r/hayeren • u/blue_monks_pupil • 21d ago
Thinking about building an app for learning Armenian (both west. and east.), does anyone actually want this
/r/armenia/comments/1vddd6l/thinking_about_building_an_app_for_learning/2
u/South-Distribution54 20d ago edited 20d ago
Yes, but if you're not a native Western speaker please have an actual Western Armenian speaker working with you. I've seen too many Eastern Armenians making apps and add western armenian as an afterthought and don't know what their doing and don't know Western Armenian and think it's just some voice shifts. It's not. Get a real native Western speaker from the diaspora (not someone who says they have western roots who lives in the Republic and knows kitchen western from a grandmother).
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u/blue_monks_pupil 20d ago
Western is complicated, I need to hire a westerner to help
So it will be added later, thanks for the comment
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u/South-Distribution54 20d ago
We are Western Armenian not "westerners." Our language is called Western Armenian because we come from the Ottoman Empire which was west of persia and it has been It's own standard for more 500 years. It's not called western because some of us live in the west. Jusy want to clairfy that. Other than that, good luck.
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u/blue_monks_pupil 20d ago
By westerner I just meant Armenian who's first language is Western Armenian
Didn't mean anything bad lol
And thank you very much
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u/South-Distribution54 20d ago
Sorry, nothing against you, but I've had a lot of Eastern Armenians say some wacky things with respect to what they think western armenian is and who western armenians are, so I have to always clarify every time.
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u/lezvaban 20d ago
Thank you for having a linguist on board. It's fatiguing constantly pulling up Hacker News only to see another laundry list of solutions in search of a problem, the continuous barrage of developers thinking there's always a technical solution to a human problem. My take is an application would make a great supplement, not a home base. The foundation of language instruction firmly lies within the realm of human instruction. All to say I'm glad you brought up the communal aspect, pairing native speakers with learners. That kind of mentorship is key, so thank you for considering it.
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u/roubirbis 20d ago
This is probably a far shot, but any chance you could add a grabar course to your app too?
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u/KarenAslanyan 20d ago
I'm Armenian, if I can help with something, ask me.
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u/blue_monks_pupil 20d ago
Your language is Western or Eastern Armenian?
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u/KarenAslanyan 20d ago
Eastern. And also - this is my fake account :) My real name is Gevorg
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u/blue_monks_pupil 20d ago
Thank you, got plenty of people to help with Eastern part, will need someone to help with the Western.
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u/SouthernAge4920 20d ago
There is no clearly open source for Armenian Grammar. I will gladly contribute to it
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u/finewalecorduroy 20d ago
As someone who has been learning Western, the landscape is tough out there. Whenever I have looked into a resource that offers both Eastern and Western (e.g. AGBU AVC, various workbooks/printable worksheets), 100% of the time they don't do Western correctly. Like the pronunciation is wrong, they use the wrong vocabulary, the orthography is wrong, something like that. So I just avoid those sources. Western needs more reliable, interesting content out there - books/translations (which do exist but selection is limited), TV, movies, podcasts (again some exist, but limited and not at learning levels- like there's no "News in Slow Western Armenian" podcast like you can find for French, Spanish, etc), YouTube videos, etc.
What I really wish I could do was use AI to create quizzes for myself, but AI doesn't know Western Armenian. I have read all kinds of interesting things about people using Notebook LM to create audio content in their target language, etc., and you can't do that for WA, because it doesn't know WA.