Armenian language

Armenian language, language that forms a separate branch of the Indo-European language family; it was once erroneously considered a dialect of Iranian. In the early 21st century the Armenian language is spoken by some 6.7 million individuals. The majority (about 3.4 million) of these live in Armenia, and most of the remainder live in Georgia and Russia. More than 100,000 Armenian speakers live in Iran. Until the early 20th century, an Armenian population had lived in Turkey in the area around Lake Van since ancient times; a small minority of Armenians lives in Turkey today. Armenians also live in Lebanon, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Iraq, France, Bulgaria, the United States, and elsewhere.

Several distinct varieties of the Armenian language can be distinguished: Old Armenian (Grabar), Middle Armenian (Miǰin hayerên), and Modern Armenian, or Ašxarhabar (Ashkharhabar). Modern Armenian embraces two written varieties—Western Armenian (Arewmtahayerên) and Eastern Armenian (Arewelahayerên)—and many dialects are spoken. About 50 dialects were known before 1915, when the Armenian population of Turkey was drastically reduced by means of massacre and forced exodus; some of these dialects were mutually unintelligible.

Origins of the language

Armenian belongs to the satem (satəm) group of Indo-European languages; this group includes those languages in which the palatal stops became palatal or alveolar fricatives, such as Slavic (with Baltic) and Indo-Iranian. Armenian also shows at least one characteristic of the centum group—comprising Celtic, Germanic, Italic, and Greek—in that it preserves occasional palatal stops as k-like sounds.

Precisely how and when the first Armenians arrived in eastern Anatolia and the areas surrounding Lakes Van, Sevan, and Urmia is not known. It is possible that they reached that territory as early as the second half of the 2nd millennium bc. Their presence as the successors to the local Urartians can be dated to approximately 520 bc, when the names Armina and Armaniya first appear in the Old Persian cuneiform inscription of Darius I (the Great) at Behistun (present-day Bisitun, Iran). A variation of that early designation, Armenian, is the name by which the people who call themselves Hay are known worldwide.

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Click Here to see full-size tableThe invention of the Armenian alphabet is traditionally credited to the monk St. Mesrop Mashtots, who in ad 405 created an alphabet consisting of 36 signs (two were added later) based partly on Greek letters; the direction of writing (left to right) also followed the Greek model. This new alphabet was first used to translate the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament.

Grabar, as the language of the first translation was known, became the standard for all subsequent literature, and its use produced what has come to be considered the golden age of Armenian literature. It concealed the noticeable dialectal variations of the spoken language and was used for literary, historical, theological, scientific, and even practical everyday texts. The first Armenian periodical, Azdarar (1794), was also printed in Grabar, although by the end of the 18th century the spoken language had so diverged from the written that the language of the periodical was not widely understood.

This divergence had been evident from roughly the 7th century, and, beginning in the 11th century, a variation of the spoken language (now called Middle Armenian) was also written. One of the territorial varieties of Middle Armenian became the official language of Lesser Armenia, the kingdom of Cilicia ruled by the Rubenid and Hethumid dynasties from the 11th to the 14th century.

By the 19th century the discrepancy between Grabar (which had continued to prevail as the written language) and the spoken language (which had by then splintered into numerous dialects) had grown so vast that a movement arose to elaborate a modern standard language that would be comprehensible to all and fit for use in schools. This movement eventually yielded two diglossic varieties of Ašxarhabar (Ashkharhabar), the modern standard language; Grabar remained the language of formal high style during the 19th century.

Western Armenian (formerly known as “Armenian of Turkey”) was based on the dialect of the Armenian community of Istanbul, and Eastern Armenian (formerly known as “Armenian of Russia”) was based on the dialects of Yerevan (Armenia) and Tbilisi (Georgia). Both Eastern and Western Armenian were purged of “Muslim” words (Arabic, Persian, and Turkish loanwords), which were replaced by words taken from Grabar. Loanwords in Grabar (from Greek, Syriac, and, most numerous of all, ancient Iranian), however, were considered part of the native traditional vocabulary and were fully absorbed.

Western Armenian is used by Armenians living in Turkey and some Arab countries as well as in emigrant communities in Europe and the United States. Eastern Armenian is prevalent in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Iran. Although they share almost the same vocabulary, the important divergences in pronunciation and the grammatical differences between the two varieties are so significant that they may be considered two different languages.

Linguistic characteristics