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1. Above article,¨Metz Yeghern¨-translated as ¨Great Calamity¨ has been there over a week now.Curiously no poster as appeared below it.
   Am I going to be the only one,or someone else will also write and declare like I do. it is quite simple,in order to escaqpe the word ¨Genocide¨coined much after the great CRIME in 1949 By Rafael Lemkin,corresponds to actuality.Meaning when ,after the Jewsish Holocaust took place in the 1941-45 by Hitler´s Nazi Germany. This honest jew then denominated the Armenian -previous one-as Genocide.
   A.In otder to make distinction between his people´s and ours
   B. In order to escape the word Genocide ,much later the Pope John pronounced the word ¨Metz Yeghern¨ when he visited Tstzernakapert,Yerevan.
   C. U.S. president Obama ,then followed suit,declaring it as ¨´Metz Yeghern¨ for political conveniency. Case is closed.Or is it?
   It certainly is not.We Armenians undeerstand quite well that word Genocide is what we are after and shall stick to it ,until it is accpeted Worldwide.
   FOR THE W O R L D O W E S J U S T I C E T O A R M E N I A N S

2. The good doctor of letters, Dr. Vartan Matiossian, has rendered a harsh diagnosis of those of us who have opted to use the English word calamity to best convey what they understand the word Yeghern meant for them. He calls their suggestion delusional. Furthermore to narrow their pathological state of mind- the delusion-he labels it “self delusion” to delineate from delusions that apparently are not “self”.

   The good doctor then sits on the sideline. He does not offer a prognosis nor intervenes for a remedy. Obviously he cannot prescribe using the G word, genocide. We have the undisputed Armenian word for it, Ցեղասպանութիւն (tseghaspanoutiun).

   Naturally I agreed to a comment Boyajian made that calamity does not embody the premeditated nature of things, let alone of the Armenian Genocide. However, I noted to him, I know no other word in English that better conveys what I have understood the word Yeghern means. C.K. Garabed has toyed with the word Cataclysm. My preference is Calamity.

   The Armenian word that best conveys to me what Yeghern means, is the Armenian word aghet. According to Wikipedia “Aghet being Armenian for “catastrophe” is a German 2010 documentary film on the Armenian Genocide”. Some of the readers may have seen the documentary. The word aget seems more commonly used in Eastern than in Western Armenian.

   .It is important for those of us who are bilingual and continue to have a healthy interest in the western Armenian literature to have a common understanding as to why is that –say- one of the most prodigious post Genocide writer, Antranig Dzarougian, called his book “Սէրը Եղեռնի մէջ» (Sere Yegherni mech) “Love (Սէրը ) during Yeghern (???) “, and not “Love (Սէրը) during the Ցեղասպանութիւն (Genocide)”. The central theme of the book is about love during the Armenian Genocide.

   Incidentally very recently I translated an article by Dr. Antranig Chalabian that appeared in Spurk weekly in Beirut, on April 19, 1970. In that article he noted – “There was an exhibit about Yeghern in the West Hall of the American University of Beirut”. When I read the statement I understood it to mean that the exhibit was not only about the 1.5 million victims of the Genocide, but of the usurped lands, of the dispersion of the survivors, and of loss of culture that had evolved since Haig took his tribe and settled on that rocky terrain at the foot hill of Mount Ararat. It never occurred to me that the exhibit he referred to was about a crime, however horrendous a crime.

   Call it a “self delusion, if you will, that is what the whole thing summed up to me, the Big Calamity (Մեծ Եղեռն) that befell on us and altered for ever the course of our history.

   Hopefully, Dr. Matiossian’s well-researched but distastefully titled article may be capped by his choice of the right English word for Yeghern, if there is one.

   • Dear Mr. Apelian:
     Please bear in mind that many of my comments are about issues probably known to you, but that are introduced here for the benefit of the readers.
     1) I used the word “self-delusional” to emphasize the fact that those writers and editors who have written “Great Calamity” so far have deluded themselves with such a translation. I have written four articles to show that yeghern meant “crime,” “evil,” “calamity,” in the 5th century A.D. (Classical Armenian), but that its meaning “calamity” disappeared from Modern Armenian by the end of the 18th century. I have also brought abundant iterary evidence to show that the meaning “calamity” was not meant by the survivors of the genocide and their contemporaries.
     2) The word “aghed” is commonly used both in Western and Eastern Armenian. It definitely means “catastrophe” in Classical and Modern Armenian. In the 5th century A.D., as I have indicated, both “yeghern” and “aghed” meant “crime” and “calamity,” as per the New Haigazian Dictionary, but not in the 20th century.
     However, Eastern Armenian uses it only to denote a natural catastrophe (for instance, աղէտի գօտի/ “aghedi kodi” (disaster area), to label the area affected by the 1988 earthquake).
     3) You’re free (and also right) to understand the genocide as the Big Calamity that befell us and altered forever the course of our history. But you have the words Medz Aghed to do that, not Medz Yeghern. You can’t force your individual perception of a meaning over the meaning of a word. Even though the effects of a collective murder/massacre become a man-made calamity for a community (e.g. Columbine, Aurora, Newtown, and so on), you can’t perceive the English words “murder” or “massacre” as synonymous with “calamity,” can you?
     4) The reason for Antranik Dzarugian calling his novel «Սէրը Եղեռնի մէջ» is that he knew, as any literate Armenian did and do know, that Yeghern is the Armenian name for the event (while tseghasbanutiun is not) and tseghasbanutiun is the Armenian translation of the word that designates “the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group”, e.g. “genocide.”
     He probably had also another meaning in mind: love flourishes even when crime (yeghern, without capital letters) is rampant.
     The title of the novel should be translated, accordingly, as “Love in the Time of Crime”? Compare Gabriel Garcia Marquez Novel, “Love in the Time of Cholera.” Incidentally, Garcia Marquez’s original word “colera” means in Spanish both the epidemic infirmity and “human rage” (see English “choleric”); thus, the Colombian novelist may have also had two meanings in mind.
     5) In the example of Dr. Chalabian’s sentence (or any other sentence along the same lines), it is clear that he encompasses everything in that word Yeghern. Not only the actual killings, but also the dispersion of the survivors to save their lives, the usurpation of the lands and the destruction of material and spiritual culture. All that constitutes a c r i m e in legal terms: life endangerment, usurpation of lands, and destruction of private property.
     6) I would suggest you to reread the end of the article. I didn’t sit on the sidelines, as you say. I offered the translation “Great Evil Crime” for Medz Yeghern, reduced, for practical considerations, to “Great Crime.” Therefore, the reasons for using “self-delusional,” however “distastefully titled” my article may seem, are… self-explanatory.

3. Correction: under point 4 of my comment, it should read: “The title of the novel should be translated, accordingly, as “Love in the Time of Crime.”

   • Vartan, I read your commentary. I understand and I leave at that.

     The following popped out in my mind as I read your articles about Yeghern. Sometime in our history there were եղերամայրեր – yegheramayrer. They were women who chanted sad melodies to further stir the emotions of a grieving crowd.

     We were taught about yegheramayrer in our formative years. I do not recall now within what context. As I said, the word popped in my mind as I read your articles. I checked Hratchia Ajarian’s dictionary just to confirm that the word exists and is not a figment of my imagination. It exists and he lists it under yeghern.

     Yegheramayrer then is comprised of yeghern and mayrer (mothers). It further implies to me that word yeghern has been in our lexicon very early on and has some connotation with grieving and sadness.

     Yeghern appears to be a word that is not used objectively but subjectively. It seems to reflects sadness and a grieving along with whatever it conveys – crime if you will, cataclysm as C.K. Garabed wills or calamity as I will or the attempted extermination of the our race, as we generally accept it to mean.

     I will appreciate if you elaborate on yegheramayrer, should you know about them and the connoatation of the word yeghern to inherently convey sadness and grieving as well.

     Yeghern, to me, is a truly an Armenian word conceived by the Armenians for the Armenians.

4. i am totally uninterested in semantics. call it genocide call it yeghern or call it rightful punishment (like the turks do), fact remains: turks are still killing armenians today and we are doing nothing about it, just like back then. sad but true

5. Vahe:
   1) I believe to have explained in my fourth article (December 12) that there are TWO similar roots in Armenian, եղեր (yegher) and եղեռն (yeghern). The first has not survived, but we have the words եղերական (yegheragan, “tragic”) and եղերամայր (yegheramayr, “mourner”) from it. Classical Armenian understood եղեր as meaning “cry, lament.” The New Haigazian Dictionary CONFUSED եղեր and եղեռն and put both under the same meaning.
   2) In the fifth century, yeghern had the meanings “crime,” “evil,” “calamity.” IT LOST THE MEANING OF “CALAMITY” IN MODERN ARMENIAN (late 18th century on). Therefore, there is no relation whatsoever between yegher and yeghern in Modern Armenian.
   3) Hrachia Ajarian listed yegher and yegheramayr under yeghern in the second section of the history of etymologies of the word. IT IS NOT IN THE FIRST SECTION ON HIS ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORD. It means that he silently corrected the New Haigazian Dictionary (which he cited in the second section).
   4) If you think that yeghern conveys a meaning of sadness and grief, you’re right. As I have tried to show, it is because the word, which I have suggested to translate “evil crime” (= “crime,” which already suggests that it is somehow untranslatable, for instance, into English), conveys a meaning of evil that makes it different from the simple (and colloquially used) word “vojir” (crime). A fraud is a crime (vojir), but it isn’t a yeghern. As a literate speaker of the Armenian language, you may understand the nuance.
   5) All words are used subjectively. They evolve over time because of that subjective use. Their use makes their meaning change. This is how “yeghern” has lost its meaning “calamity” since the 18th century. If you want to use “calamity /catastrophe /disaster /cataclysm,” feel free to use the one word that Armenian dictionaries suggest: AGHED. I strongly recommend that you leave “yeghern” alone.

6. Dr. Vartan Matiossian

   Thank you very much for your exhaustive study of the word Yeghern, It is the first of its kind as far as I know.

   Your articles rekindled cherished memories in me of my earliest Armenian language teachers in persons of the two Yetvarts, Daronian and Boyadjian., who for reasons dear to them, opted to use the word Yeghern in the classrooms more so than Ցեղասպանութիւն (tseghaspanoutiun). As I type this note, no other Armenian word comes in my mind for which I harbor the reverence I do for the word Yeghern.

   In few months the President of the United States may offer another public statement about the Armenian Genocide. It is unlikely that he will use the word Genocide. I hope he uses the Armenian word Yeghern.
   Should President Obama use Yeghern, I hope that our pundits will not rush to their computer boards and key in over again articles for our press headlining them, as some did before _ ‘Mr. President it is not Yeghern, it is Genocide’. They should instead try to reach out and educate the non Armenian pubic that the President of the United States has acknowledged to the Armenians the reality of the happening, but that he does not have the political backing and the will of his Administration to proclaim it in its legal term, that it is Genocide.

7. If President Obama uses the term ‘Medz Yeghern’ instead of ‘genocide’ I will feel disappointed that he continues to bow to Turkish pressure and misguided State Department advice. However, I have come to the conclusion that his use of the term should not be seen entirely as a negative. It is our word for the ‘great crime of genocide’ committed against our nation and our media should make sure that everyone knows that President Obama has acknowledged it. Time to get the press releases ready in anticipation of his April 24th statement and spin this in our favor.

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