Language Breakdown: Armenian
Somewhere on the long list of countries that most people in the West regularly forget the existence of, you will find Armenia. Which is a shame, because Armenian history is deeply interesting and complex, and the language’s development reflects that. Also, Armenian has its own alphabet, and I’m all about Indo-European languages that have their own alphabets.
So where to begin? To the surprise of absolutely no one, there is some debate over the origins of Armenian. (If I ever find a linguistic topic about which there is no debate, I will be shocked.) It is definitely Indo-European, but beyond that, linguists are unsure. It is most closely related to the Indo-Iranian languages and Greek, and has a significant number of Greek cognates. (If you are interested in the development of cognates across the Indo-European languages, I recommend the Armenian language wikipedia page.)
Armenian is an old language: there was an established Armenian language by the second century BC at the latest. (Yes, BC. Compared to Armenian, English is a tiny baby.) Obviously the similarities between this language and Modern Armenian were are fairly few, but this was the start. The oldest example of written Armenian dates from the 400s AD, and it is a translation of the Bible. This translation also uses the Armenian alphabet, which is credited to Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian theologian, philosopher, linguist, and statesman. (Basically, Mesrop Mashtots was the dude to be in 5th century Armenia.)
There are differing versions of the evolution of Armenian, but the basic story is this: Classical Armenian was the spoken from the 400′s to around the 1000′s, when it began to develop into Middle Armenian, which was spoken until around the 1700′s. Classical Armenian was also used as a literary language until the 1700′s. However, that is where it gets complicated. During the next century, Armenia would be divided in half; part of it conquered by the Russian empire and part conquered by the Ottoman empire. These empires were not huge fans of each other, meaning that the Armenian communities in each had little contact with each other, and as is usual, the languages spoken in these communities began to diverge. Both communities developed distinctive dialects and literary styles, as well as modernizing the language extensively. Today, the two dialects are recognized as seperate, though they remain mutually intelligible. Both dialects purged their Turkish loanwords following the Armenian genocide, which you can find out about here.
Linguistically, Armenian has several noun cases, though like other Indo-European languages in the region, (including Modern Persian) it has no grammatical gender. Like English, Armenian uses auxiliary verbs to denote some tenses and conjugates some verbs differently in the negative. The alphabet contains 39 letters, many of which represent sounds not found in English. Interestingly, the letters of the alphabet are also used as numbers: the first 36 letters all have numerical values. The alphabet also uses ligatures; two letters combined into a single character.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s exploration of Armenian. Comments, suggestions, and corrections are, as always, appreciated.
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