Armenian language

Armenian is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people in the Caucasus mountains (particularly in the Armenian Republic) and also used by the Armenian Diaspora. It is its own independent branch of the family of the Indo-European languages, with no living close relatives.

Grammar

Armenian resembles other Indo-European languages in its structure, but it shares distinctive sounds and features of its grammar with neighboring languages of the Caucasus region. Armenian is rich in combinations of consonants, especially in affricative sounds such as j, ch, and ts. Both classical Armenian and the modern spoken and literary dialects have a complicated system of declining nouns, with six or seven noun cases but no gender. In modern Armenian the use of auxiliary verbs to show tense (comparable to will in "he will go") has generally supplemented the inflected verbs of classical Armenian. Negative verbs are conjugated differently from positive ones (as in English "he goes" and "he does not go"). Grammatically, early forms of Armenian had much in common with classical Greek, Arabic, Chinese and Latin, but the modern language, like modern Greek, has undergone many transformations.

Related Topics:
Caucasus - Greek - Arabic - Chinese - Latin

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The famous Romantic poet Lord Byron took up the study of the Armenian language. He helped to compile an Armenian grammar textbook and translated a few Armenian books into English to help preserve the Armenian culture he was so impressed by.

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