We all know that the people living in Karabagh during the Soviet era used to talk Russian and business was done in the same language too. During the post-war era, people started to talk Armenian. There used to be 3-4 Russian schools out of the ten in Stepanakert; currently, none of the 12 schools is Russian. There is only one private Russian school in Stepanakert. With the help of the state, there is one classroom in the #8 school of the capital city where there are mostly foreigners that study. The “Law about Language” has been passed in 1996 in Karabagh and the Language department was founded in January 2005. Recently, the Karabagh Journalists’ Association organized a round table discussion dedicated to language barriers. Some of the participants included head of the Language Department Lernik Hakobyan, Karabagh National Assembly MPs Arpat Avanesyan and Vahram Atanesyan. The head of the language department stated that there has been some supervision going on in some establishments and companies and there have been many violations. In L. Hakobyan’s words, there are certain ministries where business is done with the use of the Russian language. There have also been violations when the department has been forced to appeal to the court. The amount of fees ranges from 50-30 thousand dram. In response to the journalist’s question as to whether or not there are state political figures that have been punished for violations, Hakobyan replied that the state figures have not committed any severe violations for appealing to the court. “There have been cases when I have noticed that the language on the signs and banners of some stores are not in Armenian, but after some warnings the store owners have changed the language. I must mention the fact that there are certain benefactors that still continue violating the law even after getting warnings. We are getting ready to appeal to the court if this continues,” said L. Hakobyan.
During the discussions, the people present talked about the discrepancies in laws. The discussion especially got serious when they started talking about the “law about language” where it is stated that all state figures must speak Armenian fluently. For example, there is no such clause in the “Law about Government” according to which the minister or some official must speak the language fluently. The people gathered were sad to inform that there were many state figures in Karabagh that didn’t speak Armenian fluently. By concluding the seminar, the participants came to the conclusion that it is necessary to make some changes in the “Law about Language” and the law must be discussed by the parties interested and the corresponding specialists.