Armenian language

From Open Encyclopedia

{{Infobox Language |name=Armenian |nativename= Հայերեն Hayeren |familycolor=Indo-European |states=Armenia, Canada, Cyprus, France, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Germany,Greece,Australia, Jordan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Brazil, Argentina, Lebanon,United Kingdom, Russia, Syria, Turkey,Israel,United States and others |speakers=7 million |nation=Armenia |iso1=hy|iso2b=arm|iso2t=hye|iso3=hye }}

Armenian is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people in the Armenian Republic and also used by the Armenian Diaspora. It constitutes an independent branch of the Indo-European language family, though many Indo-Europeanists believe it forms a subgroup with the Greek and Indo-Iranian families (see Clackson 1994 for extensive discussion).

1 General considerations
2 Grammar
3 Phonology
4 Morphology
- 4.1 Noun
- 4.2 Verb
5 Dialects
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

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General considerations

Armenian is regarded as a close relative of Phrygian. From the modern languages Greek seems to be the most closely related to Armenian. 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. 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 genocide of the Armenians in Anatolia by the Turks in 1915-1920.

Armenian is written in the Armenian alphabet, created by Saint Mesrop Mashtots in 406 AD. This alphabet, with two additional letters, is still used today.

Literature written in Armenian appeared by the 5th century. The written language of that time, called classical Armenian or Grabar, remained the Armenian literary language, with various changes, until the 19th century. Meanwhile, spoken Armenian developed independently of the written language. Many dialects appeared when Armenian communities became separated by geography or politics, and not all of these dialects remained mutually intelligible.

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Grammar

Armenian resembles 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.

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

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Phonology

Classical Armenian distinguishes seven vowels: a, i, schwa, open e, closed e, o, and u (transcribed as a, i, ə, e, ē, o, ow and u respectively).

The occlusives have a special aspirated series (transcribed with a Greek spiritus asper after the letter): p῾, t῾, c῾, č῾, k῾.

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Morphology

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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.

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Verb

Main article: Armenian verbs

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.

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Dialects

One of the greatest differences in the two modern dialects is the way certain letters are pronounced. Eastern Armenian speakers have kept the original pronunciations of the letters, pronouncing each of the 38 letters quite distinctively. On the other hand, Western Armenian speakers pronounce a few of the letters in the same way. This has to do with Western Armenians living in regions where other languages, which lacked these rich variations, were also widely spoken and therefore have been influenced by the pronunciations of these other languages (usually either Arabic or Turkish.)

For example, the Armenian language has the letter "t" (թ) as in "tiger", the letter "d" (դ) as in "develop", and another letter which is a cross between the two as in "fatter" (տ). Western Armenians will pronounce the "tiger" and "develop" examples in the same way, where as Eastern Armenian speakers pronounced each of the three differently.

Armenian also has many other unique letters not heard in other languages. There are two different "k"s; as well as a letter sounding like a cross between "p" and "b"; two "r" letters, one pronounced with a rolling "r" sound; the letter "gh" pronounced like the French "r"; "kh" a harder pronunciation also found in many Middle Eastern languages; as well as the letters "ts", "tz", "dz", "dch", "uh" like the "a" sound in the word "arrange"; and many more. These are just a few examples that make Armenian a rich and unique language.

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). The main difference between both blocks are:

Western Armenian (Arevm'tahayeren):
- example
Eastern Armenian (Arevelahayeren):
- example

In addition, neither dialect is completely homogeneous: any dialect can be subdivided into several subdialects. 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:

Western Armenian

Anatolia
- Istanbul
- Cilicia (Musa Ler, Marash, Sis, etc)
- Van
- Bitlis
Europe
- Bulgaria
- Romania
- Greece
Asia
- Lebanon
- Syria
- Jerusalem
Africa
- Egypt