Armenian language

Not to be confused with Aromanian language.
Armenian
հայերէն/հայերեն hayeren
Pronunciation [hɑjɛˈɾɛn]
Native to Armenian Highland
Native speakers
 6 million  (ca.2001 – some figures undated)[1]
Indo-European
  • Armenian
Early forms
Standard forms
Armenian alphabet
Armenian Braille
Official status
Official language in
  Armenia
 Nagorno-Karabakh Republic
Recognised minority
language in
Regulated by Institute of Language (Armenian National Academy of Sciences)[21]
Language codes
ISO 639-1 hy
ISO 639-2 arm (B)
hye (T)
ISO 639-3 Variously:
hye – Modern Armenian
xcl – Classical Armenian
axm – Middle Armenian
Glottolog arme1241[22]
Linguasphere 57-AAA-a

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The Armenian-speaking world:
  regions where Armenian is the language of the majority

The Armenian language (classical: հայերէն; reformed: հայերեն [hɑjɛˈɾɛn] 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.[23] 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,[24] and some linguists group these two languages with Phrygian and the Indo-Iranian[25][26] 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.[27][28]

Armenia was a monolingual country no later than by the second century BC.[29] 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

History of the Armenian language
Armenian alphabet
Romanization of Armenian

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),[30] 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)[31] used the comparative method to distinguish two layers of Iranian loans from the older Armenian vocabulary.

W. M. Austin (1942) concluded[32] 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)[33] 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 kwid ("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

Armenian manuscript, 5th–6th century.
first Armenian language Bible.

Classical Armenian, or Grabar, imported numerous words from Middle Iranian languages, primarily Parthian,[34] and contains smaller inventories of borrowings from Greek,[34] Syriac,[34] 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 (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) 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 Four Gospels, 1495, Portrait of St Mark Wellcome with Armenian inscriptions

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:

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, whereas the diaspora created after the Genocide of 1915 preserved the Western Armenian dialect.

Modern changes

Armenian language road sign.

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.[35]

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]. Exceptions to this rule are some words with the final letter է (ե in the reformed orthography) (մի՛թէ, մի՛գուցե, ո՛րեւէ) and sometimes the ordinal numerals (վե՛ցերորդ, տա՛սներորդ, etc.).

Vowels

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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).

Armenian vowel phonemes[36]
Front Central Back
Close i
ի
i		 u
ու
u
Mid ɛ
ե, է
e, ē		 ə
ը
ë		 ɔ
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 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.

Eastern Armenian consonant phonemes[37]
Labials Dental/
Alveolar		 Post-
Alveolar		 Palatal Velar Uvular Glottal
Nasal /m/ մ – m /n/ ն – n
Stop 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’
Affricate voiceless /t͡s/ ծ – ç /t͡ʃ/ ճ – č̣
voiced /d͡z/ ձ – j /d͡ʒ/ ջ – ǰ
aspirated /t͡sʰ/ ց – c’ /t͡ʃʰ/ չ – č
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
Approximant [ʋ] /l/ լ – l /j/ յ – y
Trill /r/ ռ – ṙ
Tap /ɾ/ ր – r
  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 t–d series:[38]

Correspondence in initial position
Indo-European *d *dʰ *t
Sebastia d dʱ tʰ
Erevan t dʱ tʰ
Istanbul d tʰ
Kharpert, Middle Armenian d t tʰ
Malatya, SWA d tʰ
Classical Armenian, Agulis, SEA t d tʰ
Van, Artsakh t tʰ

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.[39] 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

Հեռախոս (Telephone):

Case (holov) Singular Plural
Nominative (uxxakan) հեռախոս(ը-ն)* հեռախոսներ(ը-ն)*
Accusative (haycakan) հեռախոսը(-ն)* հեռախոսները(-ն)*
Genitive (serakan) հեռախոսի հեռախոսների
Dative (trakan) հեռախոսին հեռախոսներին
Ablative (bacarakan) հեռախոսից հեռախոսներից
Instrumental (gorciakan) հեռախոսով հեռախոսներով
Locative (nergoyakan) հեռախոսում հեռախոսներում

−

Մայր (Mother)

Case (holov) Singular Plural
Nominative (uxxakan) մայր(ը-ն)* մայրեր(ը-ն)*
Accusative (haycakan) մայրը(-ն)* մայրերը(-ն)*
Genitive (serakan) մոր մայրերի
Dative (trakan) մորը(-ն)* մայրերին
Ablative (bacarakan) մորից մայրերից
Instrumental (gorciakan) մորով մայրերով
Locative (nergoyakan) - -

Animated nouns don't decline for locative case.

−

Հանրապետություն (Republic)

Case (holov) Singular Plural
Nominative (uxxakan) հանրապետություն(ը-ն)* հանրապետություններ(ը-ն)*
Accusative (haycakan) հանրապետությունը(-ն)* հանրապետությունները(-ն)*
Genitive (serakan) հանրապետության հանրապետությունների
Dative (trakan) հանրապետությանը(-ն)* հանրապետություններին
Ablative (bacarakan) հանրապետությունից հանրապետություններից
Instrumental (gorciakan) հանրապետությամբ հանրապետություններով
Locative (nergoyakan) հանրապետությունում հանրապետություններում

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.

Dialects

Map of the Armenian dialects in early 20th century:
  -owm dialects, nearly corresponding to Eastern Armenian
  -el dialects (intermediate)
  -gë dialects, nearly corresponding to Western Armenian

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 (թ) as an aspirated "t" as in "tiger", (դ) like the "d" in "develop", and (տ) 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 (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 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.

Examples
English Eastern Armenian Western Armenian
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)
How are you (informal) 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 (to a place) Bari galoust (բարի գալուստ) singular: Pari yegar (բարի եկար)
plural or polite: Pari yegak' (բարի եկաք)
Welcome (as a response to 'thank you') Khntrem (խնդրեմ) Khntrem (խնդրեմ)
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 k'ez siroum em (ես քեզ սիրում եմ) 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 (Eastern) / I missed you (Western) Yes k'ez karotum em (ես քեզ կարոտում եմ) Yes k'ez garodtser em (ես քեզ կարօտցեր եմ)

Other distinct dialects include the Homshetsi language of the Hemshin people and the divergent and almost extinct Lomavren language of the Bosha people,[40] both of which are categorized as belonging to the Armenian language family.

Writing system

Main articles: Armenian alphabet and Armenian braille
Armenian keyboard layout using the Armenian alphabet.

The Armenian alphabet (Armenian: Հայոց գրեր Hayots grer or Հայոց այբուբեն 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, օ (o) and ֆ (f), were added in the Middle Ages. During the 1920s orthography reform, a new letter և (capital ԵՎ) was added, which was a ligature before ե+ւ, while the letter Ւ ւ was discarded and reintroduced as part of a new letter ՈՒ ու (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.[41])

Armenian English Latin Persian Classical and Hellenistic Greek Sanskrit Russian PIE
mayr "mother" mother ( ← OE mōdor) māter "mother" mādar "mother" mētēr "mother" mātṛ "mother" mat' *máH₂ter- "mother"
hayr "father" father ( ← OE fæder) pater "father" pedar "father" patēr "father" pitṛ "father" *pH₂tér- "father"
eġbayr "brother" brother ( ← OE brōþor) frāter "brother" barādaṛ "brother" phrātēr "brother" bhrātṛ "brother" brat *bʱráH₂ter- "brother"
dustr "daughter" daughter ( ← OE dohtor) Latin cognate lost[42] doxtar "daughter" thugatēr "daughter" duhitṛ "daughter" doč' *dʱugH₂-tér- "daughter"
kin "woman" queen ( ← OE cwēn "queen, woman, wife") cognate is unknown Old Persian kiana "woman, wife" gunē "a woman, a wife" gnā/jani "woman" žena "wife" *gʷén-eH₂- "woman, wife"
im "my" my, mine ( ← OE min) mei "my" man/am "my" emeo "my, of mine" mama "my" moy *mene- "my, mine"
anun "name" name ( ← OE nama) nōmen "name" nām "name" onoma "name" nāman "name" im'a *H₁noH₃m-n̥- "name"
utʿ "8" eight ( ← OE eahta) octō "eight" (h)aşt "eight" oktō "eight" aṣṭa "eight" vosem' *H₁oḱtō(u) "eight"
inn "9" nine ( ← OE nigon) novem "nine" noh "nine" ennea "nine" nava "nine" dev'at' *(H₁)néwn̥ "nine"
tas "10" ten ( ← OE tien) ( ← P.Gmc. *tekhan) decem "ten" dah "ten" deka "ten" daśa "ten" des'at' *déḱm̥ "ten"
ačʿkʿ "eye" eye ( ← OE ēge) oculus "eye" čaşm "eye" ophthalmos "eye" akṣan "eye" oko *H₃okʷ- "to see"
armunk "elbow" arm ( ← OE earm "joined body parts below shoulder") armus "shoulder" arenj "elbow" arthron "a joint" īrma "arm" ramo "shoulder" (archaic) *H₁ar-mo- "fit, join (that which is fitted together)"
cunk[43] "knee" knee ( ← OE cnēo) genū, "knee" zānu "knee" gonu "knee" jānu "knee" *ǵénu- "knee"
otkʿ "foot" foot ( ← OE fōt) pedis "foot" pā "foot" pous "foot" pāda "foot" *pod-, *ped- "foot"
sirt "heart" heart ( ← OE heorte) cor "heart" del "heart" kardia "heart" hṛdaya "heart" serdtse *ḱerd- "heart"
kaši "skin" hide ( ← OE hȳdan "animal skin cover") cutis "skin" pust "skin" keuthō "I cover, I hide" kuṭīra "hut" koža *keu- "to cover, conceal"
muk "mouse" mouse ( ← OE mūs) mūs "mouse" muş "mouse" mus "mouse" mūṣ "mouse" myš' *muH₁s- "mouse, small rodent"
kov "cow" cow ( ← OE cū) bos "cattle", bum[44] "cow" gāv "cow" bous "cow" gauḥ "cow" gov'adina "beef" *gʷou- "cow"
šun "dog" hound ( ← OE hund "hound, dog") canis "hound, dog" (canine) sag "dog" kuōn "hound, dog" śvan "dog" suka "bitch" *ḱwon- "hound, dog"
tari "year" year ( ← OE gēar) hōrnus "of this year" yare[45] "year" hōra "time, year" yare[45] "year" jara "springtime" (archaic) *yeH₁r- "year"
amis "month" moon, month ( ← OE mōnaþ) mēnsis "month" māh "moon, month" mēn "moon, month" māsa "moon, month" mes'ats *meH₁ns- "moon, month"
amaṙ "summer" summer ( ← OE sumor) samā "season" *sem- "hot season of the year"
ǰerm "warm" warm ( ← OE wearm) formus "warm" garm "warm" thermos "warm" gharma "heat" žarko "hot" *gʷʰerm- "warm"
luys "light" light ( ← OE lēoht "brightness") lucere, lux, lucidus "to shine, light, clear" ruz "day" leukos "bright, shining, white" roca "shining" luč' "beam" *leuk- "light, brightness"
hur "flame" fire ( ← OE fȳr) pir[44] "fire" azer "fire" pur "fire" pu "fire" plam'a "flame" *péH₂wr̥- "fire"
heṙu "far" far ( ← OE feor "to a great distance") per "through" farā "beyond" pera "beyond" paras "beyond" pere-, pro- *per- "through, across, beyond"
heġel "to pour" flow ( ← OE flōwan) pluĕre "to rain" pur "pour" plenō "I wash" plu "to swim" plavat' "swim" *pleu- "flow, float"
utel "to eat" eat ( ← OE etan) edō "I eat", edulis "edible" xur "eat" edō "I eat" admi "I eat" jest' *ed- "to eat"
gitem "I know" wit ( ← OE wit, witan "intelligence, to know") vidēre "to see" Old Persian vida "knowledge" eidenai "to know" vid "to know" videt' "see" *weid- "to know, to see"
get "river" water ( ← OE wæter) utur[44] "water" rōd "river" hudōr "water" udan "water" voda (*wodor, *wedor, *uder-) from *wed- "water"
gorc[43] "work " work ( ← OE weorc) urgēre "push, drive" kār "work" ergon "work" varcas "activity" *werǵ- "to work"
mec[43] "great " much ( ← OE mycel "great, big, many") magnus "great" mega "great, large" megas "great, large" mahant "great" mnogo "many" *meǵ- "great"
ancanotʿ[43] "stranger, unfamiliar" unknown ( ← OE uncnawen) ignōtus,[46] ignōrāntem[46] "unknown, ignorant" ajnabi "stranger, unfamiliar" agnōstos[46] "unknown" ajñāta[46] "unfamiliar" neznakomyj *n- + *ǵneH₃- "not" + "to know"
meṙac "to die" murder ( ← OE morþor) mors "death", mortalis "mortal" marg "death" / morde "dead" ambrotos "immortal" mṛta "dead" mertvyj *mrtro-, from (*mor-, *mr-) "to die"
miǰin "middle" mid, middle ( ← OE mid, middel) medius "middle" meyān "middle" mesos "middle" madhya "middle" meždu "between" *medʱyo- from *me- "mid, middle"
ayl "other" else ( ← OE elles "other, otherwise, different") alius, alienus "other, another" allos "other, another" anya "other" *al- "beyond, other"
nor "new" new ( ← OE nīwe) novus "new" now "new" neos "new" nava "new" novyj *néwo- "new"
duṙ "door" door ( ← OE dor, duru) fores "door" dar "door" thura "door" dvār "door" dver' *dʱwer- "door, doorway, gate"
tun "house" timber ( ← OE timber "trees used for building material, structure") domus "house" khune "home" domos "house" dama "house" dom *domo-, *domu- "house"
berri, berel "fertile, to carry" bear ( ← OE beran "give birth, carry") ferre, fertilis "to bear, fertile" bordan, bar- "to bear, carry" pherein "to carry" bharati "he/she/it carries" brat' "to take" *bʱer- "to bear, to carry"

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Although Armenian has no legal status in Samtske-Javakheti, it is widely spoken by the Armenian population, which is concentrated in Ninotsminda and Akhalkalaki districts (over 90% of the total population in these two districts).[8] The Georgian government fully funds around 144 Armenian school in the region (as of 2010).[9][10]
  2. ↑ Various state government agencies in California provide Armenian translations of their documents, namely the California Department of Social Services,[11] California Department of Motor Vehicles,[12] California superior courts.[13] In the city of Glendale, there are street signs in Armenian.[14][15]
  3. ↑ The Lebanese government recognizes Armenian as a minority language,[16] particularly for educational purposes.[17][18]
  4. ↑ In education, according to the Treaty of Lausanne[19][20]

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Modern Armenian at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Classical Armenian at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Middle Armenian at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ "Implementation of the Charter in Cyprus". Database for the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Public Foundation for European Comparative Minority Research. Retrieved 16 June 2014.
  3. ↑ "Implementation of the Charter in Hungary". Database for the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Public Foundation for European Comparative Minority Research. Retrieved 16 June 2014.
  4. ↑ "Iraqi Constitution: Article 4" (PDF). The Republic of Iraq Ministry of Interior General Directorate for Nationality. Retrieved 16 June 2014. The right of Iraqis to educate their children in their mother tongue, such as Turkmen, Syriac, and Armenian shall be guaranteed in government educational institutions in accordance with educational guidelines, or in any other language in private educational institutions.
  5. ↑ "Territorial languages in the Republic of Poland" (PDF). Strasbourg: European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. 30 September 2010. p. 9. Retrieved 16 June 2014.
  6. ↑ "Implementation of the Charter in Romania". Database for the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Public Foundation for European Comparative Minority Research. Retrieved 16 June 2014.
  7. ↑ "Law of Ukraine "On Principles of State Language Policy" (Current version — Revision from 01.02.2014)". Document 5029-17, Article 7: Regional or minority languages Ukraine, Paragraph 2. rada.gov.ua. 1 February 2014. Retrieved 30 April 2014.
  8. ↑ Hille, Charlotte (2010). State Building and Conflict Resolution in the Caucasus. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Publishers. p. 241. ISBN 9789004179011.
  9. ↑ "Javakhk Armenians Looks Ahead to Local Elections". Asbarez. 31 March 2010. Retrieved 26 May 2014. ...Javakheti for use in the region’s 144 Armenian schools...
  10. ↑ Mezhdoyan, Slava (28 November 2012). "Challenges and problems of the Armenian community of Georgia" (PDF). Tbilisi: European Armenian Federation for Justice and Democracy. Retrieved 26 May 2014. Armenian schools in Georgia are fully funded by the government...
  11. ↑ "Armenian Translations". California Department of Social Services. Archived from the original on 26 May 2014.
  12. ↑ "Վարորդների ձեռնարկ [Driver's Manual]" (PDF). California Department of Motor Vehicles. 2014. Retrieved 26 May 2014.
  13. ↑ "English/Armenian Legal Glossary" (PDF). Superior Court of California, County of Sacramento. 22 June 2005. Retrieved 26 May 2014.
  14. ↑ Rocha, Veronica (11 January 2011). "New Glendale traffic safety warnings in English, Armenian, Spanish". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 26 May 2014.
  15. ↑ Aghajanian, Liana (4 September 2012). "Intersections: Bad driving signals a need for reflection". Glendale News-Press. Retrieved 26 May 2014. ...trilingual street signs in English, Armenian and Spanish at intersections...
  16. ↑ "About Lebanon". Central Administration of Statistics of the Republic of Lebanon. Archived from the original on 26 May 2014. Other Languages: French, English and Armenian
  17. ↑ "Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties Under Article 44 of the Convention. Third periodic reports of states parties due in 2003: Lebanon" (PDF). Committee on the Rights of the Child. 25 October 2005. p. 108. Retrieved 26 May 2014. Right of minorities to learn their language. The Lebanese curriculum allows Armenian schools to teach the Armenian language as a basic language.
  18. ↑ Sanjian, Ara. "Armenians and the 2000 Parliamentary Elections in Lebanon". Armenian News Network / Groong. University of Southern California. Archived from the original on 26 May 2014. Moreover, the Lebanese government approved a plan whereby the Armenian language was to be considered from now on as one of the few 'second foreign languages' that students can take as part of the official Lebanese secondary school certificate (Baccalaureate) exams.
  19. ↑ Saib, Jilali (2001). "Languages in Turkey". In Extra, Guus; Gorter, Durk. The Other Languages of Europe: Demographic, Sociolinguistic and Educational Perspectives. Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters. p. 423. ISBN 9781853595097. No other language can be taught as a mother language other than Armenian, Greek and Hebrew, as agreed in the Lausanne Treaty....
  20. ↑ Okçabol, Rıfat (2008). "Secondary Education in Turkey". In Nohl, Arnd-Michael; Akkoyunlu-Wigley, Arzu; Wigley, Simon. Education in Turkey. Berlin: Waxmann Verlag. p. 65. ISBN 9783830970699. Private Minority Schools are the school established by Greek, Armenian and Hebrew minorities during the era of the Ottoman Empire and covered by Lausanne Treaty.
  21. ↑ "H. Acharian Institute of Language". sci.am. Archived from the original on 5 October 2014. Main Fields of Activity: investigation of the structure and functioning, history and comparative grammar of the Armenian language, exploration of the literary Eastern and Western Armenian Language, dialectology, regulation of literary language, development of terminology
  22. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Armenian". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  23. ↑ Armenian language – Britannica Online Encyclopedia
  24. ↑ "The Armenian Language".
  25. ↑ Handbook of Formal Languages (1997) p. 6.
  26. ↑ Indo-European tree with Armeno-Aryan, exclusion of Greek
  27. ↑ Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction, Benjamin W. Fortson, John Wiley and Sons, 2009, p383.
  28. ↑ Hans J. Holm (2011): “Swadesh lists” of Albanian Revisited and Consequences for its position in the Indo-European Languages. The Journal of Indo-European Studies, Volume 39, Number 1&2.
  29. ↑ Strabo, Geographica, XI, 14, 5; Հայոց լեզվի համառոտ պատմություն, Ս. Ղ. Ղազարյան։ Երևան, 1981, էջ 33 (Concise History of Armenian Language, S. Gh. Ghazaryan. Yerevan, 1981, p. 33).
  30. ↑ "Armenia as Xenophon Saw It", p. 47, A History of Armenia. Vahan Kurkjian, 2008
  31. ↑ "A Reader in Nineteenth Century Historical Indo-European Linguistics: On the Position of Armenian in the Sphere of the Indo-European Languages". Utexas.edu. 2007-03-20. Retrieved 2012-12-18.
  32. ↑ Austin, William M. (January–March 1942). "Is Armenian an Anatolian Language?". Language (Linguistic Society of America) 18 (1): 22–25. doi:10.2307/409074. JSTOR 409074.
  33. ↑ Igor Mikhailovich Diakonov, "Hurro-Urartian Borrowings in Old Armenian", Journal of the American Oriental Society 105.4 (1985) text
  34. ↑ 34.0 34.1 34.2 Hurro-Urartian Borrowings in Old Armenian, I. M. Diakonoff, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 105, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1985), 597.
  35. ↑ James Clackson, Indo-European Linguistics, An Introduction (2007, Cambridge)
    Robert S.P. Beekes, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics, An Introduction (1995, John Benjamins)
    Oswald J.L. Szemerényi, Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics (1996, Oxford)
  36. ↑ Dum-Tragut (2009:13)
  37. ↑ Dum-Tragut (2009:17–20)
  38. ↑ Price (1998)
  39. ↑ (Armenian is the only indoeuropean language which is agglutinative)
  40. ↑ Victor A. Friedman (2009). "Sociolinguistics in the Caucasus". In Ball, Martin J. The Routledge Handbook of Sociolinguistics Around the World: A Handbook. Routledge. p. 128. ISBN 978-0415422789.
  41. ↑ "Online Etymology Dictionary". etymonline.com. Archived from the original on 13 June 2007. Retrieved 2007-06-07.
  42. ↑ However, an Italic sister language called Oscan preserved the form "futrei" (daughter).
  43. ↑ 43.0 43.1 43.2 43.3 The letter ⟨c⟩ represents /ts/. In the Armenian words cunk, gorc, mec, and ancanotʿ, it corresponds to PIE *ǵ-.
  44. ↑ 44.0 44.1 44.2 The words "bum" (cow), "pir" (fire) and "utur" (water) in the Latin column are actually from an Italic sister language called Umbrian.
  45. ↑ 45.0 45.1 The word "yare" (year) in the Persian and Sanskrit columns is actually from an Indo-Iranian sister language called Avestan.
  46. ↑ 46.0 46.1 46.2 46.3 The prefixes for "not" in Latin are "in-" and "i-", and "an-" and "a-" in Greek and Sanskrit, which correspond to the PIE *n-.

References

Further reading

  • Adjarian, Herchyah H. (1909) Classification des dialectes arméniens, par H. Adjarian. Paris: Honoro Champion.
  • Clackson, James. 1994. The Linguistic Relationship Between Armenian and Greek. London: Publications of the Philological Society, No 30. (and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing)
  • Holst, Jan Henrik (2009) Armenische Studien. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
  • Mallory, J. P. (1989) In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth. London: Thames & Hudson.
  • Vaux, Bert. 1998. The Phonology of Armenian. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  • Vaux, Bert. 2002. "The Armenian dialect of Jerusalem." in Armenians in the Holy Land. "Louvain: Peters.

External links

Armenian edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Armenian edition of Wikisource, the free library

Armenian Online Dictionaries