Talk:Aram Sargsyan

Correct English Spelling

The English transcription of Armenian words is needed here instead of a transliteration. Please move the article to Sarkisian. Only people who know Armenian can understand the correct English pronunciation of “Sargsyan”. Thank you.

There is no reason to use the "Sarkisian" spelling. Most of Armenian sites use "Sargsyan" themselves, for example : [1] or [2]. Eastern Armenian (the only form of Armenian language official in the Republic of Armenia) has a pronunciation different from Western Armenian spoken by the diaspora from the Ottoman empire. In Eastern Armenian, գ is pronounces rather "g" and կ is rather "k". In Western Armenian, it's the contrary. The name of every Armenian citizen must be transcribed following the Eastern pronunciation. Švitrigaila 11:23, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Dear Švitrigaila,

I know that Wikipedians love frequency/commonness of dictions in the internet but in this case you should not rely on this. When Armenians write something in English about Armenia for (mostly) Armenians they may be speak English much better than I. Nevertheless, “Sargsyan” is simply incorrect in newspaper articles (whereas in scientific works it is, on the contrary, better to use transriptions). This mistake does not matter when every reader of f.e. ArmeniaNow knows how to pronounce it but one cannot expect this from average readers of Wikipedia.

1. The letter գ is usually pronounced as [kʰ] -- if it is not the initial letter -- in Eastern Armenian, too. Rather an exception is f.e. Գագիկ ([gɯ'gik]) where it is in fact prounounces as [g] in both cases. By the way, it is the same with դ (pay attention to the pronunciations of օդ, կարդալ) and բ (երբ, շաբաթ). 2. Սարգսյան ([sɯɹkʰəs'jan]) derives from Սարգիս, therefore it is the best to write it in English with i. Compare f.e. մսի (the genitive case of միս). The ի falls out but [ə] jumps in instead of it -- note that is not reflected by the Armenian diction.

Yours faithfully,

…

P.S. It is the same with Markar(ian), Vartan(ian) etc. Markarian just does not know how to write his name in English correctly. I do not want to say that he were silly –– one cannot know everything. Fortunately, we can correct this mistake. We should do it, because Wikipedia should not be the slave of commonness in the internet but throw light on things.

P.P.S. I acknowledge that the Armenian language is not my mother tongue but I have asked Armenians to be absolutely sure.

Dear Anonymous,

Since I'm not Armenian myself, I couldn't assert for sure that գ is exactly "g", դ exactly "d" and բ exactly "b". However, I did consult a grammar of Eastern Armenian and a friend of mine who studied it. Both say the same thing : գ is roughly "g", դ is roughly "d" and բ is roughly "b". I've never heard that those three letters are pronounced "kh" as you write it. The sound "kh" is roughly renderd by the letter ք.

But the issue is not here. You say a transcription must be used instead a translitteration. But what kind of transcription? Do you mean a perfect phonetic transcription. Then we must move the Mikhail Gorbachev article to Mikhail Garbachof. And Hiroshima to Heelosheemuh. That's not serious. The transcription actually used is not a perfect translitteration, but it is a translitteration all the same. People and administrations use it. I'm sure that there's "Andranik Margaryan" written on Mr. Margaryan's passport and "Aram Sargsyan" on Mr. Sargsyan's one (except if it's an old one translitterated in French from the Russian spelling — the customs in the Soviet Union was to translitterate in French!) So there is no reason to try o approximate the Armenian pronunciation in English rather than the Armenian spelling.

Švitrigaila 22:54, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

1. You know Russian, don´t you? The traditional Russian diction is f.e not Тигран Варданович Петросян but Тигран Вартанович Петросян. This is very helpful because it shows how to pronounce it as far this is possible in Russian without special means like IPA. If you do not believe me, may be, you trust the Russians? They write Саркисян. 2. Believe me, the traditional French transcription of Սարգսյան is Sarkissian. Do you trust your own people? 3. The traditional German transription of Սարգսյան is Sarkissjan, do you trust us? 4. The former prime minister of Armenia Armen Sarkissian who lives in UK for many years and has been there for the first time in the 1980s writes his name in this way (see his website). Dou you trust in so far that do you believe that he knows there is a vowel between k and s? I can assure you: he does know and he knows it better than Markarian. 5. I ASSURE YOU: THERE IS A TRADITIONAL ENGLISH TRANSCRIPTION. TRUST ME. OBEY IT -- although it is not perfect (I acknowledge that Gorbachev is not perfect, too). 6. WHO IS INTERESTED IN THE ARMENIAN SPELLING? People who know Armenian. WHO IS INTERESTED IN THE PRONUNCIATION? Every reader. You know Simon Abkarian? You know that this name is written Աբգարյան or Աբգարեան in Armenian? Dou want to move it to Abgaryan or even Abgarean, or what? Poor Abkarian would have to tell the world all day long not to say it, but to say Abkarian. A transliteration is something for experts, transcriptions are used in newspapers (and encyclopedias in headlines). Everybody wants to read Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (and not Vladimir Vladimirovič Putin) in an English newspaper, Vladimir Vladimirovitch Poutine (and not Vladimir Vladimirovič Putin) in a French one, and Wladimir Wladimirowitsch Putin (and not Vladimir Vladimirovič Putin) in a German newspaper. It is the same with Sarkisian/Sarkissian/Sarkissjan -- Sargsyan is as helpful as Vladimir Vladimirovič Putin for the readers of f.e. Le Monde. If you agree that Poutine is good in French newspapers -- and I consider you to do so –– why do you oppose Sarkisian in English or Sarkissian in French? Sorry, but I can not understand you.

By the way: Once, when I was still an active Wikipedian, I asked Mr. Armen Sarkissian which English and Armenian diction he prefers. In an email he answered: In English SARKISSIAN and in Armenian Սարսյան instead of the traditional diction Սարգսեան, still preferred by Western Armenians. This was deleted. You see how clever Wikipedia and the internet can be… So please, believe somebody who knows what he is talking and not the crowd/internet. P.S. It is the same with ջ. The correct pronuciation of միջեւ is [mitʃɛv], not [midʒɛv]. The tendency not to preserve voiced consonants except for ձ has evolved during the last 150 years.

Is it worth to come to that tone? I won't accept such orders like "Trust me. Obey it." from an anonymous I.P. Your argumentation doesn't convince me, and I have a feeling you still mix Eastern Armenian with Western Armenian. Your comment about Simon Abkarian wanders completely off the point since Abkarian is not Armenian, but French. There is no need to translitterate or to transcribe his name since it's normally written with the Latin alphabet. Furthermore, he is from Western Armenian descent, so his name has nothing to do with the debate on transcribing Eastern Armenian names.

Your comment about the English spelling of Vladimir Putin is wrong too. You seem to say that the Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin spelling doesn't proceed from an orthographic transcription, but from a pure phonetic transcription. It's absolutely false. The transcription used is orthographic, not phonetic. Read here about it. It explains why every Russian words ending in -ов are transcribed by -ov, and nor by -of. In fact, every transcription used on Wikipedia is orthographic, except maybe from non-phonetic systems, such as Chinese.

Let's come back to Armen Sargsyan: you show me his site and declare he uses himself the Sarkisian spelling. He has the right to do so, I'm not against. It's not a reason to change the spelling of the title of every Sargsyan-named person's page. I can find a lot of other Sargsyans. And even official pages about Aram Sargsyan himself : [3] for example. I can find other Armen Sargsyans too : [4], [5], [6], [7], [8]. About former prime minister Armen Sargsyan, I would say he uses the Sarkisian spelling while living in the UK to integrate in the mostly Western Armenian diaspora. I find ridiculous the claim he speaks better English than Margaryan, since Margaryan certainly didn't make his English homepage himself! If you really want to put somewhere Armen Sargsyan's prefers to write his name as Armen Sarkisian, why not? But there is no need to rename every Sargsyan's pages into Sarkisian.

One last remark: there is not always a "good way" to trasnscribe a name from another alphabet. When someone uses a transcribed form of his name on his own homepage, it doesn't mean that this name MUST be transcribed that way. It can be only a specific convenience in order to avoid to use a foreign alphabet. I have a good example: an Azerbaijani politician named Rəsul Quliyev. If you watch at his homepage, you'll see he writes at first in big letters "Rasul Gouliev". His page itself is named www.gouliev.com. But in a lot of texts written in English on this site, his name is written Rasul Guliyev. Why? Because neither Gouliev nor Guliyev are official. His only correct surname is Quliyev. He has chosen to transcribed it as Azerbaijanis usually do (a relic from the era when they used the Cyrillic alphabet), like Albanians and Latvians, but it doesn't make those transcriptions official. The same thing can be said about Robert Kocharyan. On his personnal page, his name is written Kocharian. But the official site of the government writes it Kocharyan with a Y, as it does for every Armenian name. It doesn't mean at all that the Kocharian spelling is better than the Kocharyan. It just means that those two sites don't use the same transcription system. That's all. I think Wikipedia should use only one system to transcribe Eastern Armenian names and stick to it ; and not check all the homepages of individuals who have one to see how this individual write his name on it.

Švitrigaila 23:14, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

“About former prime minister Armen Sargsyan, I would [!] say he uses the Sarkisian spelling while living in the UK to integrate in the mostly Western Armenian diaspora.” “Your argumentation doesn't convince me, and I have a feeling [!] you still mix Eastern Armenian with Western Armenian.” I know Armenian better than you (you proofed that by your comments). I will not waste my time here any longer. If you are interested in the exact pronunciation contact any competent lecturer or native speaker of Eastern Armenian. Or follow the motto “Never mind the facts!” -- it is your choice.