I live in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I am an assistant professor for the Legal Aspects of Armenian Genocide course, Professor Roberto Malkassian is in charge and I am his aide.  We teach on Mondays and Thursdays at Law School, University of Buenos Aires. We also host the Chair of Holocaust, Genocides and Anti-discrimination League Declaration, where we organize many activities regarding our Medz Yeghern, as well as other crimes against humanity worldwide.

Going back to my life whether in Yerevan, Gyumri or Karabakh, how do I deal with my Armenian spoken interviews, workshops, conferences?

My name is Luciana Minassian, I am a lawyer, I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, I studied Armenian, Western Armenian, at Surp Krikor Lusavorich school .

I have been engaged in several trips to Armenia, starting from May 2016 until this past June 2018.  

In 2016, I had the honor of having an almost two hour meeting with the former Minister of Diaspora for the first time in Ministry of Diaspora. The problem was, I had a hard time understanding a lot of the words, I can say that I almost did not understand an entire sentence. I did not have the courage to tell my two other colleagues (this meeting we attended was on behalf of CNAO or NCWA, National Congress of Western Armenians, an NGO based in Paris, in which I have the honor to be a member) I didn’t understand the entire purpose of the mission, or even to ask for a translator. I felt very embarrassed to accept the situation.  

On that trip, I also participated in the First edition of the Aurora Prize, where I hardly had problems because everyone speaks English due to so many international guests, besides the fact the I had also been invited for being a volunteer at the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, which is about Jewish and now also Armenian rescuers during both the Holocaust and Armenian Genocide. I also went to the Global Forum, but there were translation services.

The NGO meetings were also held in Armenian language, so I was a little desperate, but again, did not ask for translations, the issues discussed were very interesting to me, I wanted to become a participant…

The following trip, on  December 2016, I had the honor to attend a workshop of lawyers at the Armenian Constitutional Court. The President of the Court delivered his speech in Armenian, which again happened to be very complicated for me, mostly because the political and legal terms were still unknown or unfamiliar, so once again, the lady from Argentina felt too shy to ask for a translation, since everyone else seemed to be dealing with it perfectly fine.

On that same trip, I was invited to Yerevan State University, to hold a class explaining our activities in Argentina, which I delivered in English and was translated into Armenian by my host. Right after, I met some beautiful people, staff from there, and they brought two big books, after having a laugh due to my language barrier, so I left with Western and Eastern Armenian Language course books.

“Go back and study a little,” they said when I left, with smiles on their faces. Every time I did not understand something, I asked any hayastantsi person “why do they keep telling me to study Western Armenian? Whenever I come here I end up dealing with this situation.” Everyone answered is the same, Luciana, this is in order to preserve the cultural identity, our inheritage, the language we almost lost due to deportations and massacres more than hundred years ago.

The following day, I attended the Talish press conference with NKR Artsakh ombudsman, Doctor Ruben Melikyan, a conference which I completely understood due to the fact that the previous night, Ruben handled me an English version of the Second Interim Report on Violations of Human Rights during April 2016 four days war. I came back from Talish to Yerevan with some journalists, my ArmEnglish was fine during the entire mountain trip, they still remember me, even my driver, whom I  had met during my last visit…

Year 2017, I had been to Armenia twice, luckily. The first time, in May, during the Aurora Prize, I had no problem at all, even though in the meantime ministry’s appointments gave me a hard time again…

The second time, during September, the main purpose of the trip was the Diaspora Conference and some important meetings with the CNAO NGO. I chose the Foreign Affairs panel at the Diaspora Conference.

First panel of Foreign Affairs started, and I was overwhelmed with so many political terms, I felt completely lost, I was so sad, I travelled almost 30 hours from Buenos Aires, to be seated right there, at Karen Demirjian’s Complex, not understanding a sentence.

Even worse than me were the Mexican delegation, although they are Armenians they did not speak Armenian at all. I was lucky and by the time the panel of Genocide took place, I got myself a translator, even though this being our topic made it easier for me to follow the speakers.

The third panel, I met a friend who speaks both Western and Eastern Armenian, I asked him to stay next to me, I did not want to miss out on any talks again, there was a good talk about Oriental Studies that I did not want to miss.

On this September 2017 trip, I must say, there was a Turkish delegation who happened to be in Yerevan in order to pay a visit to NKR the following day. That was my last night in Yerevan, and I received an invitation for dinner with them. It was only about Turks and Armenians having a lovely evening in perfect brotherhood. I do not have a problem in confessing that my deepest wish is normalization of relations with Turkey. So in that chain of thought, I spent a beautiful dinner in which the only languages spoken, symbolically, were Turkish and Armenian, and I can not put in words how moving the entire experience was.  

This June 2018 trip, I decided not to hide my poor Armenian expressions anymore, and during a Gyumri trip, which was organized on behalf of my father, who died last May 2017, in order to move the Sahakyan family from a Domik to an apartment. So, if you want to amuse yourselves, you can take a look at the Aravod report, and you can get my entire statement…. Feel free to laugh, even though I am speaking about serious topics.

Conclusion, or not conclusion at all, I will continue to visit the Motherland as regularly as possible, where I feel at home, I will keep on speaking my not very reliable Western Armenian, and I commit myself to use less English and more Armenian in the future.

By the way, I would like to give a big shnorhavor to our country, and hope the best for it, as I always do.

The rest of the year, whenever I am not in Armenia, I stay updated 24-7 by different social media channels.

Instagram, a place for beautiful pictures of views and carpets and culture…

Since 2009, I have mostly been using the platform Twitter, and I believe Armenian local users of Twitter has increased by probably significantly in these 2 last years. It took me some time to have a nice bunch of Twitter accounts from Armenia that I could benefit from. But now they are the first ones to appear on my timeline….

Facebook seems to have a broader audience in Armenia, even though I find it a little bit slower in terms of time,  i.e., if I want to stay updated with Armenian news, I will always get them first on Twitter and then find out they are posted on FB the following day.  

The only exception to this situation with FB, I believe happened during Velvet Revolution, due to the fact that there were many live streams too, and there was one that I especially enjoyed because it had English translations. Everyday I wake up and religiously, instead of local news, I go to Twitter, and find out about Armenian news…

The only thing I do not get to know by myself, maybe time and experience will help me to fix that, is what the sources I read are, and I can’t really tell. But at least I get to be informed.

Armenia is a little but a precious country, internationally speaking․ Тhere is so much more that Armenia can offer besides the local culture, and it is slowly becoming a place where everyone gathers․ Coming back to the topic, the country must also have its echoes on social media.  Armenia is a place where dialogues of the world happen, let’s not belittle or misuse this beautiful advantage. We are the treasure of the South Caucasus.