The Armenian Language in the Bay Area Project (ALBA)

I am the director and founder of the Armenian Language in the Bay Area Project (ALBA). The project has four main goals:

• To create a public archive/corpus of recordings of Bay Area Armenian for future linguistic, historical, and anthropological research;

• To create opportunities for UC Berkeley undergraduate students to engage with the Armenian language and culture through research;

• To understand how the Armenian language varies across social identities, and how it may be changing in the Bay Area; and

• To generate findings which can support and promote existing efforts to maintain the (Western) Armenian language.

We currently have six Armenian undergraduate students working on the project, earning course credit in Linguistics and Armenian Studies.

This project is supported by the UC Berkeley Armenian Studies Program and Department of Linguistics.

If you are interested in participating in this project or helping spread the word, please see our flyer below!