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Armenian Alphabet
Armenian Alphabet
Armenian Alphabet
Armenian is an Indo-European language with about 6.7 million speakers mainly in Armenia ( [Hayastan]) and Nagorno-Karabakh, a de facto, though unrecognised, independent republic in the NagornoKarabakh region of the South Caucasus. There are also Armenian speakers in many other countries, including Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, Turkey, Iran, Cyprus, Poland and Romania. Armenian is the offical language of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, and has official status as a minority language in Cyprus, Poland and Romania. Until the the early 1990s schools in Armenian taught in either Armenian or Russian, however after the collapse of the USSR, Armenian became the main medium of instruction and the Russian-medium schools were closed. In 2010 Russian language education was reintroduced in Armenia [source].
Armenian alphabet
In the late 4th century AD, king Vramshapuh of Armenia asked Mesrop Mashtots, one of the officials in his chancellery and a prominent scholar, to create a new alphabet for Armenian. Before then, Armenian had been written with 'cuneiform' scripts, which was deemed unsuitable for religious works by the Armenian Church. Mashtots travelled to Alexandria, where he studied the principles of writing and came to the conclusion that the Greek alphabet was the best alphabet in use at that time because there was an almost one-to-one correspondence between sounds and letters. He used this model to come up with a new alphabet, which he presented to the king when he returned to Armenia in 405 AD. The new alphabet was well-received and a new Armenian translation of the bible was published in 405 AD. Other literary works soon followed.
There are two standard forms of Armenian: Eastern Armenian, spoken mainly in Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Georgia and Iran; and Western Armenian, spoken by the Armenian diaspora in many countries. They are more or less mutually intelligible. From the early 18th century until the 1950s some 2,000 books were published in Turkish written in the Armenian alphabet, and official documents produced during the Ottoman period were in the Armenian and Arabic scripts. The Armenian alphabet was used in the literature of Kipchak-speaking Armenian Orthodox Christians between 1524 and 1669. The poet Sayat-Nova used the Armenian alphabet to write poems in Azeri, and it was also the official script for Kurdish in Soviet Armenia from 1921-1928.
Notable features
Type of writing system: alphabet Direction of writing: left to right in horizontal lines Used to write: Armenian, and formerly used for Turkish, Azeri, Kipchak and Kurdish There are a few minor differences in the pronunciation of the letters between the two standard literary forms of Armenian: Western and Eastern.
Armenian punctuation
Downloads
Download Armenian alphabet charts in Excel or PDF format
Transliteration Bolor mardik tsnvum en azat u havasar irents' arzhanapatvut'yamb u iravunqnerov. Nranq unen banakanut'yun u khighch & mimyants' petq e' yeghbayrabar veraberven
Translation
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. (Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/armenian.htm