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Armenian
Հայերէն Hayeren
Pronunciation	[hɑjɛˈɾɛn]
Native to	Armenia  Nagorno-Karabakh (not recognized internationally)  Russia  USA  France  Georgia  Iran  Ukraine  Argentina  Lebanon  Syria  Turkey  Canada  Australia  Azerbaijan
Native speakers	6.7 million
Language family	Indo-European Armenian
Writing system	Armenian alphabet
Official status
Official language in	Armenia  Nagorno-Karabakh (not recognized internationally) Minority language:  Cyprus  Poland  Romania
Regulated by	National Academy of Sciences of Armenia
Language codes
ISO 639-1	hy
ISO 639-2	arm (B) hye (T)
ISO 639-3	Variously: hye – Modern Armenian xcl – Classical Armenian axm – Middle Armenian

The Armenian language (հայերէն in TAO or հայերեն in RAO, Armenian pronunciation: [hɑjɛˈɾɛn] — hayeren) is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora. It has its own script, the Armenian alphabet.

Linguists typically classify Armenian as an independent branch of the Indo-European language family, though many Indo-Europeanists believe it forms a subgroup with the Greek and Indo-Iranian families. (Renfrew, Clackson and Fortson 1994).

Classification

History of the Armenian language
Armenian hypothesis Proto-Armenian Classical Armenian (from 405) Middle Armenian (c. 1100 – 1700) Modern Armenian (c. 1700 – present) Eastern, Western, Zok, Homshetsi, Lomavren (mixed)
Armenian alphabet Romanization of Armenian
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Origins

The earliest testimony of the Armenian language dates to the 5th century AD (the Bible translation of Mesrob Mashtots). The earlier history of the language is unclear and the subject of much speculation.

Iranian hypothesis

Several prominent scholars of Armenian, including the founder of modern comparative linguistics, imminent German linguist Franz Bopp, have identified it as an Iranian language. Another prominent linguust, Karl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann published in the Abhandlungen of the Bavarian Academy (IV, 2) an excellent treatise about Armenian, in which he comes to the conclusion that Armenian goes back to an older dialect which must have had great similarity with Avestan and Old Persian but to which foreign elements had been added early.

The Iranian thesis is regarded as the best and most tenable, even by modern linguists. For example, Armenian language scholar and eminent linguist Winfred P. Lehmann, founder and director of the Linguistics Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote in 2007 that "Müller's view, that Armenian is Iranian, has not been disproved, and must be designated as the best established and the prevailing one at present."

Notwithstanding the substantial body of evidence documenting the Iranic character of the Armenian language, the issue of classification has long been politicized as demonstrated by linguist Fr. Muller. Fr. Müller writes: "That there are many foreign words in Armenian which have penetrated from Proto-Pehlevi is an evident fact; I fear however that many a word that is good Armenian is regarded as a foreign word only to be able to deny the Iranian character of Armenian."

Graeco-Armenian hypothesis

Armenian is regarded by some linguists as a close relative of Phrygian. Clackson (1994) holds that Greek is the most closely related surviving language to Armenian. The characteristically Greek representation of word-initial laryngeals by prothetic vowels is shared by Armenian, which also shares other phonological and morphological peculiarities with Greek. The closeness of the relationship between Armenian and Greek sheds light on the paraphyletic nature of the Centum-Satem isogloss. Armenian also shares major isoglosses with Greek; some linguists propose that the linguistic ancestors of the Armenians and Greeks were either identical or in a close contact relation. Other linguists including Fortson (2004) comment "by the time we reach our earliest Armenian records in the 5th century A.D., the evidence of any such early kinship has been reduced to a few tantalizing pieces."

Speculations on Anatolian influence

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W. M. Austin in 1942 concluded that there was an early contact between Armenian and Anatolian languages, based on what he considered common archaisms, such as the lack of a feminine and the absence of inherited long vowels.

Evolution

Early in the fifth century, Classical Armenian, or Grabar, was one of the great languages of the Near East and Asia Minor. Although an autonomous branch within the Indo-European family of languages, it had some affinities to Middle Iranian, Greek and the Balto-Slavic languages, but belonged to none of them. It was characterized by a system of inflection unlike the other languages, as well as a flexible and liberal use of combining root words to create derivative and compound words by the application of certain agglutinative affixes.

In the period that followed the invention of the alphabet and up to the threshold of the modern era, Grabar (Classical Armenian) lived on. An effort to modernize the language in Greater Armenia and the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia (11-14th centuries) resulted in the addition of two more characters to the alphabet, bringing the total number to 38.

The Book of Lamentations by Gregory of Narek (951-1003), that could be considered a masterpiece of world literature, is perhaps a good example of the development of a literature and writing style that came to be known as Middle Armenian or Vernacular. In addition to elevating the literary style of the Armenian language, Gregory of Nareg paved the way for his successors to include secular themes 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 “vulgar population” were also reflected in other literary works. Konsdantin Yerzinkatsi and several others even take the unusual step of criticizing the ecclesiastic establishment and addressing the social issues of the Armenian homeland. Not surprisingly, these changes altered the nature of the literary style and syntax but they did not constitute radical changes to the fundamentals of the grammar or the morphology of the language.

The Treaty of Turkmenchay of 1828 once again divided the traditional Armenian homeland. This time, two thirds of historical Armenia fell under Ottoman control, while the remaining territories were divided between the Russian and Persian empires. The antagonistic relationship between the Russian and Ottoman Empires led to creation of two separate and different environments under which Armenians lived and suffered. Halfway through the 19th century, two important concentrations of Armenian communities were constituted.

Because of persecutions or the search for better economic opportunities, many Armenians living under Ottoman rule gradually moved to Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, while Tiflis (Tbilisi), in Georgia, 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 vulgar language, Ašxarhabar, to the dignity of a modern literary language, in contrast to the now-anachronistic Grabar. Numerous dialects developed 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 variants emerged:

• Western Variant: The influx of immigrants from different parts of the traditional Armenian homeland to Constantinople crystallized the common elements of the regional dialects, paving the way to a style of writing that required a shorter and more flexible learning curve than Grabar.

• Eastern Variant: The dialect of the Ararat plateau provided the primary elements of Eastern Armenian, centered in Tiflis (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 Ašxarhabar. 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 minor morphological, phonetic and grammatical differences, the largely common vocabulary and identical rules of grammatical fundamentals allows users of one variant to understand the other easily.

After the First World War, 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, while the Diaspora created after the Genocide of 1915 carried with it the only thing survivors still possessed: its mother tongue, Western Armenian.

Iranian influence

The classical Armenian language (often referred to as Grabar, literally "written (language)") imported numerous words from Middle Iranian languages, primarily Parthian, and contains smaller inventories of borrowings from Greek, Syriac, Latin, and autochthonous languages such as Urartian. Middle Armenian (11th–15th centuries AD) incorporated further loans from Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and Latin, and the modern dialects took in hundreds of additional words from Modern Turkish and Persian. Therefore, determining the historical evolution of Armenian is particularly difficult because Armenian borrowed many words from Parthian and Persian (both Iranian languages) as well as from Greek.

The large percentage of roots from Iranian languages leads many linguists to classify Armenian as an Iranian language. However, some linguists such as Hübschmann (1875) disagree and used the comparative method to distinguish two layers of Iranian loans from the true Armenian vocabulary. Currently, the matter is still debated between prominent modern linguists, though the Iranian origin theory is considered the most factually compelling.

Modern changes

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.

Phonology

Stress

In Armenian the stress always falls on the last syllable, unless the last syllable contains , in which case it falls on the penultimate one. For instance, , , , but and .

Vowels

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Hamshenis Cherkesogai Armeno-Tats Loms Hayhurum Zoks
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Modern Armenian has six monophthong vowel sounds.

Consonants

The following table lists the Eastern Armenian consonantal system. The occlusives and affricates have a special aspirated series (transcribed with a Greek spiritus asper after the letter): p῾, t῾, c῾, č῾, k῾. Each phoneme in the table is represented by three symbols. The topmost indicates the phoneme's pronunciation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA); below that appears the corresponding letter of the Armenian alphabet; and the bottom symbol is its Latin-alphabet transliteration (according to ISO 9985).

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. Armenian is rich in combinations of consonants. Both classical Armenian and the modern spoken and literary dialects have a complicated system of declining nouns, 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"). Grammatically, early forms of Armenian had much in common with classical Greek and Latin, but the modern language, like modern Greek, has undergone many transformations. With time the Armenian language made a transition from a synthetic language (Old Armenian or Grabar) to a typical analytic language (Modern Armenian) with Middle Armenian as a midpoint in this transition.

Noun

Classical Armenian has no grammatical gender, not even in the pronoun. The nominal inflection, however, preserves several types of inherited stem classes. The noun may take seven cases, nominative, accusative, locative, genitive, dative, ablative, instrumental.

Verb

Verbs in Armenian have an expansive system of conjugation with two main verb types (three in Western Armenian) changing form based on tense, mood and aspect.

Dialects

The major division is between the Eastern and Western dialects. 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.

For example, Eastern Armenian speakers pronounce (թ) as an aspirated "t" as in "tiger", (դ) like the "d" in "develop", and (տ) as an unaspirated voiceless stop, sounding somewhere between the two as in "stop." Western Armenian has simplified the stop system into a simple division between voiced stops and voiceless aspirate ones; the first series corresponds to the unaspirated voiceless series of Eastern Armenian, and the second corresponds to the Eastern voiced and aspirated voiceless series. Thus, the Western dialect pronounces both (թ) and (դ) as an aspirated "t" as in "tiger," and the (տ) letter is pronounced like the letter "d" as in "develop."

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 subdivided in two major dialectal blocks and those blocks into individual dialects, though many of the Western Armenian dialects have died due to the effects of the Armenian Genocide. In addition, neither dialect is completely homogeneous: any dialect can be subdivided into several subdialects. While Western and Eastern Armenian are often described as different dialects of the same language, some subdialects are not readily mutually intelligible. It is true, however, that a fluent speaker of one of two greatly varying dialects who is exposed to the other dialect over even a short period of time will be able to understand the other with relative ease.

Other distinct dialects include the Homshetsi language of the Hemshin people and Lomavren language of the Bosha, both of which are categorized as belonging to the Armenian language family.

v t e Armenian language
Origin	Armenian hypothesis Graeco-Armenian Armeno-Aryan
History	Proto-Armenian Classical Armenian (c. 405–1100) Middle Armenian (c. 1100–1700) Modern Armenian (from c. 1700) History of the Armenian alphabet
Alphabet	Orthography Classical Reformed Braille Romanization Numerals
Grammar	Verb table Eastern Western
Dialects	Standardized Western Eastern Regional dialects Homshetsi Iranian Armenian Kakavaberd Karabakh Karin Kharberd–Yerznka Mush Shabin–Karahisar Yerevan Zok
Literature	List of writers
Promotion and study	Armenian National Academy of Sciences Armenian studies
Related topics	Proverbs
Category

Standardized forms

Armenian is a pluricentric language, having two standardized forms: Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian.

Historical Armenian dialects

In 1909, linguist Hrachia Acharian in his Classification des dialects arméniens surveyed many of the Armenian dialects in what is now present day Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Iran, Azerbaijan and other surrounding countries settled by Armenians. Unlike the traditional dialect division of Armenian into western and eastern dialects, Acharian divided Armenian into three main dialects based on which indicative particles are used. He labeled them as the -owm dialects, gë dialects, and -el dialects. These three major dialects were further divided into sub-dialects.

-owm Dialects

• Yerevan, Doğubeyazıt, Tabriz (Kala and Lilava quarters), Gavar
• Tbilisi (Havlabar quarter)
• Shushi, Gandzak, Shakhi, Baku, Derbent, Aghstafa, Dilijan, Vanadzor, Kazakh, Lori, Karadagh (area along Iran-Azerbaijan border south to Sabalan), Mujumbar, Tabriz (Lilava quarter), Burdur, Yodemish
• Shamaki, Kuba
• Astrakhan
• Julfa, Isfahan (New Julfa quarter), Shiraz, Hamadan, Bushehr, Tehran, Qazvin, Rasht, Bandar-e Anzali
• Lower Agulis, Tsagna, Upper Agulis, Yuxarı Əndəli, Tanagirt, Urumis, Dosti, Kyalaki

gë Dialects

• Erzurum, Kars, Gyumri, Akhalkalaki, Akhaltsikhe
• Mush, Sasun, Bitlis, Khozan, Khlat, Artchesh, Kop, Manazkert, Khnus, Alashkert, Aparan, Eshtia, Ujmana, Toria, Martuni
• Van, Diadin, Moks, Adamakert, Shatakh, Basargechar
• Diyarbakır, Lice, Hazro, Kozluk, Hizan, Sevaverak, Edesia
• Kharberd, Yerznka, Balu, Tchapaghjur, Chmshkatsag, Peri, Kghi, Tunceli, Kemah
• Shabin-Karahisar, Akıncılar
• Trabzon, Baberd, Gyumushkhana, Giresun
• Hemşin, Trabzon, Ünye, Fatsa, Terme, Çarşamba, Samsun, Sukhumi, Sochi, Mtsara (Gudauta District, Abkhazia), Tsebelda (Gulripsh District, Abkhazia), Adler (Sochi), Shapsugskaya (Krasnodar Krai, Russia)
• Malatya, Adıyaman
• Saimbeyli, Zeytun, Marash, Kilis, Alexandretta, Payas (Yakacik), Samandağ
• Aramo (Syria)
• Arabkir, Tevrik, Gyurin, Darende, Kesaria
• Akn
• Sebastia
• Tokat, Amasya, Merzifon, Ordu, Samsun, Sinop
• Smyrna
• Nicomedia, Adabazar, Yalova, Partizak, Geyve, İznik, Pazarköy, Karamürsel, Aslanbey, Ortaköy, Sölöz, Benli
• Istanbul
• Tekirdağ, Malkara
• Nor Nakhichevan, Rostov-on-Don, Stavropol, Krasnodar, Dnipropetrovsk, Anapa, Maykop, Taganrog, Prymorsk, Novocherkassk, Dneprovskaya
• Poland, Bukovina, Transylvania, Hungary
• Jerusalem (K'aġak'ac'i dialect), not mentioned by Acharian, but mentioned by Bert Vaux as likely coming from Cilicia
• Yozgat

-el Dialects

• Maragheh
• Khoy, Maku, Iğdır, Kori, Alighuli, Mughanjugh, Karashen, Alilu, Angeghakot, Ghushchi, Tazakend, Uz, Mazra, Balak, Shaghat, Ltsen, Sisian, Nerkin Kilisa
• Artvin, Ardahan, Artanutch, Olti

Indo-European linguistic comparison

Armenian is an Indo-European language, and so many of its Proto-Indo-European-descended words are cognates of words in other Indo-European languages such as English, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit. This table lists only some of the more recognizable cognates that Armenian shares with English (more specifically, with English words descended from the Old English(Anglo-Saxon) language). (Source: Online Etymology Dictionary.)

See also

• Armenian alphabet
• Eastern Armenian language
• Graeco-Armenian
• Language families and languages
• List of Indo-European languages
• Western Armenian language

Footnotes

1. language in Encyclopædia Britannica
2. European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages
3. Armenian language - Britannica Online Encyclopedia
4. http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/books/read12.html
5. http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/books/read12.html
6. Austin, William M. (January - March, 1942). "Is Armenian an Anatolian Language?:Language, Vol. 18, No. 1". Language. 18 (1). Linguistic Society of America: 22–25. doi:10.2307/409074. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
7. “In some publications, the voiceless plosives are also defined as ejectives or glottalised. Glottalised plosives occur in various Armenian dialects and can also be found in the Eastern Armenian vernacular based on the Yerevan dialect, but according to normative grammars, SMEA shows no glottalised voiceless plosives.” Jasmine Dum-Tragut. Armenian: Modern Eastern Armenian. London Oriental and African Language Library, 2007, issn 1382-3485; p. 17
8. The Armenian Dialects of Jerusalem by Bert Vaux, Harvard University
9. "Online Etymology Dictionary". etymonline.com. Retrieved 2007-06-07.
10. ^ The letter 'þ' was used in the Old English alphabet, and it was eventually replaced by the letters "th".
11. The word "futrei" (daughter) in the Latin column is actually from an Italic sister language called Oscan.
12. ^ The letter 'ç' is pronounced like the consonant cluster "ts", and in the Armenian words "çownk", "gorç", "meç", and "ançanot'", it corresponds to the PIE *g.
13. ^ The words "bum" (cow), "pir" (fire) and "utur" (water) in the Latin column are actually from an Italic sister language called Umbrian.
14. The word "yare" (year) in the Sanskrit column is actually from an Indo-Iranian sister language called Avestan.
15. ^ The prefixes for "not" in Latin are "in-" and "i-", and "an-" and "a-" in Greek and Sanskrit, which correspond to the PIE *n-.

References

• Adjarian, Herchyah H. (1909) Classification des dialectes arméniens, par H. Adjarian. Paris: Honoro Champion.
• Clackson, James. 1994. The Linguistic Relationship Between Armenian and Greek. London: Publications of the Philological Society, No 30. (and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing)
• Fortson, Benjamin W. (2004) Indo-European Language and Culture. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
• Hübschmann, Heinrich (1875) "Über die Stellung des armenischen im Kreise der indogermanischen Sprachen," Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Sprachforschung 23.5-42. English translation
• 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 Jeruslame." in Armenians in the Holy Land. "Louvain: Peters.

External links

• en.wiktionary.org Armenian<->English dictionary with pronunciations, etymologies and inflection tables.
• AGBU - Armenian Virtual College - First online university to learn Armenian
• Armenian language resources
• Ethnologue report on Armenian
• The Armenian alphabet
• Armeniapedia

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