Translations and other language solutions in Armenian

Armenian is one of the languages of the Indo-European family which nowadays is used by 8 million people in the world. The Armenian language is the national language in Armenia and in Nagorno-Karabakh. In addition, part of the Armenian diaspora in Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, Israel, Cyprus and elsewhere calls Armenian their mother tongue. Until 1990, education in Armenian schools was in Armenian and Russian, but after the fall of the USSR, the Armenian language became the main language for education and all other schools that had studies in Russian were shut down. In 2010, education in the Russian language was reinstated. Historically there are few remaining facts about the dawn of the Armenian language, but there are facts that date back to the 6th century B.C. The written form of Armenian first appeared in the 5th century when the Armenian alphabet was created. Traditionally there are three Armenian language development periods: the ancient Armenian written language development period from the 5th to the 11th century, which was followed by the middle Armenian language development period from the 12th to the 16th centuries, and the present-day Armenian language period since the 17th century. There are two generally accepted forms of Armenian: east and west. East Armenian has developed on the basis of the Ararat Plain dialect and is spoken in Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Georgia and Iran. The west Armenian language has developed on the basis of Constantinople and the Crimean dialect and is spoken by the Armenian diaspora. This language is also used in education and in media. In Armenian, the stress usually is on the last syllable. Interestingly, the language does not have grammatical gender categories, feminine is made by giving an ending to a word. What makes the language even more difficult to learn is the fact that the Armenian language uses a colon at the end of a sentence, not a full stop and in the place of a comma, a full stop is used. Many sounds in Armenian have no analogue in any other language in the world. Grammatical features between west Armenian and east Armenian have some differences and the phonological systems of the two Armenian literary languages can result in different pronunciations of the same word. There are about 60 dialects in Armenian. Nowadays most common dialect groups are the Ararat dialect in the eastern branch and the Anatolia dialect in the western branch. With the exception of Muslim Hamshenians in Turkey and a part of the Armenians from the North Caucasus, other dialect speakers also use one of the two literary forms when interacting with speakers of other dialects and in official business, work and education.

The development of the Armenian alphabet is still a unique event in the history of linguistics in the world. In the Armenian alphabet, there are 39 letters for 36 sounds. It’s one of the richest alphabets in the world. The alphabet consists of 7 vowels and 29 consonants, also there are 3 additional letters which usually stand for sound compounds. In the Armenian alphabet, the letters also are used for numbers. The Armenian alphabet was made in the year 405 and the creator was an Armenian monk, theologian and linguist, Mesrop Mashtots. At the end of the 4th-century, Armenian ruler, Vramshapuh asked the distinguished scientist to develop a new alphabet for the Armenian language. Before that, the Armenian language used Cuneiform for writing, but the Armenian clergymen thought that it was not suitable for the writing of religious texts. Mashtots went to Alexandria where he studied the basics of writing and came to the conclusion that the Greek alphabet was the most suitable for the creation of the Armenian alphabet. He used the Greek alphabet as a sample for the new alphabet and he showed it to the ruler when he returned to Armenia in 405. The new alphabet received recognition and already in that year, a new translation of the Bible in Armenian was written. Soon after, other literary works appeared. The ancient Armenian alphabet is also used in today’s east Armenian and west Armenian languages. Although the compositions of the sounds in both languages are slightly different, the same number of graphemes is used to denote them, with slight variations. Significantly in all this time, there have been no substantial changes. In 2005 all Armenian people celebrated the Armenian alphabet’s 1600 year anniversary, which is one of the oldest alphabets in the world. In honour of this significant occasion, on the east side slope of Mount Aragats 39 letters of the Armenian alphabet were erected. There is no such monument to the letters anywhere else in the world.

WHERE AND HOW MANY SPEAK ARMENIAN?