages. The Armenian language is unique in many ways, partly due to it having developed along its own branch in the Indo-European language tree.
DOWNLOADING WESTERN ARMENIAN FONT HOW TO
Third, my teacher would consistently correct my speech, demonstrate where to place stress in words, and explain how to adjust the intonation of a sentence.Įven though I am still working on developing my speaking ability - and have a long road to go - I am pleased to say that my intonation is miles ahead of where I started. Although I was initially unable to ‘hear’ where I was going wrong, this helped to train me to recognise the subtleties in the language that I had been missing in the early days. Second, I continued with intensive listening and recording activities. On my drive to work every day, I listened to recordings in Armenian (even if I didn’t understand what was being said) to allow myself to become more familiar with the language’s intonation and stress patterns. First, I considerably increased my exposure to the language. I ultimately overcame this by adopting three strategies. In the early days of my learning, I would listen to recorded dialogues, record myself saying the same thing, and send the recordings to my teacher (or even my fellow translator here at Sophene) for feedback, but would inevitably be told that my intonation was not quite right. But if you haven’t had considerable exposure to Armenian, it can be difficult to know what the flow of speech is supposed to sound like, even once you’ve learned the correct pronunciation rules. For example, even if we’ve never learned Italian, we recognise its melodious rise and fall of speech. For more common languages, we have typically had enough exposure to the language or its native speakers to have developed an instinctive (if stereotypical) idea of what the language is supposed to sound like (i.e., its phonology). This may not be a challenge for anybody who has grown up in an Armenian household or community, but for the non-Armenians out there who are interested in learning the Armenian language, this is one of the biggest challenges you will face.
For those who are not of Armenian heritage, no prior knowledge of phonology Five Biggest Challenges and How I Overcame Them 1. Due to my somewhat unique experiences in learning Western Armenian (see this article for more information on why I decided to learn the Western language branch rather than its Eastern cousin), I am keen to share the five biggest challenges I have faced and how I overcame them, along with three things that I thought would be challenges (but weren’t), in the hope of encouraging others who might be considering embarking on learning this beautiful yet challenging language.
For a variety of reasons, not least that I wanted to be able to read the works I was editing in their original language, I decided to embark on a language learning journey that has since led me down paths I never expected to tread.
Learning an endangered branch of any language is no easy task, but for a monolingual English speaker who is not of the language’s heritage culture, it holds unique challenges.īefore my introduction to Armenian literature several years ago, I’d had no exposure to the Armenian language.