Armenian

Armenian is the native language of Armenia, a landlocked country in Transcaucasia bordering Turkey and Iran. It is spoken by the vast majority of the population, or close to 3½ million people. There are also about 2000,000 speakers in neighboring Georgia and sizable communities in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and the United States.

The Armenians are an ancient people whose history dates back about 2,500 years. The Armenian alphabet was invented by Mesrop Mashtots, a missionary, about the year 400 A.D. Originally it consisted of thirty-six letters, six vowels and thirty consonants, to which two letters were added in the 12th century.

Armenian constitutes a separate and independent branch of the Indo-European family. The Armenians call their country Hayastan and their language Hayaren. During many centuries of Persian domination so many Iranian words entered the language that even in the 19th century many linguists thought it a dialect of Persian. It was not until 1875 that it was established as an independent language. Much of the Armenian vocabulary is not to be found in any other Indo-European language. Undoubtedly many words were derived from languages that are now extinct.