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, and is of interest to linguists for its distinctive phonological developments within Indo-European.
Linguists classify Armenian as an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. Armenian shares a number of major innovations with Greek, and some linguists group these two languages together 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, Armenian, Phrygian and Albanian.
Armenian has a long literary history, with a fifth-century Bible translation as its oldest surviving text. Its vocabulary has been heavily influenced by Western Middle Iranian languages, particularlyParthian, and to a lesser extent by Greek, Latin, Old French, Persian, and Arabic and other languages throughout its history. While in lengthy contact with Turkic languages, Turkish has influenced Armenian grammar, phonology and topic rather than its vocabulary, at least with regard to the literary forms of Armenian. There are two standardized modern literary forms, Eastern Armenian andWestern Armenian, which are mutually intelligible. The divergent and almost extinct Lomavren language is a Romani-influenced dialect with an Armenian grammar and a largely Romani-derived vocabulary, including Romani numbers.
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 Mesrob Mashtots
Early contacts
The large percentage of 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 true Armenian vocabulary.
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. But, unlike shared innovations (or synapomorphies) the common retention of archaisms (or symplesiomorphy) is not necessarily considered evidence of a period of common isolated development. (For example, the fact that birds and turtles have scales is not evidence of any special closeness, some mammals retain scales too, and scales date back to our common ancestors, the fish.)
In his paper, "Hurro-Urartian Borrowings in Old Armenian", Soviet linguist Igor Mikhailovich Diakonov notes 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 such as Udi. Noting that the Hurro-Urartian peoples inhabited the Armenian homeland in the second millennium BC, Diakonov identifies in Armenian a Hurro-Urartian substratum of social, cultural, and zoological and biological terms such as ałaxin ('slavegirl') and xnjor ('apple(tree)'). Some of the terms he gives admittedly have an Akkadian or Sumerian provenance, but he suggests they were borrowed through Hurrian or Urartu. Given that these borrowings do not undergo sound changescharacteristic 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 theaugment, a negator derived from the set phrase *ne hoiu kwid ("not ever at all"), 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 A.D., the evidence of any such early kinship has been reduced to a few tantalizing pieces.".
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.
The classical 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.
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 population, at large, 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 vernacular, 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.
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 stops are aspirated in Proto-Armenian, one of the circumstances that is often linked to the Glottalic theory, part of which postulated that the voiceless stops of Proto-Indo-European were aspirated.
Stress
In Armenian the stress falls on the last syllable, unless the last syllable contains [ə], in which case it falls on the penultimate one. For instance, [ɑχoɾˈʒɑk], [mɑʁɑdɑˈnos], [giˈni], but [vɑˈhɑgən] and [ˈdɑʃtə]. The exceptions from this rule are some words with final letter է (ե in the reformed orthography) (իհա՛րկէ, գրե՛թէ, մի՛թէ, գո՛նէ)and sometimes the ordinal numerals (վե՛ցերորդ, տա՛սներորդ etc.).
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i ի i | u ու u | |
| Mid | e̞ ե, է e, ē | ə ը ë | o̞ ո, օ o, ò |
| Open | ɑ ա a |
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’, k’(but č). 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 transliteration (according to ISO 9985)..
| Labials | Alveolar | Post- Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | lateral | ||||||||
| Plosive | voiceless | /p/ պ – p | /t/ տ – t | /k/ կ – k | |||||
| voiced | /b/ բ – b | /d/ դ – d | /ɡ/ գ – g | ||||||
| aspirated | /pʰ/ փ – p’ | /tʰ/ թ – t’ | /kʰ/ ք – k’ | ||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | /f/ ֆ – f | /s/ ս – s | /ʃ/ շ – š | /x ~ χ/1 խ – x | /h/ հ – h | |||
| voiced | /v/ վ – v | /z/ զ – z | /ʒ/ ժ – ž | /ɣ ~ ʁ/1 ղ – ġ | |||||
| Affricative | voiceless | /t͡s/ ծ – ç | /t͡ʃ/ ճ – č̣ | ||||||
| voiced | /d͡z/ ձ – j | /d͡ʒ/ ջ – ǰ | |||||||
| aspirated | /t͡sʰ/ ց – c’ | /t͡ʃʰ/ չ – č | |||||||
| Approximant | /ɹ/2 | /l ~ ɫ/2 լ – l | /j/ -յ- – y | ||||||
| Nasal | /m/ մ – m | /n/ ն – n | |||||||
| Trill | /r/ ռ – ṙ | ||||||||
| Tap | /ɾ/ ր – r | ||||||||
- Sources differ on the place of articulation of these consonants.
- ɫ and ɹ only occur in Classical Armenian
Morphology
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| Armenian manuscript, circa 5th-6th century. |
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. 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. 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.
| English | Eastern Armenian (Arevelahayeren) | Western Armenian (Arevm'dahayeren) |
|---|---|---|
| Yes | Ayo (այո) | Ayo (այո) |
| No | Voč' (ոչ) | Voč' (ոչ) |
| Excuse me | Neroġout'ioun (ներողություն) | Neroġout'ioun (ներողութիւն) |
| Hello | Barev (բարև) | Parev (բարև) |
| How are you(formal) | Vonts' ek (ո՞նց եք) | Inč'bes ek (ինչպէ՞ս էք) |
| What's up | Inč' ka č'ka (ի՞նչ կա չկա) | Inč' ga č'ga (ի՞նչ կայ չկայ) |
| Please | Khntrem (խնդրեմ) | Khntrem (խնդրեմ), Hadjiss (հաճիս) |
| Thank you | Šnorhakal em (շնորհակալ եմ) | Šnorhagal em (շնորհակալ եմ) |
| Thank you very much | Šat šnorhakal em (շատ շնորհակալ եմ) | Šad šnorhagal em (շատ շնորհակալ եմ) |
| Welcome | Bari galoust (բարի գալուստ) | Pari yegar / Pari yegak' (բարի եկար / բարի եկաք) |
| Goodbye | C'tesout'ioun (ցտեսություն) | C'desout'ioun (ցտեսութիւն) |
| Good morning | Bari louys (բարի լույս) | Pari louys (բարի լոյս) |
| Good afternoon | Bari òr (բարի օր) | Pari ges òr (բարի կէս օր) |
| Good evening | Bari yereko (բարի երեկո) | Pari irigoun (բարի իրիկուն) |
| Good night | Bari gišer (բարի գիշեր) | Kišer pari (գիշեր բարի) |
| I love you | Yes siroum em k'ez (ես սիրում եմ քեզ) | Yes ëzk'ez gë sirem (ես զքեզ կը սիրեմ) |
| I am Armenian | Yes hay em (ես հայ եմ) | Yes hay em (ես հայ եմ) |
| I miss you | Yes k'ezi garod em (ես քեզի կարօտ եմ) | Yes k'ezi garodtzadz em (ես քեզի կարօտցած եմ) |
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.
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