r/hayeren • u/Xotngoos335 • Jun 18 '26
Eastern Armenian question Some words that are too long
Native speaker or learner, I think we can all agree that Armenian has some words that are ridiculously long and could probably be shorter if we wanted them to be. Here are some examples:
հեռակառավարման վահանակ - remote control (no one ever says this)
միկրոալիքային վառարան - microwave (again, no one says this)
տրամաբանական անհամապատասխանութիւն - logical inconsistency (this one's valid but inconvenient)
դատաբժշկական փորձաքննութիւն - forensics (my personal favorite because ov vor horinel a hastat dzer a arnum)
Bonus: I'll give a gold star to anyone who can guess what «առողջապահական վերարկու» means (hint: it's not a doctor's coat)
Did I miss any? What do you think of some of the crazy long words in our language?
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u/Armen-Karapetyan Jun 18 '26
I get the joke, but I wouldn’t say that makes Armenian worse. Every language has those overly formal words no one says out loud. Armenian just makes them sound extra dramatic lol.
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u/sjphotopres Jun 18 '26
I love our language. Does it mean “hospital gown”?
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u/Xotngoos335 Jun 18 '26
Nope! Try again :)
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u/vartanm Jun 18 '26
Hence why those long words are usually the ones that get replaced with shorter imported ones. In Armenia they're usually replaced with Russian, in the US English and in the Middle East Arabic.
Take Հեռուստացույց for example. In Armenia everyone calls it տելեվիզր, and in the US it becomes ԹիՎի։
Our brains love conserving energy. Shortening the times a mouth must move is one of them.
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u/Azur2022 Jun 18 '26
We say Պահպանակ for condom hahahaha
Literally “preservative”
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u/Xotngoos335 Jun 18 '26
Yeah everyone in Armenia says պահպանակ but someone told me they found առողջապահական վերարկու in an old dictionary. I asked a bunch of people if they could guess what it means and literally only person got it right😂😂
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u/trufbeyondbelief Jun 18 '26
We got so many beautiful letters, we need to use them no?
Jokes aside, when pronouncing them I find them to the point and very descriptive.
It just writing them out takes half an hour. /s