Roundtable discussion on ‘Language is homeland: state and language policy’ held in Yerevan

The Yerevan committee of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation Dashnaktsutyun (ARF-D) has organized a roundtable discussion on “Language is homeland: state and language policy.”

Literary critics and politicians participated in the discussion. They noted narrow-mindedness is prevailing now.

Literary critic David Gyurjinyan spoke of the role of the Armenian language and education in schools.

“The government is sponsoring foreign-language TV programs, without any public demand for putting an end to it,” he said.

The expert is critical of textbooks.

“The situation is too bad. When we ask officials how teachers can work with such textbooks, they say teachers can use better textbooks, while they finance the publication of worse books,” Gyurjinyan said.

Art critic Henrik Hovhannisyan is concerned over the “triumph of slang.” He is critical of television.

“Every day we hear television. They speak as they want, a language that has nothing in common with Armenian,” he said.

“A person speaking a grammatically correct language sounds foreign. No law will help us if we do not combine our efforts.”

With respect to the government decision in favor of foreign-language schools, Hovhannisyan said:

“Narrow-mindedness gained the upper hand. People decided that foreign-language education means erudition.”