The Armenian Language Thread

**Petros Agapetos** · 01-08-2017, 07:17 AM

http://vocaroo.com/i/s1HaoDTy1Jhk
Here I am speaking Armenian.

What languages does it sound like? Which categories fit the Armenian language?

Near Eastern language
Eastern European language
Caucasus language
Iranian language

etc.

Which regions of the world does Armenian sound like it comes from?

**Petros Agapetos** · 01-08-2017, 07:23 AM

The Armenian language (հայերեն [hɑjɛˈɾɛn] hayeren) is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenians. It is the official language of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. It has historically been spoken throughout the Armenian Highlands and today is widely spoken in the Armenian diaspora. Armenian has its own unique script, the Armenian alphabet, introduced in 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots.

Armenian is an independent branch of the Indo-European languages.

Armenian is of interest to linguists for its distinctive phonological developments within that family. Armenian exhibits more satemization than centumization, although it is not classified as belonging to either of these subgroups.

Some linguists tentatively conclude that Armenian, Greek (Phrygian), Albanian and Indo-Iranian were dialectally close to each other; within this hypothetical dialect group, Proto-Armenian was situated between Proto-Greek (centum subgroup) and Proto-Indo-Iranian (satem subgroup).

Armenia was a monolingual country by the 2nd century BC at the latest. Its language has a long literary history, with a 5th-century Bible translation as its oldest surviving text. Its vocabulary has been influenced by Western Middle Iranian languages, particularly Parthian, and to a lesser extent by Greek, Persian, and Arabic throughout its history. There are two standardized modern literary forms, Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian, with which most contemporary dialects are mutually intelligible.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_language

**Petros Agapetos** · 01-08-2017, 07:28 AM

Graeco-Armenian hypothesis

The hypothesis that Greek is Armenian's closest living relative originates with Holger Pedersen (1924), who noted that the number of Greek-Armenian lexical cognates is greater than that of agreements between Armenian and any other Indo-European language. Antoine Meillet (1925, 1927) further investigated morphological and phonological agreement, postulating that the parent languages of Greek and Armenian were dialects in immediate geographical proximity in the Proto-Indo-European period. Meillet's hypothesis became popular in the wake of his Esquisse (1936).

Georg Renatus Solta (1960) does not go as far as postulating a Proto-Graeco-Armenian stage, but he concludes that considering both the lexicon and morphology, Greek is clearly the dialect most closely related to Armenian.

Eric P. Hamp (1976, 91) supports the Graeco-Armenian thesis, anticipating even a time "when we should speak of Helleno-Armenian" (meaning the postulate of a Graeco-Armenian proto-language). Armenian shares the augment, and a negator derived from the set phrase Proto-Indo-European language *ne h2oiu kwid ("never anything" or "always nothing"), and the representation of word-initial laryngeals by prothetic vowels, and other phonological and morphological peculiarities with Greek. Nevertheless, as Fortson (2004) comments, "by the time we reach our earliest Armenian records in the 5th century AD, the evidence of any such early kinship has been reduced to a few tantalizing pieces".

**Petros Agapetos** · 01-08-2017, 07:29 AM

Greco-Armeno-Aryan hypothesis

Graeco-(Armeno)-Aryan is a hypothetical clade within the Indo-European family, ancestral to the Greek language, the Armenian language, and the Indo-Iranian languages. Graeco-Aryan unity would have become divided into Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian by the mid-third millennium BC. Conceivably, Proto-Armenian would have been located between Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian, consistent with the fact that Armenian shares certain features only with Indo-Iranian (the satem change) but others only with Greek (s > h).

Graeco-Aryan has comparatively wide support among Indo-Europeanists for the Indo-European homeland to be located in the Armenian Highlands, the "Armenian hypothesis". Early and strong evidence was given by Euler's 1979 examination on shared features in Greek and Sanskrit nominal flection.

Used in tandem with the Graeco-Armenian hypothesis, the Armenian language would also be included under the label Aryano-Greco-Armenic, splitting into proto-Greek/Phrygian and "Armeno-Aryan" (ancestor of Armenian and Indo-Iranian).

**Petros Agapetos** · 01-08-2017, 07:41 AM

What do you think of our language? What languages does it sound like to you?

What languages does this speech sound like. Please rank these in the order of best fit to worst fit, for a rep comment

Georgian
Turkish
Persian
Hebrew
Romanian
Greek
Balkan Slavic
Hungarian
North Caucasus
Arabic
Middle Eastern
Caucasus

**Petros Agapetos** · 01-08-2017, 07:53 AM

Graeco-Armenian (also Helleno-Armenian) is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Greek and Armenian languages that postdates the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). Its status is comparable to that of the Italo-Celtic grouping: each is widely considered plausible without being accepted as established communis opinio. The hypothetical Proto-Graeco-Armenian stage would need to date to the 3rd millennium BC, only barely differentiated from either late PIE or Graeco-Armeno-Aryan.

The Graeco-Armenian hypothesis originated in 1924 with Holger Pedersen, who noted that the number of Greek-Armenian lexical cognates is greater than that of agreements between Armenian and any other Indo-European language. During the mid-to-late 1920s, Antoine Meillet further investigated morphological and phonological agreements, postulating that the parent languages of Greek and Armenian were dialects in immediate geographical proximity in the parent language. Meillet's hypothesis became popular in the wake of his Esquisse d'une grammaire comparée de l'arménien classique. G. R. Solta does not go as far as postulating a Proto-Graeco-Armenian stage, but he concludes that considering both the lexicon and morphology, Greek is clearly the dialect most closely related to Armenian. Eric Hamp supports the Graeco-Armenian thesis, anticipating even a time "when we should speak of Helleno-Armenian" (meaning the postulate of a Graeco-Armenian proto-language).James Clackson is again more reserved, holding the evidence in favour of a positive Graeco-Armenian sub-group to be inconclusive and tends to include Armenian into a larger Graeco-Armeno-Aryan family.