“Armenian Songs of Grikor Mirzaian Suni (1876-1939): Vocal Solos and Duets” 1997 CD booklet pages 18 and 19 show our transliteration system. This chart shows to an English language reader the sounds of the Armenian letters. We have chosen in our new transliterations to use the Eastern Armenian sounds. Our chart shows also the Western Armenian sounds when they differ from the Eastern.

We have chosen a system which uses simply the alphabet as written in English. The only unique mark we have added is an under-dot to indicate the five unaspirated letters and the strongly rolled r. Other than that, our system is normal to any reader/speaker of English. We want readers to be able to say and sing the sounds of the Armenian letters. Then they can learn to sing Suni’s lovely songs, by seeing the transliterations while they listen to the recording.

However, when different transliterations are already established, we may present them also. This is the case in our Armenian Song Bouquet four volumes of music scores of Grikor Mirzaian Suni. These were published in the 1940’s in Philadelphia.

Some of the songs on our 1997 CD are published in these Song Bouquets with slightly different spellings in the English transliteration. Examples are Dooy-Dooy and Tooy-Tooy, Aghgeg Es and Aghkek Es, Gakav Trav and Kakav Trav. The changing letters include b-p, g-k, d-t, ts-dz, ch-j.

Grikor is sometimes spelled Krikor, or Grigor. Mirzaian may be spelled Mirzayan. In Russia, Mirzayan may become Mirzayants, Mirzoeff, or Mirzoyev. Suni, in order to be pronounced with the Armenian sounds, should actually be spelled Siuni, Syuni, Siooni, or Syooni. Sometimes it’s spelled Siwni.

Sometimes Armenian has been transliterated into a second language, then from the second language into English, rather than directly from Armenian. When Russian is the second language, the “h” sound in Armenian is lost because Russian has no “h”. Russian may omit the “h” or replace it with “g” (not usually “kh” though that might be better). A result is that Hambartsoomian may become Ambartsoomian (Hitler becomes Gitler).

When French is the second language, the “oo” sound is written “ou”, which is a clear choice in French, but in English “ou” may have very different sounds as in “though”, “cough”, “enough”. For the “ch” sound in Armenian, French has to add another consonant in front because “ch” in French is pronounced like “sh” in English, and also for the “j” sound, because “j” in French is pronounced “zh”. So the Armenian Tashjian may become Tachdjian. We chose our transliteration system to teach the the English reader to be able to say the correct Armenian vowel and consonant sounds.

There are two major literary dialects in Armenian, and many more spoken dialects. Our transliterations may give a close approximation to the sounds of Armenian. Some native speakers, however, may use some different sounds.