“Greek is soft, Roman is strong, Hunnic is terrifying, Assyrian is pleading, Persian is graceful, Alan is beautiful, Gothic is sarcastic, Egyptian is flattering and gloomy, Indian is piercing, Armenian is sweet, but it can simultaneously be all other languages and generalize the properties of them”.

With these words of Yeghishe Charents, a student of Mesrop Mashtots and Sahak Partev, a public lecture organized by the National Library of Armenia dedicated to Mother Language Day began, and a meeting with Levon Galstyan, an accomplished linguist, translator, teacher, associate professor, head of the department of television and radio journalism at the Armenian State Pedagogical University.

Levon Galstyan shared his attitude towards language as a living, breathing, and developing substance. The speaker touched upon issues of language and state, language borrowings, literary language, and professional jargon, and the relationship between everyday spoken language and official speech. Levon Galstyan concluded his speech with about two dozen examples of correct and incorrect words, which unfortunately do not go out of use and continue distorting our speech and writing.