The Armenian language (Armenian: հայերեն լեզու, — hayeren lezu, conventional short form hayeren) is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people in the Republic of Armenia, in Georgia (especially in Samtskhe-Javakheti), Mountainous Karabakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) and also used by 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 (which contains Greek). This is called the Graeco-Armenian Hypothesis. Others suggest that there may be a late Indo-European branch which developed into Armenian, the Hellenic branch and the Indo-Iranian branch (Fortson 1994). Determining the historical evolution of Armenians is particularly difficult because Armenian borrowed many words from Parthian and Persian (both Iranian languages) as well as from Greek.
Armenian alphabet
History
Invented in 405 by Mesrop Mashtots in order to translate the Bible into Armenian.
It is said that some letters of the Armenian alphabet were based on the Greek ones. However, more than a visual similarity, the Armenian and Greek alphabets are rather very close in the letter/sound order. Actually a Greek colleague allegedly helped Mashtots with creating the Armenian alphabet.
Furthermore, the alphabet is composed as a prayer, beginning with A as Astvats (=God) and ending with K' as K'ristos (=Christ).
Notable features
- Type of writing system: alphabet
- Direction of writing: left to right in horizontal lines
- There are a few minor differences in the pronunciation of the letters between the two main dialects of Armenian: Western and Eastern.
- Most of the letters have numerical values.
