Classical Armenian

"Grabar" redirects here. For other uses, see Grabar (disambiguation).
Classical Armenian
Region Armenian Highlands
Era developed into Middle Armenian
Indo-European
  • Classical Armenian
Early forms
Proto-Armenian
  • Classical Armenian
Armenian alphabet (Classical Armenian orthography)
Language codes
ISO 639-3 xcl
Linguist list
 xcl
Glottolog clas1249[1]
Linguasphere 57-AAA-aa
History of the Armenian language
Armenian alphabet
Romanization of Armenian
Epitaph in Classical Armenian for Jakub and Marianna Minasowicz at St. Hyacinth's Church in Warsaw

Classical Armenian (Armenian: գրաբար, grabar, Western Armenian krapar, meaning "literary [language]"; also Old Armenian or Liturgical Armenian) is the oldest attested form of the Armenian language. It was first written down at the beginning of the 5th century, and all Armenian literature from then through the 18th century is in the Grabar Armenian language. Many ancient manuscripts originally written in Ancient Greek, Persian, Hebrew, Syriac and Latin survive only in their Armenian translation. Classical Armenian continues to be the liturgical language of the Armenian Apostolic Church and is often learned by Biblical, Intertestamental, and Patristic scholars dedicated to textual studies. Classical Armenian is also important for the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European language.

Phonology

Vowels

Classical Armenian has seven monophthong vowels:

There are also traditionally six diphthongs:

Consonants

In the following table there is listed the Classical Armenian consonantal system. The stops and affricate consonants have, in addition to the more common voiced and unvoiced series, also a separate aspirated series (transcribed with the notation used for Ancient Greek rough breathing after the letter): p῾, t῾, c῾, č῾, k῾. For each phoneme there are three symbols in the table. The leftmost indicates the pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA); in the middle there is the corresponding symbol in the Armenian alphabet; and the rightmost is its transliteration in Latin alphabet (following the 1996 ISO 9985 standard).

  Labial Alveolar Palato-alveolar
/ Palatal		 Velar /
Uvular		 Glottal
Nasals /m/   մ   m /n/   ն   n      
Stops voiced /b/   բ   b /d/   դ   d   /a/   գ   g  
unvoiced /p/   պ   p /t/   տ   t   /k/   կ   k  
aspirated /pʰ/   փ   p’ /tʰ/   թ   t’   /kʰ/   ք   k’  
Affricates voiced   /dz/   ձ   j /dʒ/   ջ   ǰ    
unvoiced   /ts/   ծ   ç /tʃ/   ճ   č̣    
aspirated   /tsʰ/   ց   c’ /tʃʰ/   չ   č    
Fricatives voiced /v/   վ   v /z/   զ   z /ʒ/   ժ   ž /k/   ղ   ł  
unvoiced /f/   ֆ   f /s/   ս   s /ʃ/   շ   š /χ/   խ   x /h/   հ   h
Approximants lateral   /l/   լ   l      
central   /ɹ/   ր   r /j/   յ   y    
Trill   /r/   ռ   ṙ      

The letter f (or ֆ) was introduced in the Medieval Period to represent the foreign sound /f/, or the voiceless labiodental fricative, and was not originally a letter in the Armenian Alphabet.

See also

Reference books

References

  1. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Classical Armenian". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

External links

For a list of words relating to Old Armenian language, see the Old Armenian language category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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