Learn to speak Armenian  

Armenian Language

Armenian CD-ROM
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Where does Armenian come from?
Today, five to six million people speak Armenian (Grimes 1992), although the total population of the Republic of Armenia is only 3.5 million (ninety three percent of whom are ethnic Armenian). Thus, nearly half of Armenian speakers today live outside their historic homeland, primarily in Iran (370,000), Syria (299,000), Lebanon (235,000), Egypt (100,000), and the United States (175,000). Smaller communities, under 40,000, are found in Canada, Cyprus, Greece, India, Israel, and Jordan. Somewhat larger communities, between 40,000 and 70,000 speakers, live in Turkey, France, and Iraq.

Enclaves of speakers also reside in Georgia and Azerbaijan, especially the Nagorno Karabakh region (CIA 1992). Haieren and Ashkhari are Armenian terms for the language, although the latter is somewhat erudite.

The term Armenian can be used to refer to at least three different languages, each with its own dialects. It can refer to Classical Armenian (the older form of the language); Modern Western Armenian (developed in those regions of Armenia that are now Turkey and the variety spoken in the diaspora); and Modern Eastern Armenian (the language of the Republic of Armenia).

Linguistic Affiliation
Armenian forms an independent branch of the Indo-European language family (Comrie, 1981). Armenian is most closely related to Greek, but has many borrowed words from such Indo-Iranian languages as Pushto and Persian. In fact, during the very early periods of its classification, Armenian was erroneously considered an Iranian language because of its large number of Iranian loan words.

Language Variation
Two standard dialects exist. Eastern Armenian is used in Armenia and in enclaves in Azerbaijan and Iran. Western Armenian is used by Armenians in Istanbul, Lebanon, Egypt, other parts of the diaspora, and formerly in eastern Turkey. Eastern Armenian has been influenced by two sets of Russian reforms and differs orthographically from Western Armenian; there are also phonological differences.

Many regional dialect variations exist, e.g., Yerevan, Tbilisi, Karabagh, Istanbul (Djahukian 1986). Some local dialects are so different from both standard forms of the language that speakers of the standard forms have difficulty in understanding local dialects (Greppin and Khachaturian 1986). Otherwise, dialect differences are no greater than dialect differences within American English.

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