The book “Stories of Hamshen/Hamshetsnak Fairy Tales” has been released in Turkey in Western Armenian, Turkish and in the Armenian dialect of Hamshen.

The book’s author, Hamshen-Armenian intellectual Mahir Ozkan has modified and presented 24 folk tales about Hamshen and the Hamshen-Armenians, writes tert.am.

In the book released by the Istanbul-based Aras Armenian Publishing House, readers can also see and examine the differences between literary Armenian and the dialect of Hamshen and other features of the Armenian dialect of Hamshen.

Historic Hamshen is located in the northeastern sector of modern-day Turkey. Founded by Prince Hamam Amatuni, the city of Hamamashen can be found on the map with the Turkish name “Hemshin”. Another settlement of Turkic-speaking residents of Hamshen – Chamlihemshin (translated as “Hamshen with fir trees”, in the dialect of Hamshen, “Cham” means fir tree – tert.am) is located a little to the east of Hamamashen. Due to religious and national repressions, several families of Hamshen-Armenians emigrated from Hamshen to Khopa, Ordu, Giresun and Samsun, but they preserved the Armenian language up to the late 1980s. To this day, Hamshen-Armenians in several villages of Khopa speak Armenian fluently.