Armenian (
classical: ,
reformed: , , ) is an
Indo-European language and an independent branch of that family of languages. It is the official language of
Armenia
Armenia (), , group=pron officially the Republic of Armenia,, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of Western Asia.The UNbr>classification of world regions places Armenia in Western Asia; the CIA World Factbook , , and ' ...
. Historically spoken in the
Armenian Highlands, today Armenian is widely spoken throughout the
Armenian diaspora
The Armenian diaspora refers to the communities of Armenians outside Armenia and other locations where Armenians are considered an indigenous population. Since antiquity, Armenians have established communities in many regions throughout the world. ...
. Armenian is written in its own
writing system
A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable fo ...
, the
Armenian alphabet
The Armenian alphabet ( hy, Հայոց գրեր, ' or , ') is an alphabetic writing system used to write Armenian. It was developed around 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian linguist and ecclesiastical leader. The system originally had ...
, introduced in 405 AD by the priest
Mesrop Mashtots Mesrob or Mesrop ( hy, Մեսրոպ) is an Armenian given name.
Mesrob / Mesrop may refer to:
* Mesrop Mashtots, also Saint Mesrop, Armenian monk, theologian and linguist. Inventor of the Armenian alphabet
** Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient M ...
. The total number of Armenian speakers worldwide is estimated between 5 and 7 million.
History
Classification and origins
Armenian is an independent branch of the
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
. It is of interest to linguists for its distinctive
phonological change
In historical linguistics, phonological change is any sound change that alters the distribution of phonemes in a language. In other words, a language develops a new system of oppositions among its phonemes. Old contrasts may disappear, new ones ...
s within that family. Armenian exhibits
more satemization than centumization, although it is not classified as belonging to either of these subgroups. Some linguists tentatively conclude that Armenian,
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
(and
Phrygian) and
Indo-Iranian were dialectally close to each other;
[''Handbook of Formal Languages'' (1997]
p. 6
within this hypothetical dialect group, Proto-Armenian was situated between
Proto-Greek
The Proto-Greek language (also known as Proto-Hellenic) is the Indo-European language which was the last common ancestor of all varieties of Greek, including Mycenaean Greek, the subsequent ancient Greek dialects (i.e., Attic, Ionic, Aeo ...
(
centum
Languages of the Indo-European family are classified as either centum languages or satem languages according to how the dorsal consonants (sounds of "K", "G" and "Y" type) of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) developed. An e ...
subgroup) and
Proto-Indo-Iranian (
satem
Languages of the Indo-European family are classified as either centum languages or satem languages according to how the dorsal consonants (sounds of "K", "G" and "Y" type) of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) developed. An ...
subgroup). Ronald I. Kim has noted unique morphological developments connecting Armenian to
Balto-Slavic languages
The Balto-Slavic languages form a branch of the Indo-European family of languages, traditionally comprising the Baltic and Slavic languages. Baltic and Slavic languages share several linguistic traits not found in any other Indo-European branc ...
.
Armenia was a monolingual country by the 2nd century BC at the latest. Its language has a long literary history, with a 5th-century Bible translation as its oldest surviving text. Its vocabulary has historically been influenced by
Western Middle Iranian languages, particularly
Parthian Parthian may be:
Historical
* A demonym "of Parthia", a region of north-eastern of Greater Iran
* Parthian Empire (247 BC – 224 AD)
* Parthian language, a now-extinct Middle Iranian language
* Parthian shot, an archery skill famously employed by ...
; its derivational morphology and syntax were also affected by
language contact with Parthian, but to a lesser extent. Contact with Greek,
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
, and
Syriac Syriac may refer to:
*Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic
*Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region
* Syriac alphabet
** Syriac (Unicode block)
** Syriac Supplement
* Neo-Aramaic languages a ...
also resulted in a number of loanwords. There are two standardized modern literary forms,
Eastern Armenian and
Western Armenian
Western Armenian ( Classical spelling: , ) is one of the two standardized forms of Modern Armenian, the other being Eastern Armenian. It is based mainly on the Istanbul Armenian dialect, as opposed to Eastern Armenian, which is mainly base ...
, with which most contemporary dialects are
mutually intelligible.
Although Armenians were known to history much earlier (for example, they were mentioned in the 6th-century BC
Behistun Inscription and in
Xenophon
Xenophon of Athens (; grc, Ξενοφῶν ; – probably 355 or 354 BC) was a Greek military leader, philosopher, and historian, born in Athens. At the age of 30, Xenophon was elected commander of one of the biggest Greek mercenary armies o ...
's 4th century BC history, ''
The Anabasis''), the oldest surviving Armenian-language writing is etched in stone on Armenian temples and is called
Mehenagir. The
Armenian alphabet
The Armenian alphabet ( hy, Հայոց գրեր, ' or , ') is an alphabetic writing system used to write Armenian. It was developed around 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian linguist and ecclesiastical leader. The system originally had ...
was created by
Mesrop Mashtots Mesrob or Mesrop ( hy, Մեսրոպ) is an Armenian given name.
Mesrob / Mesrop may refer to:
* Mesrop Mashtots, also Saint Mesrop, Armenian monk, theologian and linguist. Inventor of the Armenian alphabet
** Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient M ...
in 405, at which time it had 36 letters. He is also credited by some with the creation of the
Georgian alphabet and the
Caucasian Albanian alphabet.
While Armenian constitutes the sole member of the Armenian branch of the Indo-European family, Aram Kossian has suggested that the hypothetical
Mushki
The Mushki (sometimes transliterated as Muški) were an Iron Age people of Anatolia who appear in sources from Assyria but not from the Hittites. Several authors have connected them with the Moschoi (Μόσχοι) of Greek sources and the Geor ...
language may have been a (now extinct) Armenic language.
Early contacts
W. M. Austin (1942) concluded that there was early contact between Armenian and
Anatolian languages, based on what he considered common archaisms, such as the lack of a feminine gender and the absence of inherited long vowels. However, unlike shared innovations (or ''
synapomorphies''), the common retention of archaisms (or ''
symplesiomorphy'') is not considered conclusive evidence of a period of common isolated development. There are words used in Armenian that are generally believed to have been borrowed from Anatolian languages, particularly from
Luwian
The Luwians were a group of Anatolian peoples who lived in central, western, and southern Anatolia, in present-day Turkey, during the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. They spoke the Luwian language, an Indo-European language of the Anatolian sub-fam ...
, although some researchers have identified possible
Hittite loanwords as well. One notable loanword from Anatolian is Armenian ''xalam'', "skull", cognate to Hittite ''ḫalanta'', "head".
In 1985, the Soviet linguist
Igor M. Diakonoff noted the presence in
Classical Armenian of what he calls a "Caucasian substratum" identified by earlier scholars, consisting of loans from the
Kartvelian and
Northeast Caucasian languages
The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestani or ''Vainakh-Daghestani'', is a family of languages spoken in the Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia and in Northern Azerbaijan as well as in ...
.
Noting that
Hurro-Urartian-speaking peoples inhabited the Armenian homeland in the second millennium BC, Diakonoff identifies in Armenian a Hurro-Urartian substratum of social, cultural, and animal and plant terms such as ''
ałaxin'' "slave girl" ( ← Hurr. ''al(l)a(e)ḫḫenne''), ''cov'' "sea" ( ← Urart. ''ṣûǝ'' "(inland) sea"), ''
ułt'' "camel" ( ← Hurr. ''uḷtu''), and ''
xnjor'' "apple (tree)" ( ← Hurr. ''ḫinzuri''). Some of the terms he gives admittedly have an
Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to:
* Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire
* Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language
* Akkadian literature, literature in this language
* Akkadian cuneiform
Cuneiform is a logo- syllabi ...
or
Sumerian provenance, but he suggests they were borrowed through Hurrian or Urartian. Given that these borrowings do not undergo
sound changes characteristic of the development of Armenian from
Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo- ...
, he dates their borrowing to a time before the written record but after the
Proto-Armenian language
Proto-Armenian is the earlier, unattested stage of the Armenian language which has been reconstructed by linguists. As Armenian is the only known language of its branch of the Indo-European languages, the comparative method cannot be used to re ...
stage.
Contemporary linguists, such as
Hrach Martirosyan
Hrach K. Martirosyan ( hy, Հրաչ Մարտիրոսյան; born in Vanadzor in 1964) is an Armenian linguist. He is currently Lecturer in Eastern Armenian in the department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at University of California, Los ...
, have rejected many of the Hurro-Urartian and Northeast Caucasian origins for these words and instead suggest native Armenian etymologies, leaving the possibility that these words may have been loaned into Hurro-Urartian and Caucasian languages from Armenian, and not vice versa.
[Hrach K. Martirosyan. ''Etymological Dictionary of the Armenian Inherited Lexicon.'' Brill. 2009.] A notable example is ''
arciv'', meaning "eagle," believed to have been the origin of Urartian ''Arṣibi'' and Northeast Caucasian ''arzu''. This word is derived from Proto-Indo-European ''*h₂r̥ǵipyós'', with cognates in
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
(ऋजिप्य, ''ṛjipyá''),
Avestan (''erezef''), and Greek (αἰγίπιος, ''aigípios''). Hrach Martirosyan and Armen Petrosyan propose additional borrowed words of Armenian origin loaned into Urartian and vice versa, including grammatical words and parts of speech, such as Urartian ''eue'' ("and"), attested in the earliest Urartian texts and likely a loan from Armenian (compare to Armenian , ultimately from Proto-Indo-European ''
*h₁epi''). Other loans from Armenian into Urartian includes personal names, toponyms, and names of deities.
Loan words from
Iranian languages
The Iranian languages or Iranic languages are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian Plateau.
The Iranian languages are groupe ...
, along with the other ancient accounts such as that of Xenophon above, initially led linguists to erroneously classify Armenian as an Iranian language. Scholars such as
Paul de Lagarde
Paul Anton de Lagarde (2 November 1827 – 22 December 1891) was a German biblical scholar and orientalist, sometimes regarded as one of the greatest orientalists of the 19th century. Lagarde's strong support of anti-Semitism, vocal opposition ...
and F. Müller believed that the similarities between the two languages meant that Armenian belonged to the
Iranian language family.
The distinctness of Armenian was recognized when philologist
Heinrich Hübschmann
Johann Heinrich Hübschmann (1 July 1848 – 20 January 1908) was a German philologist.
Life
Hübschmann was born on 1 July 1848 at Erfurt. He studied Oriental philology at Jena, Tübingen, Leipzig, and Munich; in 1876 he became professor of Ira ...
(1875)
used the
comparative method
In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards t ...
to distinguish two layers of Iranian words from the older Armenian
vocabulary
A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the la ...
. He showed that Armenian often had two morphemes for one concept, that the non-Iranian components yielded a consistent
Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo- ...
pattern distinct from Iranian, and that the inflectional morphology was different from that of Iranian languages.
Graeco-Armenian hypothesis
The hypothesis that Greek is Armenian's closest living relative originates with
Holger Pedersen (1924), who noted that the number of Greek-Armenian lexical cognates is greater than that of agreements between Armenian and any other Indo-European language.
Antoine Meillet (1925, 1927) further investigated morphological and phonological agreement and postulated that the parent languages of Greek and Armenian were dialects in immediate geographical proximity during the Proto-Indo-European period. Meillet's hypothesis became popular in the wake of his book ''Esquisse d'une histoire de la langue latine'' (1936).
Georg Renatus Solta
Georg Renatus Solta (18 April 1915 in Vienna – 2 May 2005) was an Austrian Indo-Europeanist who specialized in Balkan linguistics.
Works
*1960, ''Die Stellung des Armenischen im Kreise der Indogermanischen Sprachen'', Vienna
*1965, ''Palatalisi ...
(1960) does not go as far as postulating a Proto-Graeco-Armenian stage, but he concludes that considering both the lexicon and morphology, Greek is clearly the dialect to be most closely related to Armenian.
Eric P. Hamp (1976, 91) supports the Graeco-Armenian thesis and even anticipates a time "when we should speak of Helleno-Armenian" (meaning the postulate of a Graeco-Armenian proto-language). Armenian shares the
augment
Augment or augmentation may refer to:
Language
*Augment (Indo-European), a syllable added to the beginning of the word in certain Indo-European languages
* Augment (Bantu languages), a morpheme that is prefixed to the noun class prefix of nouns ...
and a negator derived from the set phrase in the
Proto-Indo-European language
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-E ...
("never anything" or "always nothing"), the representation of word-initial
laryngeals
The laryngeal theory is a theory in the historical linguistics of the Indo-European languages positing that:
* The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) had a series of phonemes beyond those reconstructable by the comparative method. That is, the ...
by prothetic vowels, and other phonological and morphological peculiarities with Greek. Nevertheless, as Fortson (2004) comments, "by the time we reach our earliest Armenian records in the 5th century AD, the evidence of any such early kinship has been reduced to a few tantalizing pieces".
Greco-Armeno-Aryan hypothesis
Graeco-(Armeno)-Aryan is a hypothetical
clade within the
Indo-European family
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
, ancestral to the
Greek language
Greek ( el, label= Modern Greek, Ελληνικά, Elliniká, ; grc, Ἑλληνική, Hellēnikḗ) is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece, Cyprus, southern Italy ( Calabria and Salento), southe ...
, the Armenian language, and the
Indo-Iranian languages
The Indo-Iranian languages (also Indo-Iranic languages or Aryan languages) constitute the largest and southeasternmost extant branch of the Indo-European language family (with over 400 languages), predominantly spoken in the geographical subre ...
. Graeco-Aryan unity would have become divided into
Proto-Greek
The Proto-Greek language (also known as Proto-Hellenic) is the Indo-European language which was the last common ancestor of all varieties of Greek, including Mycenaean Greek, the subsequent ancient Greek dialects (i.e., Attic, Ionic, Aeo ...
and
Proto-Indo-Iranian by the mid-3rd millennium BC. Conceivably,
Proto-Armenian
Proto-Armenian is the earlier, unattested stage of the Armenian language which has been reconstructed by linguists. As Armenian is the only known language of its branch of the Indo-European languages, the comparative method cannot be used to re ...
would have been located between Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian, consistent with the fact that Armenian shares certain features only with Indo-Iranian (the ''
satem
Languages of the Indo-European family are classified as either centum languages or satem languages according to how the dorsal consonants (sounds of "K", "G" and "Y" type) of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) developed. An ...
'' change) but others only with Greek (''s'' > ''h'').
Graeco-Aryan has comparatively wide support among Indo-Europeanists who believe the
Indo-European homeland
The Proto-Indo-European homeland (or Indo-European homeland) was the prehistoric linguistic homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). From this region, its speakers migrated east and west, and went on to form the proto-communities of ...
to be located in the
Armenian Highlands, the "
Armenian hypothesis
The Armenian hypothesis, also known as the Near Eastern model, is a theory of the Proto-Indo-European homeland, initially proposed by linguists Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Ivanov in the early 1980s, which suggests that the Proto-Indo-Eu ...
". Early and strong evidence was given by Euler's 1979 examination on shared features in Greek and Sanskrit nominal flection.
Used in tandem with the Graeco-Armenian hypothesis, the Armenian language would also be included under the label Aryano-Greco-Armenic, splitting into Proto-Greek/Phrygian and "Armeno-Aryan" (ancestor of Armenian and
Indo-Iranian).
Evolution
Classical Armenian (Arm: ''grabar''), attested from the 5th century to the 19th century as the literary standard (up to the 11th century also as a spoken language with different varieties), was partially superseded by
Middle Armenian
Cilician Armenian (), also called Middle Armenian, but the former term may be confused for modern dialects, corresponds to the second period in written Armenian
Armenian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in th ...
, attested from the 12th century to the 18th century. Specialized literature prefers "Old Armenian" for ''grabar'' as a whole, and designates as "Classical" the language used in the 5th century literature, "Post-Classical" from the late 5th to 8th centuries, and "Late Grabar" that of the period covering the 8th to 11th centuries. Later, it was used mainly in religious and specialized literature, with the exception of a revival during the early modern period, when attempts were made to establish it as the language of a literary renaissance, with neoclassical inclinations, through the creation and dissemination of literature in varied genres, especially by the
Mekhitarists
, image =
, image_size =
, caption =
, abbreviation = C.A.M.
, nickname = Mechitarists
, established =
, founder = Abbot Mekhitar of Sebaste, C.A.M.
, foundin ...
. The first Armenian periodical, ''
Azdarar
''Azdarar'' ( hy, Ազդարար) (pronounced Aztarar in Western Armenian) was the first Armenian language newspaper ever published. It was established on October 16, 1794, in the city of Madras (now Chennai) in India by Father Harutyun Shmavony ...
'', was published in ''grabar'' in 1794.
The classical form borrowed numerous words from
Middle Iranian languages
The Iranian languages or Iranic languages are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian Plateau.
The Iranian languages are grouped ...
, primarily
Parthian Parthian may be:
Historical
* A demonym "of Parthia", a region of north-eastern of Greater Iran
* Parthian Empire (247 BC – 224 AD)
* Parthian language, a now-extinct Middle Iranian language
* Parthian shot, an archery skill famously employed by ...
,
[''Hurro-Urartian Borrowings in Old Armenian'', I. M. Diakonoff, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 105, No. 4 (Oct. – Dec., 1985), 597.] and contains smaller inventories of
loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because t ...
s from Greek,
Syriac,
Aramaic, Arabic, Mongol, Persian, and
indigenous languages such as
Urartian
Urartian or Vannic is an extinct Hurro-Urartian language which was spoken by the inhabitants of the ancient kingdom of Urartu (''Biaini'' or ''Biainili'' in Urartian), which was centered on the region around Lake Van and had its capital, Tushpa, ...
. An effort to modernize the language in
Bagratid Armenia
The Bagratid Kingdom of Armenia, also known as Bagratid Armenia ( xcl, Բագրատունեաց Հայաստան, or , , 'kingdom of the Bagratunis'), was an independent Armenian state established by Ashot I Bagratuni of the Bagratuni dynasty ...
and the
Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia (11–14th centuries) resulted in the addition of two more characters to the alphabet ("" and ""), bringing the total number to 38.
The ''Book of Lamentations'' by
Gregory of Narek
Grigor Narekatsi ( hy, Գրիգոր Նարեկացի; anglicized: Gregory of Narek) ( – 1003/1011) was an Armenian mystical and lyrical poet, monk, and theologian. He is venerated as a saint in the Armenian Apostolic and Catholic Churches an ...
(951–1003) is an example of the development of a literature and writing style of Old Armenian by the 10th century. In addition to elevating the literary style and vocabulary of the Armenian language by adding well above a thousand new words, through his other hymns and poems Gregory paved the way for his successors to include secular themes and vernacular language in their writings. The thematic shift from mainly religious texts to writings with secular outlooks further enhanced and enriched the vocabulary. “A Word of Wisdom”, a poem by Hovhannes Sargavak devoted to a starling, legitimizes poetry devoted to nature, love, or female beauty. Gradually, the interests of the population at large were reflected in other literary works as well. Konsdantin Yerzinkatsi and several others even take the unusual step of criticizing the ecclesiastic establishment and addressing the social issues of the Armenian homeland. However, these changes represented the nature of the literary style and syntax, but they did not constitute immense changes to the fundamentals of the grammar or the morphology of the language. Often, when writers codify a spoken dialect, other language users are then encouraged to imitate that structure through the literary device known as
parallelism.
![The first Bible printed in the Armenian language](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/The_first_Bible_printed_in_the_Armenian_language.jpg)
In the 19th century, the traditional Armenian homeland was once again divided. This time
Eastern Armenia was conquered from
Qajar Iran
Qajar Iran (), also referred to as Qajar Persia, the Qajar Empire, '. Sublime State of Persia, officially the Sublime State of Iran ( fa, دولت علیّه ایران ') and also known then as the Guarded Domains of Iran ( fa, ممالک م ...
by the
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
, while
Western Armenia
Western Armenia (Western Armenian: Արեւմտեան Հայաստան, ''Arevmdian Hayasdan'') is a term to refer to the eastern parts of Turkey (formerly the Ottoman Empire) that are part of the historical homeland of the Armenians. Weste ...
, containing two thirds of historical Armenia, remained under
Ottoman control. The antagonistic relationship between the Russian and Ottoman empires led to creation of two separate and different environments under which Armenians lived. Halfway through the 19th century, two important concentrations of Armenian communities were further consolidated. Because of persecutions or the search for better economic opportunities, many Armenians living under Ottoman rule gradually moved to
Istanbul
)
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code = 34000 to 34990
, area_code = +90 212 (European side) +90 216 (Asian side)
, registration_plate = 34
, blank_name_sec2 = GeoTLD
, blank_i ...
, whereas
Tbilisi
Tbilisi ( ; ka, თბილისი ), in some languages still known by its pre-1936 name Tiflis ( ), is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Kura River with a population of approximately 1.5 million p ...
became the center of Armenians living under Russian rule. These two cosmopolitan cities very soon became the primary poles of Armenian intellectual and cultural life.
The introduction of new literary forms and styles, as well as many new ideas sweeping Europe, reached Armenians living in both regions. This created an ever-growing need to elevate the vernacular, Ashkharhabar, to the dignity of a modern literary language, in contrast to the now-anachronistic Grabar. Numerous dialects existed in the traditional Armenian regions, which, different as they were, had certain morphological and phonetic features in common. On the basis of these features two major standards emerged:
* Western standard: The influx of immigrants from different parts of the traditional Armenian homeland to Istanbul crystallized the common elements of the regional dialects, paving the way for a style of writing that required a shorter and more flexible learning curve than Grabar.
* Eastern standard: The
Yerevan dialect provided the primary elements of Eastern Armenian, centered in Tbilisi, Georgia. Similar to the Western Armenian variant, the Modern Eastern was in many ways more practical and accessible to the masses than Grabar.
Both centers vigorously pursued the promotion of Ashkharhabar. The proliferation of newspapers in both versions (Eastern & Western) and the development of a network of schools where modern Armenian was taught, dramatically increased the rate of literacy (in spite of the obstacles by the colonial administrators), even in remote rural areas. The emergence of literary works entirely written in the modern versions increasingly legitimized the language's existence. By the turn of the 20th century both varieties of the one modern Armenian language prevailed over Grabar and opened the path to a new and simplified grammatical structure of the language in the two different cultural spheres. Apart from several morphological, phonetic, and grammatical differences, the largely common vocabulary and generally analogous rules of grammatical fundamentals allows users of one variant to understand the other as long as they are fluent in one of the literary standards.
After
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, the existence of the two modern versions of the same language was sanctioned even more clearly. The
Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic (1920–1990) used Eastern Armenian as its official language, whereas the diaspora created after the
Armenian genocide
The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily through t ...
preserved the Western Armenian dialect.
![Panneau près d'Ohanavan](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Panneau_pr%C3%A8s_d%27Ohanavan.JPG)
The two modern literary dialects, Western (originally associated with writers in the Ottoman Empire) and Eastern (originally associated with writers in the Russian Empire), removed almost all of their
Turkish lexical influences in the 20th century, primarily following the
Armenian genocide
The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily through t ...
.
Geographic distribution
The number of Armenian-speakers by country according to official government sources, including censuses and estimates:
Phonology
Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo- ...
voiceless
stop consonants are aspirated in the
Proto-Armenian language
Proto-Armenian is the earlier, unattested stage of the Armenian language which has been reconstructed by linguists. As Armenian is the only known language of its branch of the Indo-European languages, the comparative method cannot be used to re ...
, one of the circumstances that is often linked to the
glottalic theory
The glottalic theory is that Proto-Indo-European had ejective stops, , instead of the plain voiced ones, as hypothesized by the usual Proto-Indo-European phonological reconstructions.
A forerunner of the theory was proposed by the Danish lingu ...
, a version of which postulated that some voiceless occlusives of Proto-Indo-European were aspirated.
Stress
In Armenian, the stress falls on the last syllable unless the last syllable contains the definite article or , and the possessive articles and , in which case it falls on the penultimate one. For instance,
,
,
but
and
. Exceptions to this rule are some words with the final letter ( in the reformed orthography) () and sometimes the ordinal numerals (, etc.), as well as , and a small number of other words.
Vowels
Modern Armenian has six monophthongs. Each vowel phoneme in the table is represented by three symbols. The first is the sounds transcription in the
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...
(IPA). After that appears the corresponding letter of the Armenian alphabet. The last symbol is its Latin transliteration.
* Western and other dialects may also have /, /.
Consonants
The following table lists the Eastern Armenian consonantal system. The occlusives and
affricates
An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair ...
have an aspirated series, commonly transcribed with a reversed
apostrophe after the letter. Each phoneme in the table is represented by IPA, Armenian script and romanization.
The major phonetic difference between dialects is in the reflexes of Classical Armenian
voice-onset time
In phonetics, voice onset time (VOT) is a feature of the production of stop consonants. It is defined as the length of time that passes between the release of a stop consonant and the onset of voicing, the vibration of the vocal folds, or, accor ...
. The seven dialect types have the following correspondences, illustrated with the t–d series:
:
Morphology
Armenian corresponds with other Indo-European languages in its structure, but it shares distinctive sounds and features of its grammar with neighboring
languages of the Caucasus region. The Armenian orthography is rich in combinations of consonants, but in pronunciation, this is broken up with schwas. Both classical Armenian and the modern spoken and literary dialects have a complicated system of noun declension, with six or seven noun cases but no gender. In modern Armenian, the use of auxiliary verbs to show tense (comparable to will in "he will go") has generally supplemented the inflected verbs of
Classical Armenian. Negative verbs are conjugated differently from positive ones (as in English "he goes" and "he does not go") in many tenses, otherwise adding only the negative to the positive conjugation. Grammatically, early forms of Armenian had much in common with classical
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
and
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
, but the modern language, like modern Greek, has undergone many transformations, adding some
analytic features.
Noun
Classical Armenian has no
grammatical gender
In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all noun ...
, not even in the pronoun, but there is a feminine suffix ( "-uhi"). For example, (''usucʻičʻ'', "teacher") becomes (''usucʻčʻuhi'', female teacher). This suffix, however, does not have a grammatical effect on the sentence. The nominal inflection, however, preserves several types of inherited stem classes. Historically, nouns were declined for one of seven cases:
nominative (ուղղական ''uġġakan''),
accusative
The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb.
In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘th ...
(հայցական ''haycʻakan''),
locative (ներգոյական ''nergoyakan''),
genitive (սեռական ''seṙakan''),
dative (տրական ''trakan''),
ablative
In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced ; sometimes abbreviated ) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages; it is sometimes used to express motion away from something, among other uses. ...
(բացառական ''bacʻaṙakan''), or
instrumental
An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to inst ...
(գործիական ''gorciakan''), but in the modern language, the nominative and accusative cases, as well as the dative and genitive cases have merged.
;Examples of noun declension in Eastern Armenian
Which case the direct object takes is split based on animacy (a phenomen more generally known as
differential object marking
In linguistics, differential object marking (DOM) is the phenomenon in which certain objects of verbs are marked to reflect various syntactic and semantic factors. One form of the more general phenomenon of differential argument marking, DOM is pr ...
). Inanimate nouns take the nominative, while animate nouns take the dative. Additionally, animate nouns can never take the locative case.
;Examples of noun declension in Western Armenian
Verb
Verbs in Armenian have an expansive system of
conjugation
Conjugation or conjugate may refer to:
Linguistics
* Grammatical conjugation, the modification of a verb from its basic form
* Emotive conjugation or Russell's conjugation, the use of loaded language
Mathematics
* Complex conjugation, the chang ...
with two main verb types in Eastern Armenian and three in Western Armenian changing form based on
tense,
mood and
aspect
Aspect or Aspects may refer to:
Entertainment
* ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art
* Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company
* Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England
* ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...
.
Dialects
![Armenian dialects, Adjarian 1909](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Armenian_dialects%2C_Adjarian_1909.png)
Armenian is a
pluricentric language, having two modern
standardized
Standardization or standardisation is the process of implementing and developing technical standards based on the consensus of different parties that include firms, users, interest groups, standards organizations and governments. Standardization ...
forms:
Eastern Armenian and
Western Armenian
Western Armenian ( Classical spelling: , ) is one of the two standardized forms of Modern Armenian, the other being Eastern Armenian. It is based mainly on the Istanbul Armenian dialect, as opposed to Eastern Armenian, which is mainly base ...
. The most distinctive feature of Western Armenian is that it has undergone several phonetic mergers; these may be due to proximity to Arabic- and Turkish-speaking communities.
Classical Armenian (Grabar), which remained the standard until the 18th century, was quite homogeneous across the different regions that works in it were written; it may have been a cross-regional standard.
[Fortson, Benjamin W. 2004. ''Indo-European Language and Culture''. Page 338-340.] The Middle Armenian variety used in the court of Cilician Armenia (1080–1375) provides a window into the development of Western Armenian, which came to be based on what became the dialect of Istanbul, while the standard for Eastern Armenian was based on the dialect around Mount Ararat and Yerevan.
[ Although the Armenian language is often divided into "east" and "west", the two standards are actually relatively close to each other in light of wealth of the diversity present among regional non-standard Armenian dialects. The different dialects have experienced different degrees of language contact effects, often with Turkic and Caucasian languages; for some, the result has been significant phonological and syntactic changes.][ Fortson notes that the modern standard as well has now attained a subordinate clausal structure that greatly resembles a Turkic language.][Fortson, Benjamin W. 2004. ''Indo-European Language and Culture''. Page 340: "The modern standard language has not been free of these influences either; in many areas of syntax, such as subordinate clausal structure, it more greatly resembles a Turkic language than a European one."]
Eastern Armenian speakers pronounce () as ʰ () as and () as a tenuis occlusive ˭ Western Armenian has simplified the occlusive system into a simple division between voiced occlusives and aspirated ones; the first series corresponds to the tenuis series of Eastern Armenian, and the second corresponds to the Eastern voiced and aspirated series. Thus, the Western dialect pronounces both () and () as ʰ and the () letter as
There is no precise linguistic border between one dialect and another because there is nearly always a dialect transition zone of some size between pairs of geographically identified dialects.
Armenian can be divided into two major dialectal blocks and those blocks into individual dialects, though many of the Western Armenian dialects have become extinct due to the effects of the Armenian genocide. In addition, neither dialect is completely homogeneous: any dialect can be subdivided into several subdialects. Although Western and Eastern Armenian are often described as different dialects of the same language, many subdialects are not readily mutually intelligible. Nevertheless, a fluent speaker of one of two greatly varying dialects who is also literate in one of the standards, when exposed to the other dialect for a period of time will be able to understand the other with relative ease.
Distinct Western Armenian varieties currently in use include Homshetsi, spoken by the Hemshin peoples
,
, native_name_lang =
, image =
, caption = Hamshen people by country
, population = 150,000 – 200,000
, popplace =
, regions =
, region1 =
, pop1 = 150,000
, ref1 ...
; the dialects of Armenians of Kessab
Kessab, Kesab, or Kasab ( ar, كسب ; hy, Քեսապ, Kesab) is a mostly Armenian-populated town in northwestern Syria, administratively part of the Latakia Governorate, located 59 kilometers north of Latakia. It is situated near the border w ...
( Քեսապի բարբառ), Latakia and Jisr al-Shughur
Jisr ash-Shughūr ( ar, جِسْرُ ٱلشُّغُورِ, jisr aš-šuġūr, , also rendered as ''Jisser ash-Shughour'' and other spellings), known in antiquity as Seleucobelus ( el, Σελευκόβηλος, translit=Seleukóbēlos), is a city in ...
(Syria), Anjar, Lebanon
Anjar (meaning "unresolved or running river"; ar, عنجر / ALA-LC: ''‘Anjar''; also known as Hosh Mousa ( ar, حوش موسى / ''Ḥawsh Mūsá''), is a town of Lebanon located in the Bekaa Valley. The population is 2,400, consisting alm ...
, and Vakıflı, Samandağ
Vakıflı Köyü ( hy, Վաքըֆ Vak'ëf, ) is the only remaining Armenian village in Turkey. Located on the slopes of Musa Dagh in the Samandağ district of Hatay Province, the village overlooks the Mediterranean Sea and is within eyesight of ...
(Turkey), part of the "Sueidia" dialect ( Սուէտիայի բարբառ).
Forms of the Karin dialect of Western Armenian are spoken by several hundred thousand people in Northern Armenia, mostly in Gyumri
Gyumri ( hy, Գյումրի, ) is an urban municipal community and the second-largest city in Armenia, serving as the administrative center of Shirak Province in the northwestern part of the country. By the end of the 19th century, when the city w ...
, Artik, Akhuryan, and around 130 villages in Shirak Province
Shirak ( hy, Շիրակ, ) is a province ('' marz'') of Armenia. It is located in the north-west of the country, bordering Turkey to the west and Georgia to the north. Its capital and largest city is Gyumri, which is the second largest city ...
, and by Armenians in Samtskhe–Javakheti province of Georgia ( Akhalkalaki, Akhaltsikhe).
Nakhichevan-on-Don __NOTOC__
Nakhichevan-on-Don (russian: Нахичевань-на-Дону, ''Naxičevan’-na-Donu''), also known as New Nakhichevan ( hy, Նոր Նախիջևան, ''Nor Naxiĵevan''; as opposed to the "old" Nakhichevan), was an Armenian-populate ...
Armenians speak another Western Armenian variety based on the dialect of Armenians in Crimea
Armenians have maintained a presence in the Crimea since the Middle Ages. The first wave of Armenian immigration into this area began during the mid-eleventh century and, over time, as political, economic and social conditions in Armenia proper f ...
, where they came from in order to establish the town and surrounding villages in 1779 ( Նոր Նախիջևանի բարբառ).
Western Armenian dialects are currently spoken also in Gavar
Gavar ( hy, Գավառ) is a town and urban municipal community in Armenia serving as the administrative centre of Gegharkunik Province. It is situated among the high mountains of Gegham range to the west of Lake Sevan, with an average height ...
(formerly Nor Bayazet and Kamo, on the west of Lake Sevan
Lake Sevan ( hy, Սևանա լիճ, Sevana lich) is the largest body of water in both Armenia and the Caucasus region. It is one of the largest freshwater high-altitude (alpine) lakes in Eurasia. The lake is situated in Gegharkunik Province, ...
), Aparan
Aparan (Armenian: ), is a town and urban municipal community in Armenia, located in the Aragatsotn Province, about 50 kilometers northwest of the capital Yerevan. As of the 2011 census, the population of the town was 6,451. As per the 2016 offic ...
, and Talin Talin may refer to:
Places
* Talin, Armenia, a city
* Tálín, a municipality and village in the Czech Republic
*Tallinn, capital of Estonia
* Talin, Iran, a village in West Azerbaijan Province
*Talin, Syria, a village in Tartus Governorate
Other
...
in Armenia ( Mush dialect), and by the large Armenian population residing in Abkhazia, where they are considered to be the first or second ethnic minority, or even equal in number to the local Abkhaz population
Orthography
The Armenian alphabet
The Armenian alphabet ( hy, Հայոց գրեր, ' or , ') is an alphabetic writing system used to write Armenian. It was developed around 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian linguist and ecclesiastical leader. The system originally had ...
( hy, Հայոց գրեր, translit=Hayots grer or hy, Հայոց այբուբեն, translit=Hayots aybuben) is a graphically unique alphabet
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllab ...
ical writing system that is used to write the Armenian language. It was introduced around AD 405 by Mesrop Mashtots Mesrob or Mesrop ( hy, Մեսրոպ) is an Armenian given name.
Mesrob / Mesrop may refer to:
* Mesrop Mashtots, also Saint Mesrop, Armenian monk, theologian and linguist. Inventor of the Armenian alphabet
** Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient M ...
, an Armenian linguist and ecclesiastical leader, and originally contained 36 letters. Two more letters, օ (ō) and ֆ (f), were added in the Middle Ages.
During the 1920s orthography reform in Soviet Armenia, a new letter և (capital ԵՎ) was added, which was a ligature before ե+ւ, whereas the letter Ւ ւ was discarded and reintroduced as part of a new letter ՈՒ ու (which was a digraph before). This alphabet and associated orthography is used by most Armenian speakers of Armenia
Armenia (), , group=pron officially the Republic of Armenia,, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of Western Asia.The UNbr>classification of world regions places Armenia in Western Asia; the CIA World Factbook , , and ' ...
and the countries of the former Soviet Union. Neither the alphabet nor the orthography has been adopted by Diaspora Armenians, including Eastern Armenian speakers of Iran and all Western Armenian speakers, who keep using the traditional alphabet and spelling.
Vocabulary
Indo-European cognates
Armenian is an Indo-European language, so many of its Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo- ...
-descended words are cognates of words in other Indo-European languages such as English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
, Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
, Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
, and Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
.
However, due to extensive loaning, only around 1,500 words (G. Jahukyan) are known to have been inherited from Indo-European by the Classical Armenian stage; the rest were lost, a fact that presents a major challenge to endeavors to better understand Proto-Armenian and its place within the family, especially as many of the sound changes along the way from Indo-European to Armenian remain quite difficult to analyze.
This table lists some of the more recognizable cognates that Armenian shares with English words descended from Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...
.
See also
* Armenian PowerSpell Armenian PowerSpell — the electronic corrector for texts in thmodernArmenian language used in Armenia. Checks spelling, grammar, punctuation,[Armenian Sign Language
Armenian Sign Language is the deaf sign language of Armenia.
Classification
Wittmann (1991) Wittmann, Henri (1991). "Classification linguistique des langues signées non vocalement." Revue québécoise de linguistique théorique et appliquée 1 ...](_blank)
* Languages of Armenia
Armenia is an ethnically homogeneous country, in which Armenian is the official language and is spoken as a first language by the majority of its population. Armenian is a pluricentric language with two modern standardized forms: Eastern Armen ...
* Language families and languages
* List of Indo-European languages
* Classical Armenian orthography
Classical Armenian orthography, traditional orthography or Mashtotsian orthography ( in classical orthography and in reformed orthography, ''Hayereni tasagan ughakrutyun''), is the orthography that was developed by Mesrop Mashtots in the 5th centu ...
* Auguste Carrière Auguste Carrière (19 August 1838, Saint-Pierre-le-Vieux – 25 January 1902, Paris) was a linguist, grammarian and French historian, specializing in comparative grammar and Armenian culture. He was a professor at the Institut national des langues ...
Notes
Footnotes
References
*
*
*
*
*
*
Further reading
* Adjarian, Hrachya H. (1909) ''Classification des dialectes arméniens
The Armenian language has two standardized forms: Western Armenian and Eastern Armenian. Before the Armenian genocide and other significant demographic changes that affected the Armenians, several dozen Armenian dialects existed in the area histor ...
, par H. Adjarian.'' Paris: Honoré Champion.
* Clackson, James. 1994. ''The Linguistic Relationship Between Armenian and Greek.'' London: Publications of the Philological Society, No 30. (and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing)
* Holst, Jan Henrik (2009) ''Armenische Studien.'' Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
* Mallory, J. P. (1989) ''In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth.'' London: Thames & Hudson.
*
* Vaux, Bert. 1998. ''The Phonology of Armenian.'' Oxford: Clarendon Press.
* Vaux, Bert. 2002. "The Armenian dialect of Jerusalem." in ''Armenians in the Holy Land''. Louvain: Peters.
External links
Armenian Lessons
(free online through th
Linguistics Research Center
at UT Austin)
Armenian Swadesh list of basic vocabulary words
(from Wiktionary'
Swadesh list appendix
ARMENIA AND IRAN iv. History, discussion, and the presentation of Iranian influences in Armenian Language over the millennia
Nayiri.com
(Library of Armenian dictionaries)
dictionaries.arnet.am
Collection of Armenian XDXF
XDXF (XML Dictionary eXchange Format) is a project to unite all existing open dictionaries and provide both users and developers with a universal XML-based format, convertible from and to other popular formats like Mova, PtkDic, and StarDict.
...
and Stardict
StarDict, developed by Hu Zheng (胡正), is a free GUI released under the GPL-3.0-or-later license for accessing StarDict dictionary files (a ''dictionary shell''). It is the successor of StarDic, developed by Ma Su'an (馬蘇安), continuing ...
dictionaries
Grabar
(Brief introduction to Classical Armenian also known as Grabar)
բառարան.հայ
– Armenian dictionary
{{Authority control
Indo-European languages
Subject–object–verb languages
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Articles containing video clips