As part of the Women's Month in Armenia, organised by the Women's Resource Centre
20 March 2009
Meeting at 11am in front of the Komitas Pantheon, Yerevan.
Program: Cleaning the park and the cemeteries of Armenian women writers.
Poetry reading in front of Silva Kaputikyan's and Shushanik Kurghinyan's tombstones.
Flowers and candle lighting ceremony to remember our foremothers.
Psychotic Little Worlds
1 month ago
Posts
7 comments:
How does one say "homosexuality" in Armenian?
Would any Armenian-speaker volunteer to create an article about homosexuality on the Armenian Wikipedia? There is already an article about homosexuality in many languages, as you can see here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality but not yet on http://hy.wikipedia.org
I`m not sure how you would say homosexuality in Armenian, but I know some words for homosexual:
Homosexual (this is the one I prefer, it`s used in many languages, including Armenian and is easy to understand)
Miaserakan (this is the pure Armenian translation, mi as in one and ser as in sex/gender. Nice word but it`s so sexually neutral and doesn`t sound so "treating". In homoSEXual you have the word sex in it and since sex is still such a taboo in Armenian culture I guess that`s the main reason why Armenian media loves to use the Armenian translation of the word)
Gay (some people have started to use this English word, but still mostly used by Armenian Americans)
Miaseramol (again a pure Armenian word, where mi means one and ser means gender and mol is usually used in Armenian medical terms for diseases, so basically this word makes homosexuality an illness)
Kaput (meaning blue and is used as a slang for gay)
Ghzik (an other slang word for gay/queer)
Gomik (a russian slang for gay)
Galuboy (Russian, meaning blue as slang for gay)
Gyot (I believe it`s a Turkish word, and very demeaning word for gay, can be translated as fagot or something like that)
Article started here : http://hy.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D5%84%D5%AB%D5%A1%D5%BD%D5%A5%D5%BC%D5%A1%D5%AF%D5%A1%D5%B6
Any Armenia-speaker may help by modifiying and adding to it.
I never heard the word Համասեռահակություն to refer to "homosexuality" in Armenian. For "homosexual", or "gay", "Միասեռական" is the most widely acceptable Armenian translation, although I use "գեյ" ("gay") in Armenian too.
I guess, one of the best persons to help would be Shushan from Queering Yerevan. May be she will read this, or I'll contact her.
Thanks, Paris Gay, this is important, although a bit strange to have this discussion under this particular post :)
i am not really an expert on terms and terminologies, but i would agree with mika that at this point it's simply not in our favor (and not logical) to create or invent new words that will introduce further complexities and obstacles in the perception of homosexuality. so miaserakan -- as odd and as strange it might sound -- stands for homosexual in armenian. i had coined a term for drag and was hoping that it would enter circulation -- because we don't have a word for drag in armenian and we need such a term -- pokh'hagutyun or pokh'hagnvel -- which is a semantic term describing the process of dressing up and performing as the opposite gender. the word lesbian is usually transliterated as lezbuhi or lezbian, otherwise queer women are typically referred to as miaserakan kanajq. but we don't normally say "miaserakan tghamardik" so we shouldn't use the term "miaserakan kanayq" either -- because miaserakan is a collective term that implies both genders. hope this helps.
ok what these comments have to do with the "clean up activity" ? :)
I have absolutely no idea why these all have started here :)
In future, I would ask readers of my blog to make comments under relevant posts only. If you do not see a relevant post in past or present, please email me with your request and info, and I'll do my best to publish a new post where the issues could be raised and discussed appropriately. Thanks!!
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