Homshetsi ( Armenian : Հոմշեցի , romanized : Homshetsi lizu ; Turkish : Hemşince ) is an archaic Armenian dialect spoken by the eastern and northern group of Hemshin peoples ( Hemşinli ), a people living in northeastern Turkey , Abkhazia , Russia , and Central Asia .
6-606: It has some differences from Armenian spoken in Armenia. It was not a written language until 1995, when linguist Bert Vaux designed an orthographic system for it based on the Turkish alphabet ; the Armenian alphabet was used by Christian immigrants from Hamshen (Northern Hamshenis)—who refer to the language as Homshetsma (Հոմշեցմա) in Russia and Abkhazia . Homshetsi is a spoken language amongst
12-524: A spread glottis . Vaux is frequently consulted by the press for linguistic articles. For example, in 2004 he discussed product names that contain place names, such as Coney Island hot dogs. In 2005 he was interviewed in USA Today regarding the differences in regions of the United States about whether to call carbonated soft drinks "soda", or "pop", or "coke". In 2002–2003 his survey to create
18-773: The Caucasus . Vaux was editor of the journal Annual of Armenian Linguistics from 2001 to 2006 and is co-editor of the book series Oxford Surveys in Generative Phonology . Vaux's Law (as labelled by Avery & Idsardi 2001, Iverson & Salmons 2003), which he first formulated in a 1998 article in Linguistic Inquiry , states that laryngeally unspecified – i.e. voiceless – fricatives become [GW]/[sg] ([Glottal Width]/[spread glottis]) in systems contrasting fricatives without reference to [GW]/[sg]; thus they are to be aspirated or, more technically, to be pronounced with
24-819: The Eastern Hemshinli, also known as the Hopa Hemshinli, who live in a small number of villages in Turkey's Artvin Province and Central Asia . The Western or Rize Hamsheni are a related, geographically separate group living in Rize Province , who spoke Homshetsi until sometime in the 19th century. They now speak only Turkish with many Homshetsi loanwords. A third group, the northern Homshentsik, who live in Russia , Georgia ( Abkhazia ), Armenia , also speak Homshetsi. Homshetsi has linguistic features that indicate it belongs to
30-716: The Western Armenian dialect group; however, the two are generally not mutually intelligible. Homshetsi has close ties to the Armenian dialects formerly found in northeastern Turkey, in particular in Khodorchur and, to a lesser extent, in Trabzon . Because of its extended isolation, Homshetsi contains many archaisms that set it apart from all other Armenian dialects. The language preserves forms found only in Classical and Middle Armenian, and at
36-675: The same time preserves foreign (especially Arabic and Turkish) grammatical and lexical components that were stripped from modern Armenian during the twentieth century. UNESCO has categorised Homshetsi as a language that is "definitely endangered". Bert Vaux Bert Vaux ( / v ɔː k s / ; born November 19, 1968, Houston, Texas ) teaches phonology and morphology at the University of Cambridge . Previously, he taught for nine years at Harvard and three years at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee . Vaux specializes in phonological theory, dialectology, field methodology, and languages of
#259740