1 Notes on the Armenian Dialect of Ayntab ♣ Bert Vaux, University of Cambridge Appeared in Annual of Armenian Linguistics 20:55-82 (2000) 1. Introduction It is commonly believed that the Armenians of Ayntab (Armenian An†eb, modern Turkish Gaziantep, both originally from Arabic ¿ayntab) abandoned their Armenian speech in favor of Turkish at a very early period, perhaps as early as the sixteenth century (see for example Aça®ean 1911:30, Kiwlêsêrean 1929:17). For this reason, Ayntab is omitted from most surveys of Armenian dialects (cf. inter alia «aribyan 1953, Grigoryan 1957, Ôahukyan 1972, and the Soviet Armenian Encyclopedia). Coc‘ikean 1947 mentions that the Ayntab Armenians originally spoke Turkish and Arabic, but notes that the use of Armenian in Ayntab increases after 1850, and that the Armenian they employ is a local dialect, not Standard Armenian; he provides a word list and text sample in this dialect (1947:64-65). E@ia K‘asuni (1953:313ff.) adds that the Ayntab Armenians continued to use a wealth of Armenian words and phrases in their dialect of Turkish, and in fact preserved also a significant number of Armenian songs, sayings, poems, and idioms. I would add that at least some of the Ayntab Armenians have always spoken Armenian up to the present day, though (judging by the Ayntab Armenians I have met) the variety that they speak is much closer to Standard Armenian than to the local dialect described below. However, the Armenian words and expressions that the Ayntab Armenians preserve in their Turkish are drawn from the original Ayntab dialect, rather than from Standard Armenian. The purpose of this article is to survey the Armenian spoken in Ayntab until early in this century, and to ascertain the place of this variety within the sphere of modern Armenian dialects. The primary source for the present paper is a diary completed in 1964 by the Reverend Dikran Kherlopian, a copy of which was kindly made available to me by his grandson Krikor Bezjian. Reverend Kherlopian was born in Ayntab, and died in Beirut in 1969 at the age of 77. The relevant portion of the diary consists of eight handwritten pages, containing lists of individual words, expressions, and personal names used by the Ayntab Armenians. I have arranged the words and phrases below in (English) alphabetical order, and augmented the original list with English glosses and commentary where possible. I note relevant parallels to the two other primary sources on the Ayntab dialect, Babgên Vardapet 1900 (hereafter referred to as “B”), and K‘asuni 1953 (henceforth “K”), as well as to comparative materials in Aça®ean's etymological dictionary (1971-79; henceforth “HAB”). The abbreviation “T” marks Turkish forms, “P” indicates Persian, "A" Arabic, and "Gk" Greek. 2. Transcription Notes The orthography employed by Rev. Kherlopian is somewhat complicated, and does not always indicate the actual pronunciation in a way that will be clear to all readers. For this reason, I have found it necessary to distinguish between spellings, which are given in Armenian script, and pronunciations, which are given in transcription. For example, what Rev. Kherlopian writes as a®åsta' is transcribed as a®åsda, reflecting the fact that the t is pronounced with its Western Armenian value [d]. ♣ I am deeply indebted to Krikor Bezjian for copying portions of his grandfather's diary for me, and to Hagop Hachikian for the many hours he spent helping me to decipher the handwriting and language in the diary. Thanks also to Harutyun Maranci for comments on a later draft of this paper.