Harvard Prof. Vaux Speaks on Dialect of the Hamshen

By Marc A. Mamigonian

BELMONT, MA-The Armenian dialect of the Hamshen, a mostly Muslim and little-known group of Armenian origin living along the Black Sea in Turkey and Abkhazia in Georgia, was the topic of a lecture by Harvard University professor of linguistics Bert Vaux on June 7 at the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research Center in Belmont.

Few people are aware of these people, who in all number several hundred thousand worldwide. The Armenian community is largely unaware of this group to whom they are related ethnically and whose language, called Homshetsma by its speakers, is closely related to standard Western Armenian.

In his talk, Prof. Vaux focused on the Muslim or Eastern Hamshen (or Hemshinli) of Northeast Turkey. Vaux has done extensive fieldwork with Hamshen living in the United States, including the Boston area.

Explaining that the Hamshen derive their name from a village of the same name in Northeastern Turkey, near Rize, which seems to have been itself derived from an Armenian prince Haman Amatuni who came there with migrants from the Ayrarat district in the 8th century, Vaux detailed the striking similarities and noteworthy differences between the language Homshetsma and standard Armenian.

Vaux, with Hagop Hachikian of Belmont, has developed a means of writing Homshetsma using Turkish orthography-as opposed to the Armenian alphabet, which is unknown to the Muslim Hamshen. Drawing on the audience's knowledge of Armenian, he presented a number of Hamshen words, phrases, and eventually an Armenian folktale in Homshetsma. Audience members were able to identify certain words based on their similarity to their familiar Armenian, or in some cases Turkish, forms.

One of the more entertaining examples of Homshetsma language which Vaux presented was a series of perplexing riddles, which not only gave a sense of the language but also provided something of a window into the culture. The riddles, the answers to which seemed to bear only a passing relationship to the questions, are in fact, he explained, characteristic of the sometimes impenetrable-to the outsider-world of traditional Armenian riddle culture. One of the riddles, translated, goes "I put a sieve full of egg on the roof." The answer is "Star."

Another window into the forces shaping the culture is provided by Hamshen personal names, which are mostly unfamiliar to Armenians. Their names do not generally have Armenian roots but rather are generally related to Turkish or Georgian names-which are languages unrelated to Armenian. Indeed, there is a strong South Caucasian and Turkish aspect to Hamshen language and culture, which is hardly surprising given their geographical location.

Vaux explained that while there were forced conversions of the Hamshen to Islam from the 16th century down to the 1915 Genocide, the language preserves the memory of the people's Christian past to an extent; for the most part, though, Christian elements have been noticeably purged. Yet, although the language has been mostly de-Christianized, the Hamshen still observe the Armenian Christian New Year-celebrated on the day of Epiphany-the Armenian Christian feast of Vartivar, and the language retains the Armenian Christian word for God, Asdvadz. In addition, down to the 20th century, it was reported that some Hamshen still performed baptisms.

Vaux played an audiotape of one of his field research subjects telling a folktale called "Temel's Head" in the Homshetsma dialect. Although the audience had difficulty following the spoken language due to changes in pronunciation, the written version proved more recognizable. The story is actually a variant of a well-known satirical Armenian folktale called "The Priest's Head"-only stripped of its Christian elements. The folktale, then, stands in miniature for the larger relationship between Homshetsma and standard Armenian.

Vaux concluded by posing a question to the audience which prompted a good deal of discussion: Are the Hamshen Armenians? Opinions from the audience varied; but this was perhaps to be expected given that opinions vary even among the Hamshen themselves. Some of them privately acknowledge their Armenian identity or roots, but publicly few will do so. Others consider themselves to be Turks or Laz.

There are, it was pointed out, important political factors at play in Turkey which would discourage the Hamshen from openly professing their Armenian origins. One aspect of their identity which singles them out from other Armenians who have lived in Turkey is the fact that they were left largely unaffected by the Genocide.

Prof. Vaux has done extensive research on the Armenian language, especially documentation, preservation, and analysis of nonstandard dialects, including that of the Hemshinli. He is the author of The Phonology of Armenian, a major study of Armenian linguistics published by Oxford University Press. In addition to articles on Armenian linguistics and dialectology, he is the author of the forthcoming The Armenian Dialect of New Julfa and forthcoming textbooks of Eastern and Western Armenian. He also is the author of a chapter on the Hamshen language in the forthcoming book The Hemshinli, edited by Hovann Simonian, as well as a lengthy article on the subject in the forthcoming issue of NAASR's Journal of Armenian Studies.