Armenian is the official language of Armenia, and is also spoken in parts of Iran, Georgia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and other countries. A total of approximately 7 million people speak Armenian throughout the world. The Armenian's own name for their language is
Hayeren.
The Armenian language is generally believed to represent its own unique branch of the Indo-European language family. Its closest linguistic relative was Phrygian, a now-extinct language from Asia Minor. Armenian also shows similarities to Greek. There are two major dialects of Armenian: Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian.
The Armenian alphabet was developed early in the fifth century AD by Mesrop Mashtots, a cleric at the Armenian royal court. The letters bear some resemblence to cursive Greek writing. Armenian is written from left to right, just like English. It also has both capital and lowercase letters. The Armenian alphabet is shown below:
Capital Letters:
Lowercase Letters:
The Eastern and Western dialects of Armenian both use the same alphabet, but some Armenian letters have different names and pronunciations in the different dialects. The Eastern Armenian pronunciation for each letter tends to be distinct, while Western Armenian uses the same sound for several different letters.
The pronunciation of certain Armenian letters can also vary depending on their placement within a word. Armenian pronunciation is marked by a large number of common consonant combinations.
There are a significant number of root words in the Armenian language that are similar to roots in Old Persian. Classical Armenian also borrowed words from various Iranian languages. Middle Iranian picked up vocabulary from Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Latin. The modern form of the language originally borrowed even more words from Persian and Turkish. However, many words of Turkish origin were dropped from the language, or at least from its literary form, early in the twentieth century, following conflicts between Armenians and Turks in Anatolia.
Armenian nouns are declined to show case, meaning that they change form to indicate their role in a sentence. There are seven possible cases: nominative, accusative, locative, genitive, dative, ablative, and instrumental. However, neither Armenian nouns nor Armenian pronouns have gender. Armenian verbs are conjugated to show tense, mood, and aspect. Negative verbs are conjugated differently than positive verbs. Verb conjugation also differs between Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian.
Regular practice is important to learn to speak Armenian well. That's why good
Armenian software programs can be so useful. It's easier than ever to learn Armenian and to begin to speak Armenian with the language resources and Armenian language software from Transparent Language, such as
Before You Know It. We wish you the best of luck in your endeavors to learn Armenian!
