Armenian language

One of the main divisions of the Indo-European language family. Old Armenian, the classical literary language, is still used in the liturgy of the Armenian Church. Armenian was not written down until the 5th century AD, when an alphabet of 36 (now 38) letters was evolved. Literature flourished in the 4th to 14th centuries, revived in the 18th, and continued throughout the 20th.

Contemporary Armenian, with modified grammar and enriched with words from other languages, is used by a group of 20th-century writers.

The many forms of medieval and modern vernaculars are known as ashkharhabar, secular language, in contrast to the classical language grabar. The medieval Armenian of Cilician Armenia displays a consonantal shift similar to that of High German. Modern Western Armenian, spoken in Constantinople and among emigrants elsewhere, derives from similar dialects, while modern Eastern Armenian, spoken in Armenia and Iran, preserves a consonantal system close to that of classical Armenian. The vocabulary of classical Armenian contains many Iranian cultural loans, and also some Greek and Syriac ecclesiastical terms. Cilician Armenian adopted many Old French terms.

The later medieval forms abound in Turkish and Persian loans, and the word order and syntax, in classical Armenian close to that of Greek, became more Turkish in character. Russian loans were common for a time in the Eastern Armenian spoken in Tsarist and Soviet Russia, but these have largely been purged from the Armenian vocabulary, which is rich and expressive.