Spoken in: Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh (de facto a republic, de-jure part of Azerbaijan), and the Armenian diaspora.

Total speakers: 7 million.

Language family: Indo-European, Armenian.

Writing system: Armenian alphabet.

Official status
Official language in: Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh.

Regulated by: National Academy of Sciences of Armenia.

The Armenian language (hayeren lezow, conventional short form hayeren) is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as Nagorno-Karabakh (a de facto republic but de-jure part of Azerbaijan). The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora.

Linguists standardly classify Armenian as an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. Some Indo-Europeanists, notably Clackson (1994), have proposed that Armenian may have been grouped together with the Hellenic branch (Greek). This is called the Graeco-Armenian Hypothesis, in combination with a Graeco-Aryan hypothesis (Colin Renfrew, Clackson and Fortson 1994).


History of the Armenian language

The Armenian language dates to the early period of Indo-European differentiation and dispersion some 5000 years ago, or perhaps as early as 7,800 years ago according to some recent research.

Graeco-Armenian hypothesis

Armenian is regarded by some linguists as a close relative of Phrygian. Many scholars such as Clackson (1994) hold 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 of Greek. The close relatedness of 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. However 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."

Indo-European studies

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, the absence of inherited long vowels and the centum character.

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 loans from Iranian languages initially led linguists to classify Armenian as an Iranian language. The distinctness of Armenian was only recognized when Hübschmann (1875) used the comparative method to distinguish two layers of Iranian loans from the true Armenian vocabulary. 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.


Languages and dialects

- Armenian:
- Eastern Armenian, - Western Armenian.


Morphology

Armenian manuscript 5-6 cc.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.

Lord Byron studied the Armenian language. He helped to compile an Armenian grammar textbook and translated a few Armenian books into English.

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. Interestingly enough, it shares the common -tion noun-forming suffix with Latin (the Armenian cognate is t'yown).

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.

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 two greatly varying subdialects who are exposed to the other dialect over even a short period of time will be able to understand the other with relative ease.


Historical Armenian Dialects

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

- owm Dialects:

1. Yerevan, Doğubeyazit, Tabriz (Kala and Lilava quarters), Gavar, Kamo;
2. Tbilisi (Havlabar quarter);
3. Shusha, Ganja, Shaki, Baku, Derbent, Agstafa, Dilijan, Vanadzor, Qazakh, Lori, Karadagh, Mujumbar, Tabriz (Lilava quarter), Burdur, Ödemiş;
4. Shamaki, Quba;
5. Astrakhan;
6. Julfa, Isfahan (New Julfa quarter), Shiraz, Hamadan, Bushehr, Tehran, Qazvin, Rasht, Bandar-e Anzali;

- gë Dialects:

1. Erzerum, Kars, Gyumri, Akhalkalaki, Akhaltsikhe;
2. Muş, Sason, Bitlis, Hizan, Ahlat, Erciş, Bulanık, Malazgirt, Hinis, Eleşkirt, Aparan, Eshtia, Ujmana, Toria;
3. Van, Diadin, Mukus, Buşkale, Çatak, Basargecher;
4. Diyarbakır, Lice, Hazro, Kozluk, Hizan, Siverek, Şanlıurfa;
5. Harput, Erzincan, Palu, Bingöl, Çemişgezek, Akpazar, Kigi, Tunceli, Kemah;
6. Şebinkarahisar, Akıncılar;
7. Trabzon, Bayburt, Gümüşhane, Giresun;
8. Hemşin, Trabzon, Ünye, Fatsa, Terme, Çarşamba, Samsun, Sukhumi, Sochi, Mtsara, Tsebelda, Adler, Shapsugskaya;
9. Malatya, Adıyaman;
10. Saimbeyli, Süleymanlı, Kahramanmaraş, Kilis, İskenderun, Yakacik, Samandağ
11. Aramo;
12. Arapgir, Divriği, Gürün, Darende, Kayseri, Yozgat;
13. Kemaliye;
14. Sivas;
15. Tokat, Amasya, Merzifon, Ordu, Samsun, Sinop;
16. İzmir;
17. İzmit, Adapazarı, Yalova, Bahçecik, Geyve, İznik, Pazarköy, Karamürsel, Aslanbey, Ortaköy, Sölöz, Benli;
18. Istanbul;
19. Tekirdağ, Malkara;
20. Nor Nakhichevan, Rostov-on-Don, Stavropol, Krasnodar, Dnipropetrovsk, Anapa, Maykop, Taganrog, Prymorsk, Novocherkassk, Dneprovskaya;
21. Poland, Bukovina, Transylvania, Hungary;
22. Jerusalem (K'aġak'ac'i dialect), not in Adjarian but mentioned by Vaux as likely coming from Cilicia;

- el Dialects:

1. Maragheh;
2. Khoy, Maku, Iğdir, Kori, Alighuli, Mughanjugh, Karashen, Alilu, Angeghakot, Ghushchi, Tazakend, Uz, Mazra, Balak, Shaghat, Ltsen, Sisian, Nerkin Kilisa;
3. Artvin, Ardahan, Ardanuç, Oltu.


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).