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by Edwin Gerard Hamamdjian (Author), Nadia Brugnara (Illustrator)
ACABI'S ARMENIAN: Idioms and popular expressions in Old Western Armenian by Edwin Gerard Hamamdjian is a linguistic recollection of a dialect once widely spoken, but which today is high on UNESCO'S list of endangered languages. This book is a testament to the language spoken with her family and friends by the author's great-grandmother Acabi (1882-1965), in Constantinople, then Cairo, and later, Los Angeles.
As you scroll through this collection of often humorous linguistic memorabilia, many of you will revel with nostalgia in the echoes of your elders' voices. Their hybrid form of Western Armenian offers a generous pot-pourri of Armenian mixed with neighboring Turkish, Greek, Italian, Kurdish, and Arab loan words. Some older folks still call it Dajkahayeren, or Ottoman-Armenian. Although many purists frown on what they consider a bastardization of the language, the dialect still reverberates deeply in the souls and memories of many speakers who hope to keep it alive.
