Series Introduction

Todd B. Krause and Jonathan Slocum

Armenian is the state language of what in current memory was the littlest republic of this previous Soviet Union, now the southernmost republic associated with Commonwealth of Independent States. The language is spoken by roughly four million individuals nevertheless residing inside the boundaries for the republic. a little selection of speakers are now living in north-western Iran, plus some communities dot the countryside of eastern Turkey. Many emigrees have actually spread the language to all the corners associated with globe. The initial documentary evidence of this Armenians is really a sixth century b.c. inscription in Behistun because of the Persian master Darius we. It absolutely was almost a thousand years, nonetheless, ahead of the Armenians on their own started to place their language to writing, when in 406 or 407 A.D. a priest MaЕЎtКїocКї (also called Mesrop) developed A armenian alphabet. One additionally discovers mention of the an alphabet that is prior by the Syriac bishop Daniel, purportedly abandoned as it ended up being ill-suited towards the audio system associated with the language. The language whose documents date back once again to this period is termed traditional Armenian. Much later on, into the twelfth to seventeenth hundreds of years, one discovers the legacy of Middle Armenian, whose writers attempted to emulate the type of the Golden Age of Classical Armenian. Between those two cycles one further differentiates two phases associated with Armenian language: post-Classical, spanning the sixth and 7th hundreds of years, and Pre-Middle Armenian, through the eighth to twelfth centuries. Following the century that is seventeenth Armenian developed into a modern kind that has divided in to two varieties: West Armenian and East Armenian.

Note: this group of classes is for systems/browsers with Unicode В® support, but fonts lacking Armenian figures. Lessons rendered in alternative character sets can be found via links (Romanized and Unicode 3) when you look at the margin that is upper-left as well as the base of this site.

Note: this group of classes in Armenian uses Romanized letters as opposed to the conventional alphabet that is armenian. Classes rendered within the old-fashioned alphabet could be accessed through the Armenian menu product.

Origin and Geographical Location

Relating to Greek mythic tradition, Armenia ended up being known as after Armenus, certainly one of Jason’s Argonauts. Herodotus, composing when you look at the fifth century B.C., states that the Armenians lived in Thrace then relocated into Phrygia, from where they crossed into the subsequent territory that is armenian. Strabo, composing within the very first century B.C., states that the Armenians joined the territory from two instructions, one team originating from Phrygia when you look at the western, one other originating from Mesopotamia into the southeast. Although by neither account were they the initial inhabitants for the area, Xenophon records in 400 B.C. which they appear to have absorbed all of the regional dwellers.

Armenian tradition, recorded between your 5th and centuries that are eighth, relates the Armenian individuals to the descendants of Noah. Following the Flood, Noah’s household settled in Armenia before going south to Babylon in successive generations. Certainly one of Noah’s descendants, Haik, revolted and Chatroulette gdynia returned to Armenia, pursued by the Babylonian Bel. Haik killed Bel and became ruler for the Armenian land, and the descendants of Haik later defended Armenia through the forces of Assyria.

Contemporary scholarly views are simply as wide-ranging. a typical view is that the Armenians had been of Indo-European stock and joined the region either along with all the Phrygians from the Balkan area or because of the Mitanni through the section of the Aral Sea. They encountered the Urartuan tradition in a period of decrease and in the end arrived to rule over them as well as other Caucasian teams in your community. Another concept attracts on linguistic similarities between your Armenian language and the Caucasian languages for the area to express that the Armenians had initially been by by themselves a Caucasian tribe which adopted an Indo-European tongue, and this Caucasian substrate is in charge of the truth that Armenian is pretty genetically isolated among the list of Indo-European languages. Still another concept is the fact that Armenians will be the many inactive users of the initial speakers of Proto-Indo-European; that the Indo-European languages originated from the transcaucasian area, nevertheless the Armenians, whom decided to go with never to migrate from the area, had been marginalized during periods of Hittite and Urartuan dominance. Suffice it to state, the origin that is true of Armenian individuals will remain shrouded in obscurity for a while in the future.

The Armenian land itself is a plateau situated approximately 5000 legs above ocean degree and hemmed in by mountainous areas. It lies roughly southeast of the Ebony Sea and southwest regarding the Caspian Sea. The ancient Armenian homeland was somewhat more expansive as compared to modern Armenian Republic, also including most of eastern Turkey, the northeastern part of Iran, and areas of Azerbaijan and Georgia. Into the northeast the Kur River separates the highland area from lowlands which sweep to the Caspian Sea. The north edge is proceeded because of the Pontus mountain range, which expands west through the way to obtain the Kur and shields Armenia through the Ebony water. The Taurus and Zagros hill ranges produce a normal boundary operating across the whole southern expanse and cutting Armenia removed from Mesopotamia. The Armenian plateau it self is split by a number of smaller hill ranges that furnish the sources for several unnavigable rivers. The section that is northermost of Euphrates would be to form the boundary between Greater and Lesser Armenia when you look at the subsequent imperial struggles.