Talk:Armenian language

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To-do list for Armenian language: edit · history · watch · refresh
  1. TO DO Create Orthography section. Note two orthographies: Traditional and Reformed. Note four "flavors" of written Armenian:Serouj 07:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
    1. Eastern Morphology + Traditional orthography = Iranian-Armenian writing & writing from the Republic of Armenia before 1920. Serouj 07:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
    2. Eastern Morphology + Reformed orthography = Majority Eastern Armenian writing from the Republic of Armenia starting 1920+. Serouj 07:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
    3. Western Morphology + Traditional Orthography = Western Armenian writing. Serouj 07:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
    4. Classical Morphology + Traditional orthography = Classical Armenian writing. Serouj 07:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  2. TO DO Under Orthography, make sure to:. Serouj 07:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
    1. Note that Armenian is always written left to right. Serouj 07:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
    2. Include Punctuation. Serouj 07:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
    3. Include Diacritical Marks. Serouj 07:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  3. TO DO Create History section: Classical Armenian, Middle Armenian, Modern Armenian (Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian). Serouj 07:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  4. TO DO Update Vowel chart from one in Western Armenian (footnote that էօ is not found in Eastern Armenian?). Serouj 07:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  5. TO DO Update Consonant chart from one in the Traditional Orthography article (remove its footnotes; but footnote Traditional vs. Reformed spelling, where different). Serouj 07:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  6. TO DO Under Morphology, stress that there are three: Classical, Eastern, Western (and Middle?). Serouj 07:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  7. TO DO Under Phonology, stress that there are two: Eastern/Classical/(Middle?) and Western. Serouj 07:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  8. TO DO Under History, need to elaborate on the role of Armenian within IE languages and its relationship with other IE languages.--Eupator 16:12, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  9. TO DO Provide a Vocabulary section, with estimated numbers of words borrowed from different languages. (Also note the problem of Russification of the Armenian language in modern times in the Republic of Armenia - e.g. that the Armenian media excessively uses Russian words instead of native Armenian words.) Serouj 04:16, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
  10. TO DO Rewrite the Latin column in the Comparison table, amending the vast errors in it.
  11. TO DO clean up this TO DO list. VartanM 03:54, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
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Contents

[edit] Quick Question

The article indicates that Armenian is Indo-European yet it has similarities with Aramaic, which doesn't exactly make sense to me. Can someone help me here. I don't wish to change anything, I really just want to hear someone's take on this. Thanks. Deman7001 21:42, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay man I'm no expert or anything, but the Armenian language is 100% Indo-European no question on that, the Armenian language has roots expanded to many other languages, but it is for sure. Artaxiad 21:48, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
There is a mere handful of Aramaic loanwords in Armenian: the two languages are unrelated. Armenian is Indo-European, and Aramaic is Afro-Asiatic. — Gareth Hughes 21:49, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
I've just seen that 'Aramaic' is up there in the lead paragraph, and it has a reference supporting it. I am sure this is wrong. Can someone double check the reference? — Gareth Hughes 21:51, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Sigh* thats from a banned user Ararat arev, you can remove it if you like, the person he quotes is no where near reliable. Artaxiad 22:09, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for that. I couldn't find any credentials on-line anywhere. I'll revert or rework the lead. — Gareth Hughes 22:13, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Unprotecting

Indefinite full protection of a Wikipedia article simply isn't acceptable. I've unprotected it and will keep it on my watchlist. If the banned user returns as an IP, the page can be (temporarily!) semi-protected. If he returns with a user account, the account can be blocked. —Angr 15:44, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Armenian's relation to to other IE branches

Just in case it's not clear, I decided to post here a paragraph from the entry on Armenian in the Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics:

Armenian belongs to the Indo-European family, and is commonly believed to be most closely related to Greek and Indo-Iranian. (For instance, all three share a prohibitive particle *me: (Greek me:, Sanskrit ma:, Armenian mi) and the imperfect third-person singular augment *e- (as in Greek e-pher-e, Sanskrit a-bhar-a-t, Armenian e-ber ‘(s)he/it carried’). Many more such parallels are discussed in Clackson, 1994.) Because of its many loans from various Middle Iranian languages, especially Parthian, Armenian was thought to be an Iranian dialect until Heinrich Hübschmann demonstrated in 1875 that it was a distinct branch of the Indo-European family. Scholars disagree on how the Armenians came to historical Armenia, the eastern half of present-day Turkey centered around Lake Van and Mount Ararat; some believe they came southward from the Russian steppe, others believe they and the Hittites came eastward from Greece, and others suggest they moved only a short distance from an original Indo-European homeland in the Transcaucasus. It is most likely that this settlement occurred in the second millennium b.c. The earliest mentions of the Armenians occur in the inscriptions of the Achaemenid Persian king Darius (6th century b.c.) and the Greek historian Herodotus (5th century b.c.)

As you can see, the current state of scholarship is that Armenian is a distinct branch of Indo-European, which, while borrowing words from Iranian languages, is not an Iranian language. It is closest to the Hellenic and Iranian branches of IE, but the relationship looks closer than it really is because of borrowings into Armenian from those two branches. — Gareth Hughes 18:15, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Moreover, the bare fact that Armenian shares (unborrowed) words with Iranian languages and Greek is uninteresting and irrelevant to the paragraph in question. All Indo-European languages share words with each other. You might as well say that Armenian shares words with Germanic and Celtic, too. —Angr 18:19, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
Some examples of shared words

English: door, Russian: Dver, Armenian: dur

English: cat, Russian: koshka, Armenian: katu

English: light, Spanish: lus, Armenian: luys

As you can see there are similarities VartanM 18:26, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

cat is a borrowing in all those languages, not a descendent of an Indo-European root. --Krsont 23:10, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Borrowed vs Shared

Borrowing makes no sense, because if I borrow something I have to return it. Do Armenians have to return the words they borrowed from the Persians? Are the Persians expecting their words back anytime in the near future? Besides I know alot of Persians who use Armenian words daily. So the correct term to use here is sharing. VartanM 18:20, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

The metaphor of "borrowing" loanwords (incorporated into that very word) is the standardly used one; there is no implication that a borrowed word has to be returned, or that loanwords have to be repaid. "Borrowing" and "loanword" are well-established technical terms of historical linguistics; "shared words" is not. —Angr 18:39, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
The term 'borrowed' or 'loaned' is used by linguists, probably because it would not be polite to say 'stolen'. All languages do a certain amount of 'borrowing', or 'stealing'; it's natural. However, old borrowings can be confused as native words, and, thus, the language appears related, or more related, to the language from which the 'borrowing' was taken than it really is. That's the issue here. Now, 'shared' is not part of the technical language of comparative linguistics, so to use it would look rather amateurish. If anything, 'shared' suggests a greater level of cooperation and planned language development than is true in almost all cases. — Gareth Hughes 19:56, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

There are Armenian words to this day that Persians use to have also, but Persians have ceased to use them now. Im talking about over thousand years ago Persians ceased to use them. There are many cases like this, I had mentioned this earlier. Im saying "Armenian" words, cause to this day we still have those words, but Persians dont use them anymore. It has nothing to do with the conversion by Arab Muslims, cause there are many words that still are shared, but those other words dont exist in Persian anymore, possibly cause of Arab invasion and Arab words are found in Persian now. Alex mond 20:26, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Borrowed is not correct here, because it shows the lack of knowledge on the topic, since it says determning the history of Armenian is difficult. If its difficult why is it "positive" that "we" borrowed? You see, there are many cases with "root" words identical, which shows the languages had common links, just as the case with the other Indo-Europeans like Indian and Persian. Alex mond 20:31, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

List of words and references, please. 'Shared' is not the correct word. This argument has no substance to it. Unless you can produce references, you shouldn't push an incorrect wording on the article page. — Gareth Hughes 20:34, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
Some Armenian words descend from a common proto-language to Armenian, Hellenic and Iranian languages (even many to Proto-Indo-European). You could call this corpus of vocabulary 'shared', but the linguistic term is more usually 'common'. Some Armenian words are borrowed from other languages. There is a huge difference between these two sets of vocabulary. However, the age of many of the borrowings often makes them difficult to distinguish from common vocabulary derived from a proto-language. You seem to misunderstand what the term 'borrowed' means in a the context of comparative linguistics. — Gareth Hughes 20:40, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

I told you thats not the case, I said there are "root" words in Indo-Iranian, like Sanskrit, which are identical with Armenian to this day. In fact, those words that I found are used to this day in Armenian, but its the ancient Indian Sanskrit which has ceased from their common daily language. Persians have the same case, many of the words have ceased to be used today. It continued in Armenian, this isnt nationalism, in case one might think, since Im saying we "share" words. Alex mond 20:49, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Some examples of the root identical:

Armenian git-(gitel or gitakzel) means knowledge Sanskrit gita

Armenian amb-(amboghj) means all Sanskrit amboh

Armenian avid-(avidya silent h) means eternal Sanskrit avidya

Armenian apr-(aprel) means life or living Sanskrit aprana

Armenian mta-(mtazel) means thinking Sanskrit mita

Armenian vich-(vichel or vichoom) means distinguish Sansrkit vichara Alex mond 20:53, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

All you are doing is sampling Indo-European roots in Armenian. Again, no sources. The text you keep insisting on is this: "Armenian shares many root words with Sanskrit and Persian (both Indo-Iranian) languages as well as with Greek." It is a meaningless sentence: all Indo-European languages 'share many root words': it's called common heritage. Are you taking personal insult in the use of the word 'borrowed'? It is a technical term, whereas 'shares' is not, and it is technically correct. Please read carefully: "Armenian belongs to the Indo-European family, and is commonly believed to be most closely related to Greek and Indo-Iranian. (For instance, all three share a prohibitive particle *me: (Greek me:, Sanskrit ma:, Armenian mi) and the imperfect third-person singular augment *e- (as in Greek e-pher-e, Sanskrit a-bhar-a-t, Armenian e-ber ‘(s)he/it carried’). Many more such parallels are discussed in Clackson, 1994.) Because of its many loans from various Middle Iranian languages, especially Parthian, Armenian was thought to be an Iranian dialect until Heinrich Hübschmann demonstrated in 1875 that it was a distinct branch of the Indo-European family." This is from the work I referenced above. The importance of loanwords in Armenian is the basis of Hübschmann's thesis that remains central to modern scholarly opinion on Armenian. Your edit effectively denies scholarship. Maybe I'll use the 'loanword' in the text as you seem to have a problem with the 'b'-word. — Gareth Hughes 21:39, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

I'll explain why both "borrowed" and "loanwords" is not correct. Do you see Indian language pages saying that they "borrowed" from Persian? Please do show me that if you can find that. I told you many places which I looked it says we share a common history and heritage. So you realize Indo-Europeans share a common heritage. So if other language pages in same case dont use borrowed or loanwords, why you prejudicing Armenian? Alex mond 21:55, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Urdu has many borrowed words from Persian, these are quite different from words that come from Proto-Indo-Iranian. It can be quite difficult at times to see the difference between Persian loanwords and common Proto-Indo-Iranian words that just happen to look the same as Persian words because of their common source. You clearly do not understand this important distinction. Academic scholarship writes quite clearly about the presence of Iranian loanwords in Armenian. Their existence is important to the establishment of Armenian as a separate branch of Indo-European rather than an adjunct to Indo-Iranian. I certainly am not prejudiced against Armenian — a badly placed ad hominem argument there — I read Classical Armenian just before Christmas here in Oxford University. The unique status of Armenian is proved by the fact that many of these words are loanwords rather than words of common origin. Hübschmann says they are loanwords, as does Encyclopaedia Britannica: "When the scientific study of Armenian started in the 19th century, the language was considered an Iranian dialect, a mistake easily explained by the vast number of Iranian loanwords in the vocabulary. Subsequent studies, however, have convincingly shown Armenian to be an independent member of the Indo-European language family. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Armenian was a variety of Phrygian, a tongue presumed to be Indo-European. What little is known of the latter is insufficient to support or confirm such a claim." I think this is pretty clear. — Gareth Hughes 22:28, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

You seem to know a lot about this topic. Since you do, I would like to see if you can understand why there are Armenian words to this day used, that are not used anymore in Persian, probably also Indian use to have also that are not used anymore. You understand my question? Im saying there are tons of Armenians words like 'Arta', like Artaxiad dynasty and many Arta- names which persist in Armenian, but not found in Persian anymore. So if I see words like Arta or Artar which means "righteous", still used in Armenian, why do you think that we borrowed from Persian. Dont get me wrong, I understand clearly what it means to borrow words. I understand that 1000's of readers see it that way, that we are a branch from Persians, not the other way around. Which is totally incorrect. So, please answer me, why do the words persist in Armenian, and very "important" words, like Arta- <---"righteous" in Armenian, but it has ceased to be used in Persian now. I cant think of more of a way to make clear of this. I will also cite my sources with some linguistics, revealing Armenian is the root and the Armenian Highlands. Take the Kura-Araxes culture (Aratta) for example, which shows Indo-European presents in the 3rd millenium BC, and the spread to Northern Syria of a pottery type associated with that movement. There are many records from the 3rd and 2nd millenium BC identified with Armenians also. Please explain to about the "borrowing" of words from Persian, since we use them to this day, but they stopped using these words we still use. Thank you. 75.28.37.201 23:55, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Im sorry, this just goes to show how everyone has their own type theories, and that history is "incomplete", please admit that. There is more and more to find out about history. I'll leave with that. 75.28.37.201 23:58, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

When the words of a language descend from a common proto-language (like Proto-Indo-European) they go through quite distinct sound changes. The pattern of these changes is one way of distinguishing in which language a word grew up. One word that has not changed too much in the many Indo-European languages is the Proto-Indo-European root *leuk-. This gives us լոյս (loys) in Armenian, 'lux' in Latin, 'ljus' in Swedish and 'light' in English. In Indo-Iranian languages, the initial *l- of PIE almost always becomes an 'r' consonant. Thus, in Old Persian, this root produces the word 'rauča', meaning 'day'. This is one, of many, signs that Armenian is not as close to the Indo-Iranian languages as it may otherwise seem. So, this is a quick introduction to how different, yet related, languages derive words from a common source. Now, there are a number of words in Armenian that are quite similar to words in Middle Iranian languages. The telling thing about these words is that their pronunciation shows that they grew up in the Iranian languages (with their different system of sound changes). If they were native Armenian words, their pronunication would be very different. Now, these Iranian loanwords (for that is what they are) have been part of Armenian for so long that they have made themselves at home, and feel a quite natural part of the language. This has happened to such an extent that early studies of Armenian did suggest a closer genetic relationship between Armenian and Iranian languages than is actually true. Here is another interesting paragraph from Vaux's entry in the Encyclopaedia of Language and Lingusitics:

In linguistic terms Armenian is notable for its significant divergences from Proto-Indo-European, particularly in terms of pronunciation and vocabulary. Some of the more striking phonological changes are the development of a rich set of affricates (ts, dz, etc.), the loss of final syllable rimes (e.g., PIE *worgjom ‘work’ > Classical Armenian gorts), the change of initial *dw to erk- (e.g., PIE *dwo: ‘2’ > Classical Armenian erku), and the change of original *w to g. Most striking in the vocabulary of Armenian is the rarity of words inherited from Indo-European and the overwhelming predominance of words of unknown origin. Unsurprisingly, native IE words survive primarily in the core vocabulary: mayr ‘mother’ < *ma:ter, hayr ‘father’ < *pater, khoyr ‘sister’ < *swesor, kov ‘cow’ < *gwows, tun ‘house’ < *domos, em ‘I am’ < *esmi. The remainder of the lexicon is drawn primarily from Parthian, and to a lesser extent Greek and Syriac (q.v. Hübschmann, 1895); several hundred and perhaps as many as several thousand words are of unknown origin, most likely having come from Urartian, Hurrian, and other now-extinct autochthonous languages. Armenian also incorporated large numbers of Arabic words following the expansion of the Arabs in the Middle East in the 7th century, and the spoken language absorbed thousands of Turkish words following the arrival of Turkic tribes in Anatolia beginning in the 11th century.

75.28.37.201, the problem is that you do not distinguish between words from different sources. The linguistics involved here is rather more subtle than you, and the others here, realise. That Iranian language might cease to use a certain word that has been borrowed by Armenian is neither here nor there: words appear and disappear in all languages. What is important is the presence of the word during the relevant period of Iranian languages. However, in your posts and those of Alex mond, words are thrown up without any understanding of how common words derived from a proto-language clearly differ from loanwords. — Gareth Hughes 11:54, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

If you read in your own writings here, it shows you what Im trying to prove here. You mention distinct Armenians words from Hurrian, or other origins(which is really Sumerian words)not found in any modern language, making them unique. So this is what I mean, when you put "borrowed", it makes it seem like our language is just taken all toghether from Persian or Old Persian, it throws the reader off. Another thing is that the Urdu page which you showed me, puts thats part where they borrowed from Arabs and Persians a little further down the page, so this is what I mean can we put that lower down the page atleast? It will certainly help readers understand that we didnt "borrow" everything, making it seem like we just took things from others. I know you dont see it that way, Im talking about many readers misunderstand that sentence. 75.16.81.154 16:16, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

The anon is right about the content being in the top section, as opposed to the other language pages lower down the pages. Can we move it down like the other pages? Alex mond 16:18, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

This guy has good points, and since Indo-European presents existed in the 3rd millenium BC in the Armenian Highlands, from the Kuro-Araxes culture, it even reveals more that Armenian is possibly much older and that Indo-Iranian is a seperate branch from Proto-Armenian(also known as Armeno-Aryan). T. V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov, The Early History of Indo-European (aka Aryan) Languages, Scientific American, March 1990, also support these finds of earlier Indo-European presents, as opposed to other scholars. And to say that this Kuro-Araxes culture had nothing to do with Armenian is incorrect, since these linguistic place the homeland(Armenian language development in 3rd millenium) in the very place of that culture. Alex mond 16:22, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Everything you said is completely irrelevant to the issue at hand. The fact is that a large number of Armenian words were borrowed from other languages rather than being inherited from Proto-Indo-European. That fact (1) in no way impinges on the fact that Armenian is a separate branch of Indo-European, and not an Iranian language; (2) is not demeaning to Armenians, Armenian culture, or the Armenian language (a huge proportion of the English lexicon has been borrowed from other languages too, and it doesn't hurt English speakers' feelings to know that); and (3) has absolutely no bearing whatever on the issue of Kuro-Araxes culture (or vice versa). —Angr 16:36, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Are you trying to compare Armenian with English, regarding the borrowings? You cant compare those two, since English, first of all, is not an independent branch of IE, it branches out from Germanic, West Germanic, Anglo-Saxon etc etc, and finally English. Armenian however, is straight from Indo-European, and has no other sub-branches like English. So using that as an example is inaccurate. Garzo, I would like to also mention that a lot is incomplete still, in searching for these answers, as they say its "difficult" to determine how it all turned out. Thus, there are very unique sounds in Armenian, not found in any other Indo-European languages. Ive noticed some of those sounds in Russian, and some other ones in Persian, but Armenian has all those unique sounds from the both of them, and other sounds not even in any of the Indo-European. Making those sounds a total of 8 or 9. Chinese is the only other language that has these sounds, I find that very very intersting, and as I said a lot of history and linguistic study is still incomplete. Not to mention I have a Chinese friend that also know Korean, and he showed me his Chinese words with those unique sounds, that Korean simplified them without those fancy unique sounds. If you can understand what I just told you, you will know that those Sanskrit and Persian words for examples, are taken from Armenian, and simplified without those sounds. I gave you some of the examples earlier, which included those sounds. Alex mond 17:03, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Modern Armenian is just as far away from Proto-Indo-European as Modern English is. A child is always four generations away from his great-grandfather, regardless of whether he has dozens of cousins or is the only child of an only child of an only child. Likewise, all languages evolve over time, regardless of whether they split into many dialects that evolve into separate languages or not. As for the "very unique" [sic] sounds of Armenian, they don't prove anything either. Even unusual sounds can occur in loanwords. You have to look at the specific histories of specific words to see whether they're loanwords or not, and it isn't always easy. If you have an Armenian word, and you know its Proto-Indo-European ancestor, but the sound changes it went through are typically Iranian and not typically Armenian (like l > r as Gareth mentioned above), then the only conclusion is that Armenian borrowed it from an Iranian language. No doubt Iranian languages borrowed from Armenian too, but since that has no effect on the Armenian language, it isn't relevant to this article. —Angr 18:01, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes you're right, Persians and Indians also have borrowed words from Armenian. I was just thinking about something else besides what I mentioned above. I realized that there are no surviving ancient records of the Armenian language, like there is of ancient Indian Sanskrit. You see todays Persian and Indian is nothing like ancient Sanskrit or ancient Indo-Iranian. Since thats the case, same goes with ancient Armenian, all these languages, Persian, Indian, Armenian, have evolved from that ancient time of Sanskrit etc. So people are basically using later Armenian, to determine this issue. If we were to use modern Indian and Persian, we might as well realize that the ancient as they claim Indo-Iranian, is some other people then, if thats the case. So Im just saying that there is no records of ancient Armenian, like how there is records of ancient Sanskrit, and that all these Indian, Persian, Armenian, were different in those ancient times, then they are now. My points above also suppose this point, when I said Korean took from Chinese, with Chinese have the unique sounds that Armenian has and no other language, the Korean took and simplified the Chinse words. Same goes with Indian and Persian words, which they borrowed from us and simplified like the Korean simplifying unique sounds of Chinese. Also, the migration of Indians and Persians to the southeast from the Armenian Highlands. There are records of swastika symbols in Armenia, and similarity have been found with Indians and Persian language wise, being with Armenian in the Armenian Highland, then branching off to their eventually land. So we see Indo-European presents in Armenian Highlands from 3rd millenium BC, the Kuro-Araxes culture, which is the exact place of modern Armenia, and some scholars placing the homeland of Indo-European in that location of that culture. Another point is many ancient records indentified with Armenian, like 3rd millenium BC Armani, which to this day Assyrians refer to Armenians by Armani, 2nd millenium BC records of Ermenen, Turks and Kurds refer to Armenians by Ermeni, and on and on. Alex mond 17:30, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

One more time: this has nothing to do with the issue under discussion. While reconstruction of family relationships among language can be made both easier and more secure by written records, in principle they are not required. If we find (as in Gareth's example above) that Armenian generally agrees with other IE languages in having /l/ in various words, but in certain words it agrees with Indo-Iranian languages in having /r/, that fact requires explanation, and the most parsimonious explanation is that that particular words were acquired from Indo-Iranian and not from the original Armenian word-stock. (It is possible that there could be other explanations - perhaps /l/ did change to /r/ in certain environments in Armenian - but unless somebody can produce evidence for such an explanation the hypothesis of borrowing remains preferable). But this argument in no way depends on ancient writings - it would be valid even if records of Indo-Iranian were younger than those of Armenian, or even if both languages were unwritten. --ColinFine 00:04, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

It appears you answered only about the first half of what I wrote, please read the entire paragraph:

My points above also support this point, when I said Korean took from Chinese, with Chinese have the unique sounds that Armenian has and no other language, the Korean took and simplified the Chinse words. Same goes with Indian and Persian words, which they borrowed from us and simplified like the Korean simplifying unique sounds of Chinese. Also, the migration of Indians and Persians to the southeast from the Armenian Highlands. There are records of swastika symbols in Armenia, and similarity have been found with Indians and Persian language wise, being with Armenian in the Armenian Highland, then branching off to their eventually land. So we see Indo-European presents in Armenian Highlands from 3rd millenium BC, the Kuro-Araxes culture, which is the exact place of modern Armenia, and some scholars placing the homeland of Indo-European in that location of that culture. Another point is many ancient records indentified with Armenian, like 3rd millenium BC Armani, which to this day Assyrians refer to Armenians by Armani, 2nd millenium BC records of Ermenen, Turks and Kurds refer to Armenians by Ermeni, and on and on. Alex mond 02:01, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I did not reply to the rest of your paragraph because after reading it about four times I still cannot make very much sense of it, or see what relevance it might have to the point at issue. For example
  • Even if there are 'unique sounds' that Chinese or Armenian have (a highly dubious proposition), what has that to do with loanwords in Armenian?
  • What slightest connection have graphic symbols (swastikas) with loanwords?
  • I don't think anybody is in doubt that there were long periods when Armenians were in contact with Aryans. What is your point?
--ColinFine 23:17, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Whats the point? The point is that "Ar"menians are "Ar"yans, and that those loanwords you claim we took from Persians, I just went through explaning, is not taken from Persian, but the other way around, the examples I gave you here explain this. The Persians which took Armenian words and simplified the sounds, is what I meant with the Korean taking Chinese words and simplifying their sounds of those "words", not other words with sounds but the "very" exact words Persian took and simplified them. Also, the root word for Aryan is the Armenian Ari- or Arin. Just as Iran is Aryan, same with Arin, is Aryan. I also mentioned Ari-yan swastika symbols in the Armenian Highlands from as early as 4th millenium BC identical to the ones in Indus valley, cause that is the home of the Ari- Aryans. And to talk about the root word Ar- and its meaning(s), is a totally different subject, so Im not going to go through that here now. Alex mond 02:02, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

we understand that this is what you believe. But since you are just a kid trolling Wikipedia, understand that this is completely irrelevant. Learn to understand WP:RS or find another forum for your cranky material. dab (𒁳) 16:36, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

You're the kid who doesnt read the entire discussion, reading a few lines down here doesnt score you points for other readers. And if every single statement needed a reliable source, the people here would have already told me, but since you're selfish behavior thinks otherwise, please leave it with you. The example of the reliable sources not needed, is in one of the examples here, which Colin misunderstood me on a certain statement, and I clarified here. Here that you read only a handful of lines, and not the "entire discussions" Alex mond 17:31, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Leaving aside the name calling, you did not 'explain' anything. You have (repeatedly) made an assertion which is at variance with all the sources I can remember looking at (I am not an expert on Armenian, so these are somewhat limited). The onus is on you to justify your unusual claims by authoritative reference.
Whether a word survives to the present day or not in one or other language is completely irrelevant to the question of whether it is a loanword. Survival or extinction of words depends on many factors, and is not predictable.
The only thing that can tell you that a particular word is a loanword is if its phonological structure is not consistent with other derivations within the language, but only with those in some other language. Sometimes it is clear that a word must be borrowed; other times, particularly between closely-related languages, it is not so clear.
Of course it is possible that there are loanwords from (pre) Armenian in Indo-Iranian; but to establish such you would need to show that a word occurred in both stocks, but that its form in some I-I language could not be accounted for in the normal development of that language, but only in Armenian. Otherwise the alternative hypothesis of separate developments from a common origin would be preferable. Do you have any examples for which you can show this? --ColinFine 22:49, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

You just stated that your not an expert on Armenian, so I don't need to go further then this. Yes I do have the examples, but I will continue with someone that is really interested and (claiming to be) expert, and who knows a lot about Armenian, possibly Garzo, that I spoke earlier here. Alex mond 01:12, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

No, please don't. This talk page is for discussing how to improve the article, not for defending one's own original research. You have never denied that there are Indo-Iranian loanwords in Armenian, nor that the presence of large numbers of loanwords has made tracing the linguistic history of Armenian difficult, which is all the article says. The article itself has actually been quite stable on this point over the last few days, since the statement was moved out of the lead. If you're content with the current state of the article, there's nothing more to discuss. —Angr 04:05, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Correct name of Armenian Language

I noticed that at the beginning of the article, it lists the name of the Armenian language in Armenian to be "hayeren lezu." When I was studying abroad in Armenia, my language professor at YSU said that this was incorrect. The phrase "hayeren lezu," is redundant, as the suffix -eren attached to the end of the word already means language. So, the phrase "hayeren lezu" means "Armenian language language." Furthermore, the word "hayeren" is a noun, and as such cannot act as an adjective modifying the word "lezu" according to the grammar of the Armenian language. Armenian is more strict than English in this regard, and in my experience, nouns rarely (if ever) act as adjectives in the Armenian language. The two proper ways to refer to the language are simply "hayeren" or "hayots lezu." I looked this up in my big green Armenian dictionary (Asmangulian and Hovhanissian, "Hayastan" Publishing House, Yerevan: 1984), which confirmed that these are proper ways of referring to the language in Armenian. I only have training in Eastern Armenian, so I cannot vouch for Western Armenian, but I know that in Eastern Armenian "hayeren lezu" is bad grammar. 70.162.244.251 05:47, 4 October 2007 (UTC)Erin Hutchinson, student of Armenian language at Arizona State University and Yerevan State University

[edit] Adjarian's Armenian dialects Source

I have included information on Armenian dialects from Adjarian. Some cities, I have not been able to identify the modern name, such as Khian. Azalea pomp 03:46, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Armenian language family

One site, www.krysstal.com/langfams says that Armenian falls within the Thracian language branch, along with the dead languages Dacian, Thracian and Phrygian. I haven't checked other sources but if others might, I propose this heading be changed and that the extinct languages be added. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Parmadil (talk • contribs) 05:12, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, there is not enough information on Dacian, Thracian or Phrygian for linguists to say with any certainty if they are closely related to Armenian. Many linguists have Armenian and Greek closer to each other than they are to any other Indo-European language. I believe Phrygian would have the strongest link to Armenian than either Thracian or Dacian. Azalea pomp 05:25, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
The latest conclusion I have heard is that Phrygian is a kentum language and *Dh has merged with *D like in Baltic, Slavic, Iranian, and Albanian, for example. So it's not likely that Armenian and Phrygian are related. This hypothesis is generally being abandoned currently I believe. On the other hand, Duridanov claims that Thracian is satem and displays a consonant shift like Armenian. Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:57, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
BTW, from simply looking at the soundlaws I've seen on Wikipedia, on Duridanov's website, in the Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture and elsewhere, provided they are correct, it appears more like Dacian is closely related with early Albanian, Thracian with Armenian, and Phrygian perhaps with (non-Greek non-Slavic) Macedonian and possibly further with Illyrian and Messapic. Sounds more realistic to me I must say. Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:06, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
I forgot to mention an important point: Phrygian is supposed to be a kentum language, but is thought to palatalise velars before front vowels, which would account for instances of seeming satem reflexes.
It should be kept in mind that most Indo-European languages exhibit a palatalisation of velars before front vowels that leads to affricates or palatal stops. There are strikingly few exceptions in the modern languages, namely continental Germanic (i. e., Germanic except Scandinavian and Anglo-Frisian), Celtic (Goidelic only exhibits secondary phonemic palatalisation in velars, but also in most other consonants), Sardinian (Gallurese and Sassarese counting as part of Corsican), Dalmatian, possibly certain non-mainstream Greek dialects, apparently Lithuanian (being like Goidelic), and (for extinct branches) at least parts of Anatolian, especially Hittite, and possibly Tocharian (also having been much like Goidelic at one stage). Florian Blaschke (talk) 03:18, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] IE Roots

I fixed the transcriptions of the Armenian and many IE proto forms etc. Some of the roots are questionable though. Azalea pomp 02:12, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Latin Words

As this is the Armenian language page, is more than one Latin root necessary to show cognates. It's a bit overkill. Also, please include complete information such as vowel length. Also, always use standard transliterations for languages which do not use the Latin script. -- Azalea pomp (talk) 21:12, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Armenian has an independent branch

We really need a direct source for that? It is common throughout the vast literature on IE that at the moment Armenian is an independent branch of IE. You can check American Heritage Dictionary's IE section. You can check Porkorny. Even language sources like the Ethnologue or even Ruhlen's book have this commonly accepted fact. Azalea pomp (talk) 02:57, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Is this really something that requires a citation? This has been known since the 19th century when it was proved by Hübschmann and never disputed by anyone since then.-- Ευπάτωρ Talk!! 05:34, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Sorry I forgot the question mark. I agree we don't need a citation for this. Azalea pomp (talk) 06:26, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Orthography Question

Why is it that the letter hiun in the Wikipedia articles is almost always transcribed as w, and ts' as c'? For example, the transcription of the armenian word name is written "anown" or and goodbye as "C'tesowt'iown". Doesn't anyone else feel these to be incredible misleading transcriptions at least as far as pronunciation? "u" or "oo" would be much better replacements for "ow" and "iu" for "iow". KaraiBorinquen —Preceding comment was added at 00:52, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

  • Absolutely. All of those references should be removed and re-written using the International Phonetic Alphabet. Please see the Western Armenian language article for examples. Also see the Romanization of Armenian article. Only a few years ago, most computers couldn't display the characters from the International Phonetic Alphabet, and therefore latin characters were used to denote Armenian language sounds understandable to a broader audience. With the development of the Unicode standard and its ubiquity, this has changed and now the IPA may be used to precisely describe sounds in Armenian, rendering the ISO 9985 obsolete. Serouj (talk) 18:50, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
I think all of you are misunderstanding some things. IPA is used to transcribe a language phonetically or phonologically. The ISO and Library of Congress transliterations are used to transliterate/romanize written Armenian, letter by letter. Since this is an encyclopedic article which uses academic sources, we use a transliteration from an official body used in academia. Phonetic/Phonological transcriptions are only needed for the relevant sections of the article. Azalea pomp (talk) 21:02, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Number of people speaking Armenian

The number of people speaking Armenian is 5.5 million according to the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, a trusted publication of linguistics. You can't always pull numbers from the internet where did you get 6.7 million from? You cannot make up these numbers, the most accurate way to get it is from a university publication book. So stop changing it! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.151.124.66 (talk) 13:44, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Here is the source for the number: http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=hye The Ethnologue has the number as 6,723,840. The Ethnologue is used by academic linguistics. Also, the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language has a copyright date of what 1998? Azalea pomp (talk) 22:07, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

READ CAREFULLY! "Population 3,399,903 in Armenia (2001 Johnstone and Mandryk). Population total all countries: 6,723,840." It's population not number of speakers! MosMusy (talk)

I did the country profile says: Armenia. 2,991,360, but the language article says: Armenian [hye] 3,399,903 in Armenia (2001 Johnstone and Mandryk). Population total all countries: 6,723,840. That is more likely implied speakers as the section is for the Armenian language. Their numbers don't quite add up though. The Ethnologue divides by language, not ethnic group. Ethnologue articles will often state: x number of ethnic group and y number of speakers for that ethnic group. Also, the Armenian diaspora would be larger than 6.7 million. In any event, a 1998 book would be outdated for the number of speakers. Azalea pomp (talk) 22:58, 21 March 2008 (UTC)


[edit] New Language Numbers Source Needed

I will have to check the newest version of the Ethnologue to see if they have new accurate numbers. The online version is an older version. Also, as nice as the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language is, it is 10 years old and thus the numbers would not be accurate for today. Azalea pomp (talk) 17:53, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ejectives

From what I've gathered so far, the Modern Eastern Armenian voiceless unaspirated stops are indeed glottalised, but the loudness of the ejective quality varies. In most dialects, including the standard, the glottalisation is barely audible, though relatively best in the affricates. The further you venture north in Armenia, the louder the glottalisation is. In Armenian dialects in Georgia, it is particularly clearly audible. But still, I have read that even the glottal quality of the Georgian ejectives is not perceived by everyone and they are often mistaken for simple voiceless stops. Personally, I can hear the Georgian ejectives clearly, as clearly as those in Amharic, but have trouble with the (standard) Armenian ones.

Generally, though, it is said that Caucasian ejectives are not as loud as ejectives in the languages of the Americas. Certainly, Mayan languages have clearly audible ejectives, from what I've heard myself.

The more notable ejectives of the northern Armenian dialects would not be surprising, given the proximity of, or even continued bilinguality in, Georgian. Ejectives are an areal feature - I have heard that they can even be found in Northern Kurdish (i. e., Kurmanji in Turkey) and Southwestern Turkish dialects, that is, in an area where Armenian was once widely spoken, in Ossetic, in Kumyk, and (in the central northwest of the Caucasus, in the general area of Vladikavkaz and Pjetigorsk) even certain Kosak varieties of Russian!

Whether already medieval Armenian had ejective stops is unknown, though at least if they were present in Middle Armenian, if not also Classical/Old Armenian (given its general high typological similarity to Old Georgian, especially in the phonological system), it might help to understand the Western Armenian consonant shifts. An ejective might become some sort of implosive before passing to a voiced stop (and since a preglottalised voiced stop sounds very similar to an implosive, I suspect this is what Beekes had in mind when he suggested that proto-Indo-European *D was in fact *['D] in his introduction, and possibly elsewhere). It must be taken in account, though, that individual dialects exhibit various other shifts and mergers unlike those in the two standard dialects; so the whole matter is more complicated and I don't have the necessary overview of Armenian dialectology.

As an aside, the voiced quality of the Georgian mediae is not phonologically distinctive and can be missing or reduced/partial, much like in German, for example; the missing glottalisation and aspiration are already enough. Given that old voiced stops became unvoiced in Western Armenian, this might be a relevant observation. Since the voiced stops became aspirated voiceless stops, this might be the reason for the idea that they might have originally have been voiced aspirated stops.

If one knows about the Armenian ejectives and the Georgian system of occlusives that is not primarily based on the voiced/voicedlessness distinction, one understands Gamq'relidze's and Ivanov's glottalic hypothesis a lot better - or at least where Gamq'relidze draws his inspiration from. (I do not endorse the hypothesis, almost all the arguments for it do not hold water, though it may help understanding certain restraints on PIE root structure, there may be a few suggestive Italo-Celtic sound laws, and I can't understand why PIE *t is [d] at the ends of words, though the glottalic theory doesn't really help either: going from what I know from Armenian, one should expect [dh] or even simply [t]!)

I just noticed that unlike this article, Eastern Armenian does acknowledge the ejectives! What the ... Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:54, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes... This article needs to be updated to reflect the ejectives. Also, the Eastern Armenian language and Western Armenian language articles (as well as the article on Traditional Armenian orthography need to be updated to reflect the fact that in Classical Armenian ejectives likely did not exist (according to my investigations). Serouj (talk) 20:24, 8 May 2008 (UTC)