Armenian Language Lessons

Sorry, but there are no pictures with this one.  We start to learn Armenian about 4 weeks before we went to the MTC.  Our sweet tutor Queer Brough did all that she could, but with me, Elder Rich, it was pretty hopeless.  Now for a couple of stories about our progress with the language.

When Sister Rich and I want to try something new, we will ask or look it up in the reference material that Sister  Brough gave us.  We decided that we wanted to buy a whole rotisserie chicken from the stand by our apartment. I was the one to try.  It is very seldom that these guys can understand anything that I say to them, even simple numbers in Armenian. We looked up the words for 1 whole chicken.  I wrote them in my notebook and rehearsed them many times.  Unfortunately,  two things went wrong.  First, it is a mistake to try and translate directly from English to another language.  They don't say whole chicken, just chicken.  Second mistake, I used the word for four rather than chicken.  The guy said to me that he only had two chicken, I said that I only wanted one.  We had better luck the next time.

We have started taking the Marchutnee to work rather than the Metro and the Trolley Bus.  It is only 35 minutes.  The ride is very uncomfortable.  It is a 12 passenger van that can have as many as 35 people in it.  They stop at every bus stop, as long as someone tells them to.  There are people standing up and just crowded in them.  The Sister Missionary that showed us around when we were here told us that their main function in life was to humiliate people.  I have to agree, but they do get you to work.  The phrase to get them to stop is next Bus Stop stop, or kongaroom piek.  The day before, which was Sunday I had been working on a work to add to my Testimony.  The word for the Testimony is kavootchana.  The spelling of these words is just a guess.  Any time I am trying to learn a word, I will rehearse it over and over in my mind.  When it was time to get off the Marchutnee, I told the driver kavootchana piek. He did stop.  I asked Sister Rich if I said it right and she said all aghast, "no".  We had a meeting with our engineer and translator a short time later and told them the story.  They really got a kick out of it, because the way it translated was for the driver to stop sinning.  Now we will get in trouble for breaking the no proselyting rule.

I don't let these little set backs stop me.  I keep trying and Sister Rich keeps telling me how to do it right.  It is a beautiful language.

Elder Rich