Dialect

In 1985, I was in the second grade. My mother accompanied me to school on my first day. I really didn't know what to expect since it was my first time attending a public school in California. My mother left as soon as I met my new teacher who stood holding a sign that said "Second Grade" in bold black letters. The students lined up in rows with their respective grade levels and prepared to make their way to their classrooms with their teachers. I stood in line behind a girl who, at first glance, resembled a boy. She had short hair and wore round glasses and carried an orange lunch box that had a picture of "Mr. T" on it. We started talking and I learned that my soon-to-be-friend was an Armenian tomboy named Carolyn.

Here's an answer to questions raised by Allen Brandstater ("Columnist raises some questions," Community Commentary, April 12) and Patrick Azadian ("Going tribal during elections," From the Margins, March 7): When I read Azadian's column I thought, "Is he referring to the Armenian tribe?" I am a member of the short, funny last-name tribe (Jones), difficult to pronounce by some other tribes I am a 48-year resident of Glendale, and I thought of the Armenians as one solitary tribe. Then, thanks to Ani Amirkhanian, a Glendale News-Press staff writer, I got a clearer picture.

It strikes you only a few minutes into “The Playboy of the Western World” how absolutely authentic the presentation feels. The set, the costumes, the characters, the language, all of them working in harmony to quickly transport the audience like a time machine to early 19th-century Ireland. After seeing a few shows at A Noise Within over the past year, I realize now that authenticity is their calling card. “Noises Off” plunged you into the ultra-realistic backstage drama of British theater.

Beneath a starry sky, Sosé Thomassian and Allen Yekikian held each other on their wedding night, arms looped around hips, eyes locked, for more than 20 minutes so the photographer could capture what would become their favorite wedding photo. Back at the wedding reception in a lakeside Armenian town, the photographer showed off the shot and the crowd cooed. The couple got their wedding, but there will be no first anniversary. About eight months after the wedding, on May 10, Thomassian and Yekikian died in a head-on car crash while on a weekend getaway in Georgia, Armenia's neighbor to the north.

Adultery, infanticide, overtones of incest and patricidal urges: Eugene O'Neill's 1924 American classic, “Desire Under the Elms,” with its deliberate evocation of mythic Greek tragedy, caused an uproar when it was first produced. Indeed, a 1926 production in Los Angeles was deemed so obscene that its actors were arrested. In reality, of course, the stage has never been a stranger to all manner of sexual dysfunction and brutality. And the shock value of O'Neill's play about the converging fates of a rigid tyrant obsessed with the farm he has scratched from stony ground, the sons who covet it and a seductive new stepmother with a predatory eye - may seem somewhat blunted by today's measure.

Jackson Bell Now when emergency workers have to respond to homes where the residents don't speak English, they have a useful new tool. Glendale Fire Chief Chris Gray and his staff, while at the city's Civil Service Commission meeting this week, introduced "Bridging the Gap," a translation guide that provides phonetic pronunciations for 36 phrases helpful for firefighters and paramedics. The phrases include, "Do you have pain?"; "Are you taking any medications?"

ANI AMIRKHANIAN Third in a three-part series. In the past weeks I have been looking at the relationships between Armenian sub-groups. Now, I want to turn my attention to the Lebanese Armenians, the last sub-group I will be discussing in this series. Like the other two Armenian sub-groups, the Lebanese Armenian community is isolated in its own enclave and members tend to group with their "own kind." Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic, in my opinion, about Lebanese Armenians or "Arevmedahyes," as they are known, is their very distinctive dialect.

The American Dialect Society recently announced its word of the year: "truthiness." For those of you who don't spend your days glued to any of the myriad cable channels that cover the exciting world of professional word-smithing, the American Dialect Society is a group that has crowned itself an authority for sanctioning a word of the year. This year, "truthiness" is their pick. "'Truthiness' refers to the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true," the society reports on its website.

To serve a diverse population, Glendale translates several documents - from police forms to community brochures - into multiple languages, but differing dialects and incorrect translations make some materials difficult to understand, according to an internal audit report. Translations are currently done in a patchwork fashion, which could lead to grammatical and spelling mistakes, officials found. Some departments rely on internal staff or local church leaders to lend a hand in translating documents into Armenian, Spanish and Korean, the most commonly used secondary languages.

Adultery, infanticide, overtones of incest and patricidal urges: Eugene O'Neill's 1924 American classic, “Desire Under the Elms,” with its deliberate evocation of mythic Greek tragedy, caused an uproar when it was first produced. Indeed, a 1926 production in Los Angeles was deemed so obscene that its actors were arrested. In reality, of course, the stage has never been a stranger to all manner of sexual dysfunction and brutality. And the shock value of O'Neill's play about the converging fates of a rigid tyrant obsessed with the farm he has scratched from stony ground, the sons who covet it and a seductive new stepmother with a predatory eye - may seem somewhat blunted by today's measure.

It strikes you only a few minutes into “The Playboy of the Western World” how absolutely authentic the presentation feels. The set, the costumes, the characters, the language, all of them working in harmony to quickly transport the audience like a time machine to early 19th-century Ireland. After seeing a few shows at A Noise Within over the past year, I realize now that authenticity is their calling card. “Noises Off” plunged you into the ultra-realistic backstage drama of British theater.

Here's an answer to questions raised by Allen Brandstater ("Columnist raises some questions," Community Commentary, April 12) and Patrick Azadian ("Going tribal during elections," From the Margins, March 7): When I read Azadian's column I thought, "Is he referring to the Armenian tribe?" I am a member of the short, funny last-name tribe (Jones), difficult to pronounce by some other tribes I am a 48-year resident of Glendale, and I thought of the Armenians as one solitary tribe. Then, thanks to Ani Amirkhanian, a Glendale News-Press staff writer, I got a clearer picture.

In 1985, I was in the second grade. My mother accompanied me to school on my first day. I really didn't know what to expect since it was my first time attending a public school in California. My mother left as soon as I met my new teacher who stood holding a sign that said "Second Grade" in bold black letters. The students lined up in rows with their respective grade levels and prepared to make their way to their classrooms with their teachers. I stood in line behind a girl who, at first glance, resembled a boy. She had short hair and wore round glasses and carried an orange lunch box that had a picture of "Mr. T" on it. We started talking and I learned that my soon-to-be-friend was an Armenian tomboy named Carolyn.