Eric Papazian: “Having an Armenian surname was unusual in Norway”

Norway was dominated by Denmark in a union for 400 years (ca. 1400-1814), and used Danish in writing (the Scandinavian languages are closely related – like dialects). Because of this, the upper classes developed a mixed Dano-Norwegian spoken language, which, after the union with Denmark was broken in 1814 and because of national romanticism, gradually replaced Danish in writing. This Dano-Norwegian spoken and written language is now officially called Bokmål (book language). The lower classes continued speaking Norwegian dialects, and in the 19th century a written language based on the dialects was constructed, called Nynorsk (New Norwegian). But it never succeeded in replacing Bokmål, and has always been used by a (diminishing) minority.

The result of this is a majority standard language (Bokmål) that has social but not national prestige (because of it is partly Danish origin), while the dialects are recognized as genuinely Norwegian. But nationalism means less today, and because of the social prestige of Bokmål and internal migration the dialects are being influenced by Bokmål, and some of them are threatened. So it seems we may be following the example of the rest of Europe, with the standard gradually replacing the dialects, with a delay of 150 years or so.

For me it was interesting to find out there is a Norwegian linguist with Armenian family name. Could you please tell us your family story?

My mother was a Norwegian girl from Oslo who went to Paris after school, in the 1930s. There she met my father, who was an Armenian born in Varna in Bulgaria. His parents came from Istanbul, but moved to Bulgaria and later to Romania before the genocide. His sister married a wealthy French Armenian who owned a factory, and after school my father joined her in Paris to work with his brother-in-law. He married my mother, and I was born in 1939. Soon after, my father was called out as a French soldier, was taken prisoner and spent three years as a prisoner of war in Germany. During this time I and my mother lived with his parents in Bucharest. They spoke both Armenian and Turkish, but could also speak French, and that became the common language, since my mother did not know the other two. So I grew up speaking French. When my father was released, we joined him in Paris and later went to Norway, in 1946. My parents bought a house in a remote valley in the middle of southern Norway, where I went to school. I had to learn Norwegian in two varieties: Bokmål – my mother’s language – at home, and the local dialect outside. After more than 70 years, I still can switch between the two. That is the source of my interest in dialects.

I assume you are connected to Vahram Papazian – the greatest theater actor of Armenia in the 20^th century, who was also from Constantinople.