Armenian

Armenian (Hayaren) belongs to the Indo-European language family. It forms its own independent branch and has no close relatives. It is generally thought to be most closely related to Greek but has has been erroneously considered to be an Iranian language because of its large number of Iranian loan words.

It is estimated that Armenian is spoken by about 6 million people worldwide (Ethnologue). Eastern Armenian It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia, a former Soviet Republic located in the Caucasus where it is spoken by some 3.5 million people. However, nearly half of Armenian speakers today live outside of Armenia, most of whom speak Western Armenian.

The Armenian diaspora resulted from several historical events. During World War I, Armenians in Turkey suffered from ethnic cleansing and genocide (1915-1916). From 1918 to 1920, those who resisted the Turks, attempted to create an independent Armenian Republic, but their efforts failed. Armenia was then divided among the USSR, Turkey, and Iran. This resulted in mass emigration of Armenians to different parts of the world.

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the establishment of an independent Republic of Armenia, there has been a rebirth of interest in the language among the Armenians.
Dialects
The term Armenian can be used to refer to at least three different varieties of the language, each with its own dialects.

•   Classical Armenian (Grabar) is a 5th-century classical form of the language, which remained the literary language until the 19th century, and is still maintained by the Armenian church.
•   Modern Eastern Armenian is spoken in present-day Armenia and in enclaves in Azerbaijan and Iran.
•   Modern Western Armenian was spoken by Armenians in Anatolia, Turkey, prior to the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1916. Today, it is used by Armenian communities in the United States, Europe, Middle East, Australia, and South America. Most recently, however, Eastern Armenian communities are being established alongside the older Western ones.

Eastern Armenian has been influenced by two sets of Russian reforms and differs orthographically from Western Armenian. There are also phonological differences. Many regional dialect variations exist, e.g., Yerevan, Tbilisi, Karabakh, Istanbul. Some local dialects are so different from both standard forms of the language that speakers of the standard forms have difficulty in understanding local dialects.

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