Armenian language

The Armenian language (classical: Õ°Õ¡ÕµÕ¥Ö€Õ§Õ¶; reformed: Õ°Õ¡ÕµÕ¥Ö€Õ¥Õ¶ [hÉ'jɛˈɾɛn] hayeren) is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenians. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia and the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. It has historically been spoken throughout the Armenian Highlands and today is widely spoken in the Armenian diaspora. Armenian has its own unique script, the Armenian alphabet, invented in 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots.

Linguists classify Armenian as an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. It is of interest to linguists for its distinctive phonological developments within the Indo-European languages. Armenian shares a number of major innovations with Greek, and some linguists group these two languages with Phrygian and the Indo-Iranian family into a higher-level subgroup of Indo-European, which is defined by such shared innovations as the augment. More recently, others have proposed a Balkan grouping including Greek, Phrygian, Armenian, and Albanian.

Armenia was a monolingual country no later than by the second century BC. Its language has long literary history, with a fifth-century Bible translation as its oldest surviving text. There are two standardized modern literary forms, Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian, with which most contemporary dialects are mutually intelligible.

Classification and origins

While the Armenians were known to history much earlier (for example, they were mentioned in the 6th century BC Behistun Inscription and Xenophon's 4th century BC history, The Anabasis), the oldest surviving Armenian-language text is the 5th-century AD Bible translation of Mesrop Mashtots, who created the Armenian alphabet in 405 AD, at which time it had 36 letters. He is also credited by some with the creation of the Georgian alphabet.

Early contacts

The loans from Iranian languages initially led linguists to erroneously 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 older Armenian vocabulary.

W. M. Austin (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. However, unlike shared innovations (or synapomorphies), the common retention of archaisms (or symplesiomorphy) is not necessarily considered evidence of a period of common isolated development.

Soviet linguist Igor Diakonov (1985) noted the presence in Old Armenian of what he calls a Caucasian substratum, identified by earlier scholars, consisting of loans from the Kartvelian and Northeast Caucasian languages. Noting that the Hurro-Urartian peoples inhabited the Armenian homeland in the second millennium b.c., Diakonov 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 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, he dates their borrowing to a time before the written record but after the Proto-Armenian language stage.

Graeco-Armenian hypothesis

The hypothesis that Greek is Armenian's closest living relative originates with 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. Meillet (1925, 1927) further investigated morphological and phonological agreement, postulating that the parent languages of Greek and Armenian were dialects in immediate geographical proximity in the parent language. Meillet's hypothesis became popular in the wake of his Esquisse (1936). Solta (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 most closely related to Armenian. Hamp (1976, 91) supports the Graeco-Armenian thesis, anticipating even a time "when we should speak of Helleno-Armenian" (meaning the postulate of a Graeco-Armenian proto-language). Armenian shares the augment, and a negator derived from the set phrase PIE *ne h₂oiu k^wid ("never anything" or "always nothing"), and the representation of word-initial laryngeals by prothetic vowels, and 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. Nevertheless, linguists, including Fortson (2004), comment "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."

Evolution

Classical Armenian, or Grabar, 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. In the period that followed the invention of the alphabet and up to the threshold of the modern era, Grabar lived on. An effort to modernize the language in Greater Armenia and the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia (11â€"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 (951â€"1003) is an example of the development of a literature and writing style in Middle Armenian. 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 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. 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 vernacular, AÅ¡xarhabar, 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 (1920â€"1990) used Eastern Armenian as its official language, whereas the diaspora created after the Genocide of 1915 preserved the Western Armenian dialect.

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

Proto-Indo-European voiceless occlusives are aspirated in Proto-Armenian, one of the circumstances that is often linked to the Glottalic theory, a version of which postulated that the voiceless occlusives of Proto-Indo-European were aspirated.

Stress

In Armenian the stress falls on the last syllable unless the last syllable contains [É™], in which case it falls on the penultimate one. For instance, [É'χoɾˈÊ'É'k], [mÉ'ʁÉ'dÉ'ˈnos], [giˈni] but [vÉ'ˈhÉ'gÉ™n] and [ˈdÉ'ʃtÉ™]. Exceptions to this rule are some words with the final letter Õ§ (Õ¥ in the reformed orthography) (Õ´Õ«Õ›Õ©Õ§, մի՛գուցե, Õ¸Õ›Ö€Õ¥Ö‚Õ§) and sometimes the ordinal numerals (վե՛ցերորդ, Õ¿Õ¡Õ›Õ½Õ¶Õ¥Ö€Õ¸Ö€Õ¤, etc.).

Vowels

Modern Armenian has six monophthongs. Each vowel phoneme in the table is represented by three symbols. The first indicates the phoneme's pronunciation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). After that appears the corresponding letter of the Armenian alphabet. The last symbol is its Latin transliteration (according to ISO 9985).

Consonants

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

1. Sources differ on the place of articulation of these consonants.

The major phonetic difference between dialects is in the reflexes of Classical Armenian voice-onset time. The seven dialect types have the following correspondences, illustrated with the tâ€"d series:

The consonants transcribed ⟨dʱ⟩ are breathy voiced.

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 agglutinative, one of only two Indo-European languages with this characteristic, the other one being Persian. 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, but there is a feminine suffix (-ուհի "-uhi"). For example, ուսուցիչ (usuts'ich, "teacher") becomes ուսուցչուհի (usuts'chuhi, 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. Nouns are declined for one of seven cases: nominative, accusative, locative, genitive, dative, ablative, or instrumental.

Examples of nouns' declension

Õ€Õ¥Õ¼Õ¡Õ­Õ¸Õ½ (Telephone):

âˆ'

Õ„Õ¡ÕµÖ€ (Mother)

Animated nouns don't decline for locative case.

âˆ'

Õ€Õ¡Õ¶Ö€Õ¡ÕºÕ¥Õ¿Õ¸Ö‚Õ©ÕµÕ¸Ö‚Õ¶ (Republic)

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

Armenian is a pluricentric language, having two modern standardized forms: Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian. 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 (Õ©) as an aspirated "t" as in "tiger", (Õ¤) like the "d" in "develop", and (Õ¿) as a tenuis occlusive, sounding somewhere between the two as in "stop." 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 (Õ©) and (Õ¤) as an aspirated "t" as in "tiger", and the (Õ¿) 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 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, some subdialects are not readily mutually intelligible. Nevertheless, a fluent speaker of one of two greatly varying dialects who is exposed to the other dialect for 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 the divergent and almost extinct Lomavren language of the Bosha people, both of which are categorized as belonging to the Armenian language family.

Writing system

The Armenian alphabet (Armenian: Հայոց Õ£Ö€Õ¥Ö€ Hayots grer or Հայոց Õ¡ÕµÕ¢Õ¸Ö‚Õ¢Õ¥Õ¶ Hayots aybuben) is a graphically unique alphabetical writing system that is used to write the Armenian language. It was introduced around 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian linguist and ecclesiastical leader, and originally contained 36 letters. Two more letters, Ö… (o) and Ö† (f), were added in the Middle Ages. During the 1920s orthography reform, a new letter Ö‡ (capital ÔµÕŽ) was added, which was a ligature before Õ¥+Ö‚, while the letter Õ' Ö‚ was discarded and reintroduced as part of a new letter ÕˆÕ' Õ¸Ö‚ (which was a digraph before).

Indo-European cognates

Armenian is an Indo-European language, 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
• Western Armenian language
• Urartian language
• Glottalic theory
• Graeco-Armenian
• Homshetsi dialect
• Language families and languages
• List of Indo-European languages

Notes

Footnotes

References

Further reading

External links

• Armenian Swadesh list of basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh list appendix)
• AGBU â€" Armenian Virtual College â€" First online university to learn Armenian
• Armenian language resources
• The Armenian alphabet
• Learn Armenian (Organization teaching grammar vocabulary and phrases)

Armenian Online Dictionaries

• en.wiktionary.org Armenianâ€"English dictionary with pronunciations, etymologies and inflection tables.
• Armenian English Dictionary Armenianâ€"English dictionary.
• Nayiri.com (Library of Armenian dictionaries):
  • Armenian dictionary (about 18,000 terms; definitions in Armenian).
  • Armenian Explanatory Dictionary (Õ€Õ¡ÕµÕ¥Ö€Õ§Õ¶ Բացատրական Ô²Õ¡Õ¼Õ¡Ö€Õ¡Õ¶) by Stepan Malkhasiants (about 130,000 entries). One of the definitive Armenian dictionaries.
  • Armenian Etymological Dictionary (Õ€Õ¡ÕµÕ¥Ö€Õ§Õ¶ Ô±Ö€Õ´Õ¡Õ¿Õ¡Õ¯Õ¡Õ¶ Ô²Õ¡Õ¼Õ¡Ö€Õ¡Õ¶) by Hrachia Acharian (5,062 word roots). The definitive study of the history and origins of word roots in Armenian. Also includes explanations of each word root as it is used today.
  • Explanatory Dictionary of Contemporary Armenian (Ժամանակակից Հայոց Ô¼Õ¥Õ¦Õ¾Õ« Բացատրական Ô²Õ¡Õ¼Õ¡Ö€Õ¡Õ¶) published by the Armenian SSR Academy of Sciences between 1969 and 1980. In Eastern Armenian, reformed orthography (about 125,000 headwords).
  • Հայոց Ô¼Õ¥Õ¦Õ¸Ö‚Õ« Õ†Õ¸Ö€ Ô²Õ¡Õ¼Õ¡Ö€Õ¡Õ¶, Western Armenian dictionary published in two volumes in Beirut in 1992 (about 56,000 headwords).
  • Modern Armenian Explanatory Dictionary (Ô±Ö€Õ¤Õ« Õ€Õ¡ÕµÕ¥Ö€Õ¥Õ¶Õ« Բացատրական Ô²Õ¡Õ¼Õ¡Ö€Õ¡Õ¶) by Edward Aghayan (about 135,600 headwords). In Eastern Armenian and reformed Armenian orthography.
  • Armenian Language Thesaurus (Հայոց Ô¼Õ¥Õ¦Õ¾Õ« Õ€Õ¸Õ´Õ¡Õ¶Õ«Õ·Õ¶Õ¥Ö€Õ« Ô²Õ¡Õ¼Õ¡Ö€Õ¡Õ¶) by Ashot Sukiasyan (about 83,000 entries). In Eastern Armenian and reformed Armenian orthography.
  • Armenian-English dictionary (about 70,000 entries).
  • English-Armenian dictionary (about 96,000 entries).
  • Armenian-French dictionary (about 18,000 entries).
  • French-Armenian dictionary (about 20,000 entries).
• www.masis.am/test/dic/ Armenianâ€"English Dictionary, more than 17,000 terms.
• dictionaries.arnet.am Collection of Armenian XDXF and Stardict dictionaries
• dictionary.hayastan.com Armenianâ€"English Dictionary, more than 9,000 terms.
• Daoulagad - mobile Armenian OCR dictionary

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