Introduction Prepositions have a no-fail knack for rocking my confidence in Western Armenian. I see them as a telltale sign of my newness to the language, my hesitation with its grammar and my inclination to overlay English onto a language flailing in its grips. When, in moments of linguistic desperation, I resign myself to a literal translation from English—on a break, rather than in a break; in ten minutes, rather than from ten minutes; to the library rather than just library—not only do I men- tally wince at what I hear as a mistake, but I also sense my complicity in trampling on a minority language as it takes its last stand against a globalized language of power. While these literal translations may seem contrived to my ear, this linguis- tic fusion may, in fact, mark the beginning of a new phase in the history of the language and its speakers. A century ago, Western Armenian was spoken by Armenians in the Ottoman Empire; today, it is the waning language of their descendants living in diaspora on six continents around the world. A century ago, Western Armenian was a language of art and science, of commerce and news, of love and friendship; today, its domains are shrinking as its perception as a relic of the past—incompatible with contemporary life—becomes more entrenched among its native speakers. A century ago, Western Armenian transcended class and generation; today, it vies for the attention of young, upwardly mobile diasporans with few practical reasons to use it. I belong to a growing subset of these young diasporans: new speakers. New speakers, emerging subjects of sociolinguistic research 1 , are students of minority languages who swim against the current of language shift by learning minority— often endangered—languages. In the case of Western Armenian, where the 14 IN SEARCH OF LINGUISTIC LEGITIMACY Western Armenian and the New Speaker Jennifer Manoukian