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68-460: 40°14′00″N 44°15′05″E  /  40.23333°N 44.25139°E  / 40.23333; 44.25139 Aghavnatun ( Armenian : Աղավնատուն , formerly, Akhavnatukh ) is a village in the Armavir Province of Armenia . it is home to ruins of an iron-age fortress, a 13th-century tomb and a chapel. There are four churches in the village, the oldest of which is Surp Gevork Church of

136-518: A reformed spelling of the Armenian language. The reform changed the digraph ու and the ligature և into two new letters, but it generally did not change the pronunciation of individual letters ( see the footnotes of the chart ). Those outside of the (former) Soviet sphere , including all Western Armenians as well as Eastern Armenians in Iran , have rejected the reformed spellings and continue to use

204-495: A sound shift it came to be pronounced [o] , and has since the 13th century been written օ ( ō ). For example, classical աւր ( awr , [auɹ] , 'day') became pronounced [oɹ] , and is now written օր ( ōr ). (One word has kept aw , now pronounced /av/ : աղաւնի ( ałavni ) 'pigeon', and there are a few proper names still having aw before a consonant: Տաւրոս Tauros, Փաւստոս Faustos, etc.) For this reason, today there are native Armenian words beginning with

272-455: A code for the sign – U+058F (֏). In 2012 the sign was finally adopted in the Armenian block of ISO and Unicode international standards. The Armenian eternity sign , since 2013, is assigned Unicode U+058D (֍ – RIGHT-FACING ARMENIAN ETERNITY SIGN) and, for its left-facing variant, U+058E (֎ – LEFT-FACING ARMENIAN ETERNITY SIGN). The ArmSCII character encoding , developed between 1991 and 1999,

340-520: A consistent Proto-Indo-European pattern distinct from Iranian, and that the inflectional morphology was different from that of Iranian languages. The hypothesis that Greek is Armenian's closest living relative originates with Holger 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. Antoine Meillet (1925, 1927) further investigated morphological and phonological agreement and postulated that

408-653: A different source or sources for Armenian sounds not found in Greek. This is suggested by the Greek order of the Armenian alphabet; the ow ligature for the vowel / u / , as in Greek; the similarity of the letter ի /i/ in shape and sound value to Cyrillic И и and (Modern) Greek Η η ; and the shapes of letters which "seem derived from a variety of cursive Greek", including Greek/Armenian pairs Θ / թ , Φ / փ , and Β / բ . It has been speculated by some scholars in African studies, following Dimitri Olderogge, that

476-468: A loan from Armenian (compare to Armenian եւ yev , ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁epi ). Other loans from Armenian into Urartian includes personal names, toponyms, and names of deities. Loan words from Iranian languages , along with the other ancient accounts such as that of Xenophon above, initially led some linguists to erroneously classify Armenian as an Iranian language. Scholars such as Paul de Lagarde and F. Müller believed that

544-425: 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

612-409: Is also treated as a letter, bringing the total number of letters to 39. The Armenian word for 'alphabet' is այբուբեն ( aybuben ), named after the first two letters of the Armenian alphabet: ⟨ Ա ⟩ Armenian : այբ ayb and ⟨ Բ ⟩ Armenian : բեն ben . Armenian is written horizontally, left to right . One of the classical accounts of

680-552: Is an independent branch of the Indo-European languages . It is of interest to linguists for its distinctive phonological changes within that family. Armenian exhibits more satemization than centumization , although it is not classified as belonging to either of these subgroups. Some linguists tentatively conclude that Armenian, Greek (and Phrygian ), Albanian and Indo-Iranian were dialectally close to each other; within this hypothetical dialect group, Proto-Armenian

748-561: Is clearly the dialect to be most closely related to Armenian. Eric P. Hamp (1976, 91) supports the Graeco-Armenian thesis and even anticipates 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 in the Proto-Indo-European language * ne h₂oyu kʷid ("never anything" or "always nothing"),

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816-474: Is derived from Proto-Indo-European *h₂r̥ǵipyós , with cognates in Sanskrit (ऋजिप्य, ṛjipyá ), Avestan ( ərəzifiia ), and Greek (αἰγίπιος, aigípios ). Hrach Martirosyan and Armen Petrosyan propose additional borrowed words of Armenian origin loaned into Urartian and vice versa, including grammatical words and parts of speech, such as Urartian eue ("and"), attested in the earliest Urartian texts and likely

884-415: Is not considered conclusive evidence of a period of common isolated development. There are words used in Armenian that are generally believed to have been borrowed from Anatolian languages, particularly from Luwian , although some researchers have identified possible Hittite loanwords as well. One notable loanword from Anatolian is Armenian xalam , "skull", cognate to Hittite ḫalanta , "head". In 1985,

952-478: Is the fact that the pantheon of the ancient Armenians included Tir , who was the patron god of writing and science. A 13th-century Armenian historian, Vardan Areveltsi , in his History , notes "that an Armenian script existed of old is attested" during the reign of King Leo the Magnificent ( r.  1187–1219 ), after coins naming idolatrous kings were found stamped with the script. The evidence that

1020-451: Is the most common Armenian keyboard layout, enjoying broad support across modern operating systems. Because there are more characters in the Armenian alphabet (39) than in Latin (26), some Armenian characters appear on non-alphabetic keys on a conventional QWERTY keyboard (for example, շ maps to , ). The phonetic layout is not very performant, due to the letter frequency difference between

1088-569: Is the working language. Armenian (without reference to a specific variety) is officially recognized as a minority language in Cyprus , Hungary , Iraq , Poland , Romania , and Ukraine . It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . Armenian alphabet The Armenian alphabet ( Armenian : Հայոց գրեր , Hayocʼ grer or Հայոց այբուբեն , Hayocʼ aybuben ) or, more broadly,

1156-466: The Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia (11–14th centuries) resulted in the addition of two more characters to the alphabet (" օ " and " ֆ "), 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 of Old Armenian by the 10th century. In addition to elevating the literary style and vocabulary of

1224-563: The Armenian genocide , mostly in the diaspora ). The differences between them are considerable but they are mutually intelligible after significant exposure. Some subdialects such as Homshetsi are not mutually intelligible with other varieties. Although Armenians were known to history much earlier (for example, they were mentioned in the 6th-century BC Behistun Inscription and in Xenophon 's 4th century BC history, The Anabasis ),

1292-398: The Armenian script , is an alphabetic writing system developed for Armenian and occasionally used to write other languages. It was developed around 405 CE by Mesrop Mashtots , an Armenian linguist and ecclesiastical leader. The script originally had 36 letters. Eventually, two more were adopted in the 13th century. In reformed Armenian orthography (1920s), the ligature և ev

1360-456: The Ge'ez script had an influence on certain letter shapes, but this has not been supported by any experts in Armenian studies. There are four principal calligraphic hands of the script. Erkatagir , or 'ironclad letters', seen as Mesrop's original, was used in manuscripts from the 5th to 13th century and is still preferred for epigraphic inscriptions. Bolorgir , or 'cursive', was invented in

1428-641: The Greek language , the Armenian language, and the Indo-Iranian languages . Graeco-Aryan unity would have become divided into Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian by the mid-3rd millennium BC. Conceivably, Proto-Armenian would have been located between Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian, consistent with the fact that Armenian shares certain features only with Indo-Iranian (the satem change) but others only with Greek ( s > h ). Graeco-Aryan has comparatively wide support among Indo-Europeanists who believe

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1496-591: The Indo-European homeland to be located in the Armenian Highlands , the " Armenian hypothesis ". Early and strong evidence was given by Euler's 1979 examination on shared features in Greek and Sanskrit nominal flection. Used in tandem with the Graeco-Armenian hypothesis, the Armenian language would also be included under the label Aryano-Greco-Armenic , splitting into Proto-Greek/Phrygian and "Armeno-Aryan" (ancestor of Armenian and Indo-Iranian ). Classical Armenian (Arm: grabar ), attested from

1564-542: The Mekhitarists . The first Armenian periodical, Azdarar , was published in grabar in 1794. The classical form borrowed numerous words from Middle Iranian languages , primarily Parthian , and contains smaller inventories of loanwords from Greek, Syriac, Aramaic, Arabic, Mongol, Persian, and indigenous languages such as Urartian . An effort to modernize the language in Bagratid Armenia and

1632-438: The traditional Armenian orthography . They criticize some aspects of the reforms and allege political motives behind them. Notes: In cursive, the upper- and lower-case letters look more similar than they do in print, and the stroke order is more apparent. Ancient Armenian manuscripts used many ligatures . A commonly used ligature is և (composed of ե and ւ ). Armenian print typefaces also include many ligatures. In

1700-403: The 10th century and became popular in the 13th. It has been the standard printed form since the 16th century. Notrgir , or 'minuscule', invented initially for speed, was extensively used in the Armenian diaspora in the 16th to 18th centuries, and later became popular in printing. Sheghagir , or 'slanted writing', is now the most common form. The earliest known example of the script's usage

1768-666: The 10th century. A circular tower of an unknown purpose is found on a hill top near the village. This article about a location in Armavir Province , Armenia is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Armenian language Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European Armenian

1836-460: The 1840s and 1890s. Constantinople was the main center of Armenian-scripted Turkish press. This portion of the Armenian press declined in the early twentieth century but continued until the Armenian genocide of 1915. In areas inhabited by both Armenians and Assyrians , Syriac texts were occasionally written in the Armenian script, although the opposite phenomenon, Armenian texts written in Serto ,

1904-408: The 5th century to the 19th century as the literary standard (up to the 11th century also as a spoken language with different varieties), was partially superseded by Middle Armenian , attested from the 12th century to the 18th century. Specialized literature prefers "Old Armenian" for grabar as a whole, and designates as "Classical" the language used in the 5th century literature, "Post-Classical" from

1972-635: The Armenian alphabet. The Armenian alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in version 1.0, in October 1991. It is assigned the range U+0530–058F. Five Armenian ligatures are encoded in the "Alphabetic presentation forms" block (code point range U+FB13–FB17). On 15 June 2011, the Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) accepted the Armenian dram sign for inclusion in the future versions of the Unicode Standard and assigned

2040-481: The Armenian language by adding well above a thousand new words, through his other hymns and poems Gregory paved the way for his successors to include secular themes and vernacular language 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,

2108-566: The Armenian scholars of the Middle Ages knew about the existence of a pre-Mashtotsian alphabet can also be found in other medieval works, including the first book composed in the Mashtotsian alphabet by the pupil of Mashtots, Koriwn, in the first half of the fifth century. Koriwn notes that Mashtots was told of the existence of ancient Armenian letters which he was initially trying to integrate into his own alphabet. The Armenian alphabet

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2176-698: The Armenian script. When the Armenian Duzian family managed the Ottoman mint during the reign of Abdülmecid I, they kept records in Armenian script but in the Turkish language. From the middle of the 19th century, the Armenian alphabet was also used for books written in the Kurdish language in the Ottoman Empire. The Armenian script was also used by Turkish-speaking assimilated Armenians between

2244-621: The Armenians are amongst those nations who have their own distinct alphabet. Philostratus the Athenian , a sophist of the second and third centuries, wrote: And they say that a leopardess was once caught in Pamphylia which was wearing a chain round its neck, and the chain was of gold, and on it was inscribed in Armenian lettering: "The king Arsaces to the Nysian god". According to

2312-467: The Hurro-Urartian and Northeast Caucasian origins for these words and instead suggest native Armenian etymologies, leaving the possibility that these words may have been loaned into Hurro-Urartian and Caucasian languages from Armenian, and not vice versa. A notable example is arciv , meaning "eagle", believed to have been the origin of Urartian Arṣibi and Northeast Caucasian arzu . This word

2380-669: The Russian Empire), removed almost all of their Turkish lexical influences in the 20th century, primarily following the Armenian genocide . In addition to Armenia and Turkey, where it is indigenous , Armenian is spoken among the diaspora . According to Ethnologue , globally there are 1.6 million Western Armenian speakers and 3.7 million Eastern Armenian speakers, totalling 5.3 million Armenian speakers. In Georgia, Armenian speakers are concentrated in Ninotsminda and Akhalkalaki districts where they represent over 90% of

2448-459: The Russian and Ottoman empires led to creation of two separate and different environments under which Armenians lived. Halfway through the 19th century, two important concentrations of Armenian communities were further consolidated. Because of persecutions or the search for better economic opportunities, many Armenians living under Ottoman rule gradually moved to Istanbul , whereas Tbilisi became

2516-833: The Soviet linguist Igor M. Diakonoff noted the presence in Classical Armenian of what he calls a "Caucasian substratum" identified by earlier scholars, consisting of loans from the Kartvelian and Northeast Caucasian languages . Noting that Hurro-Urartian-speaking peoples inhabited the Armenian homeland in the second millennium BC, Diakonoff 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

2584-741: The Western Syriac script, is more common. The Kipchak -speaking Armenian Christians of Podolia and Galicia used an Armenian alphabet to produce an extensive amount of literature between 1524 and 1669. The Armenian script, along with the Georgian , was used by the poet Sayat-Nova in his Armenian poems. An Armenian alphabet was an official script for the Kurdish language in 1921–1928 in Soviet Armenia . The Armeno-Tats , who've historically spoken Tat , wrote their language in

2652-624: The alphabet "Armeno-Turkish", describing it as consisting of 31 Armenian letters and "infinitely superior" to the Arabic or Greek alphabets for rendering Turkish. This Armenian script was used alongside the Arabic script on official documents of the Ottoman Empire written in Ottoman Turkish. For instance, the first novel to be written in Turkish in the Ottoman Empire was Hovsep Vartanian 's 1851 Akabi Hikayesi (Akabi's Story), written in

2720-434: 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, Ashkharhabar, to the dignity of a modern literary language, in contrast to

2788-524: The conversion of Iberia under Mirian III (326 or 337) and the Bir el Qutt inscriptions of 430, contemporaneously with the Armenian alphabet. Traditionally, the following phrase translated from Solomon's Book of Proverbs is said to be the first sentence to be written down in Armenian by Mashtots: Ճանաչել զիմաստութիւն եւ զխրատ, իմանալ զբանս հանճարոյ : Čanačʿel zimastutʿiun yev zxrat, imanal zbans hančaroy. To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive

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2856-555: The creation of the script, i.e. after 400, and on paleographic grounds between the 5th and 7th centuries. It is now in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France . The earliest surviving manuscripts written in Armenian using Armenian script date from the 9th–10th century. Certain shifts in the language were at first not reflected in the orthography. The digraph աւ ( au ) followed by a consonant used to be pronounced [au] (as in lu au ) in Classical Armenian , but due to

2924-678: The existence of an Armenian alphabet before Mesrop Mashtots comes from Philo of Alexandria (20 BC – AD 50), who in his writings notes that the work of the Greek philosopher and historian Metrodorus of Scepsis ( c.  145 BC – 70 BC ), On Animals , was translated into Armenian. Metrodorus was a close friend and a court historian of the Armenian emperor Tigranes the Great and also wrote his biography. A third century Roman theologian, Hippolytus of Rome (170–235), in his Chronicle , while writing about his contemporary, Emperor Severus Alexander ( r.  222–235 ), mentions that

2992-580: 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 Armenian genocide preserved the Western Armenian dialect. The two modern literary dialects, Western (originally associated with writers in the Ottoman Empire) and Eastern (originally associated with writers in

3060-627: The fifth-century Armenian historian Movses Khorenatsi , Bardesanes of Edessa (AD 154–222), who founded the Gnostic current of the Bardaisanites , went to the Armenian castle of Ani and there read the work of a pre-Christian Armenian priest named Voghyump, written in the Mithraic script of the Armenian temples, named after Mihr , the Armenian national god of light, truth, and the sun. In Voghyump's work, amongst other histories, an episode

3128-425: The hypothetical Mushki language may have been a (now extinct) Armenic language. W. M. Austin (1942) concluded that there was early contact between Armenian and Anatolian languages , based on what he considered common archaisms, such as the lack of a feminine gender and the absence of inherited long vowels. Unlike shared innovations (or synapomorphies ), the common retention of archaisms (or symplesiomorphy )

3196-470: The interests of the population at large were reflected in other literary works as well. Konsdantin Yerzinkatsi and several others took the unusual step of criticizing the ecclesiastic establishment and addressing the social issues of the Armenian homeland. These changes represented the nature of the literary style and syntax, but they did not constitute immense changes to the fundamentals of the grammar or

3264-434: The late 5th to 8th centuries, and "Late Grabar" that of the period covering the 8th to 11th centuries. Later, it was used mainly in religious and specialized literature, with the exception of a revival during the early modern period, when attempts were made to establish it as the language of a literary renaissance, with neoclassical inclinations, through the creation and dissemination of literature in varied genres, especially by

3332-405: The letter օ ( ō ) although this letter was taken from the Greek alphabet to write foreign words beginning with o [o] . The number and order of the letters have changed over time. In the Middle Ages, two new letters ( օ [o] , ֆ [f] ) were introduced in order to better represent foreign sounds; this increased the number of letters from 36 to 38. From 1922 to 1924, Soviet Armenia adopted

3400-537: The linguistic literature on Classical Armenian, slightly different systems are in use. For about 250 years, from the early 18th century until around 1950, more than 2,000 books in the Turkish language were printed using the Armenian alphabet. Not only did Armenians read this Turkish in Armenian script, so did the non-Armenian (including the Ottoman Turkish) elite. An American correspondent in Marash in 1864 calls

3468-567: The morphology of the language. Often, when writers codify a spoken dialect, other language users are then encouraged to imitate that structure through the literary device known as parallelism . In the 19th century, the traditional Armenian homeland was once again divided. This time Eastern Armenia was conquered from Qajar Iran by the Russian Empire , while Western Armenia , containing two thirds of historical Armenia, remained under Ottoman control. The antagonistic relationship between

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3536-400: The new orthography, the character և is no longer a typographical ligature, but a distinct letter, placed in the new alphabetic sequence, before "o". The following Armenian punctuation marks are placed above and slightly to the right of the vowel whose tone is modified in order to reflect intonation: ISO 9985 (1996) transliterates the Armenian alphabet for modern Armenian as follows: In

3604-403: The now-anachronistic Grabar. Numerous dialects existed 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 standards emerged: Both centers vigorously pursued the promotion of Ashkharhabar. The proliferation of newspapers in both versions (Eastern & Western) and the development of

3672-541: The official status of the Armenian language. Eastern Armenian is the official variant used, making it the prestige variety while other variants have been excluded from national institutions. Indeed, Western Armenian is perceived by some as a mere dialect. Armenian was also official in the Republic of Artsakh . It is recognized as an official language of the Eurasian Economic Union although Russian

3740-584: The oldest surviving Armenian-language writing is etched in stone on Armenian temples and is called Mehenagir . The Armenian alphabet was created by Mesrop Mashtots in 405, at which time it had 36 letters. He is also credited by some with the creation of the Georgian alphabet and the Caucasian Albanian alphabet . While Armenian constitutes the sole member of the Armenian branch of the Indo-European family, Aram Kossian has suggested that

3808-483: The parent languages of Greek and Armenian were dialects in immediate geographical proximity during the Proto-Indo-European period. Meillet's hypothesis became popular in the wake of his book Esquisse d'une histoire de la langue latine (1936). Georg Renatus 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

3876-407: The path to a new and simplified grammatical structure of the language in the two different cultural spheres. Apart from several morphological, phonetic, and grammatical differences, the largely common vocabulary and generally analogous rules of grammatical fundamentals allows users of one variant to understand the other as long as they are fluent in one of the literary standards. After World War I ,

3944-570: The population. The short-lived First Republic of Armenia declared Armenian its official language. Eastern Armenian was then dominating in institutions and among the population. When Armenia was incorporated into the USSR, the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic made Eastern Armenian the language of the courts, government institutions and schools. Armenia was also russified . The current Republic of Armenia upholds

4012-436: The representation of word-initial laryngeals by prothetic vowels, and other phonological and morphological peculiarities with Greek. Nevertheless, as Fortson (2004) comments, "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". Graeco-(Armeno)-Aryan is a hypothetical clade within the Indo-European family , ancestral to

4080-468: The similarities between the two languages meant that Armenian belonged to the Iranian language family . The distinctness of Armenian was recognized when philologist Heinrich Hübschmann (1875) used the comparative method to distinguish two layers of Iranian words from the older Armenian vocabulary . He showed that Armenian often had two morphemes for one concept, that the non-Iranian components yielded

4148-519: 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. Contemporary linguists, such as Hrach Martirosyan , have rejected many of

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4216-497: The words of understanding. Various scripts have been credited with being the prototype for the Armenian alphabet. Pahlavi was the priestly script in Armenia before the introduction of Christianity, and Syriac , along with Greek, was one of the alphabets of Christian scripture. Armenian shows some similarities to both. However, the general consensus is that Armenian is modeled after the Greek alphabet , supplemented with letters from

4284-585: Was a dedicatory inscription over the west door of the church of Saint Sarkis in Tekor . Based on the known individuals mentioned in the inscription, it has been dated to the 480s. The earliest known surviving example of usage outside of Armenia is a mid-6th century mosaic inscription in the chapel of St Polyeuctos in Jerusalem. A papyrus discovered in 1892 at Fayyum and containing Greek words written in Armenian script has been dated on historical grounds to after

4352-527: Was introduced by Mesrop Mashtots and Isaac of Armenia (Sahak Partev) in AD 405. Medieval Armenian sources also claim that Mashtots invented the Georgian and Caucasian Albanian alphabets around the same time. However, most scholars link the creation of the Georgian script to the process of Christianization of Iberia , a core Georgian kingdom of Kartli . The alphabet was therefore most probably created between

4420-627: Was noted of the Armenian King Tigranes VII (who reigned from 144 to 161, and again from AD 164–186) erecting a monument on the tomb of his brother, the Mithraic High Priest of the Kingdom of Greater Armenia , Mazhan. Movses of Khoren notes that Bardesanes translated this Armenian book into Syriac ( Aramaic ), and later also into Greek . Another important evidence for the existence of a pre-Mashtotsian alphabet

4488-405: Was situated between Proto-Greek ( centum subgroup) and Proto-Indo-Iranian ( satem subgroup). Ronald I. Kim has noted unique morphological developments connecting Armenian to Balto-Slavic languages . The Armenian language has a long literary history, with a 5th-century Bible translation as its oldest surviving text. Another text translated into Armenian early on, and also in the 5th-century,

4556-682: Was the Armenian Alexander Romance . The vocabulary of the language has historically been influenced by Western Middle Iranian languages , particularly Parthian ; its derivational morphology and syntax were also affected by language contact with Parthian, but to a lesser extent. Contact with Greek, Persian , and Syriac also resulted in a number of loanwords. There are two standardized modern literary forms, Eastern Armenian (spoken mainly in Armenia) and Western Armenian (spoken originally mainly in modern-day Turkey and, since

4624-593: Was widely used in Windows 9x operating systems but has become obsolete due to the advent of Unicode. Similarly, Arasan-compatible fonts, based on Hrant Papazian's original Arasan font encoding from 1986, replaced ASCII's Latin characters with Armenian ones, like using the ASCII code for ⟨+⟩ (43) to represent the Armenian ⟨Չ⟩ . These fonts, once popular on Windows 9x , have also been deprecated in favor of Unicode . The phonetic keyboard layout

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