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The Armenian alphabet is an alphabet
Alphabet

An alphabet is a standardized set of letter basic written symbols each of which roughly represents a phoneme, a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past....
 that has been used to write the Armenian language
Armenian language

The 'Armenian language' is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenians. It is the official language of the Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh....
 since the year 405
405

Sorry, no overview for this topic
 or 406
406

Sorry, no overview for this topic
. Up to the 19th century, Classical Armenian had been the literary language; since then, the Armenian alphabet has been used to write the two modern dialects of Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian. ?? The Armenian word for "alphabet" is , named after the first two letters of the Armenian alphabet and .
le class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;">
Letter Name Pronunciation Transliteration
Romanization of Armenian

There are various systems of romanization of the Armenian alphabet....
 Numerical value
Armenian numerals

The system of Armenian numerals is a historic numeral system created using the majuscules of the Armenian alphabet.There was no notation for 0 in the old system, and the numeric values for individual letters were added together....
Traditional Reformed Pronunciation Classical Eastern Western Classical ISO 9985
Classical Eastern Western
? ? ??? 1
? ? ??? 2
? ? ??? 3
? ? ?? 4
? ? ?? , initially 1 5
? ? ?? 6
? ? ? 7
? ? ?? 8
? ? ?? ?? 9
? ? ?? ?? 10
? ? ??? 20
? ? ???? ????? 2 30
? ? ?? ?? 40
? ? ?? c ç 50
? ? ??? 60
? ? ?? ?? 70
? ? ?? 80
? ? ??? 90
? ? ?? ?? c c? 100
? ? ??? 200
? ? ?? ?? 3, 300
? ? ??? 400
? ? ?? 500
? ? ? , initially 4 600
? ? ?? 700
? ? ?? ?? 800
? ? ?? ?? 900
? ? ?? 1000
? ? ?? ?? 2000
? ? ??? ??? 3000
? ? ???? ?????5 4000
? ? ?? ??6 6 r 5000
? ? ?? ?? 6000
? ? ???? N/A7 8 7000
? ? ???? ????? 9 8000
? ? ?? ?? 9000
Added during the thirteenth century
? ? ? N/A
? ? ?? ?? N/A
Letter Traditional Reformed Classical Eastern Western Classical Eastern Western Classical ISO 9985 Numerical value
Armenian numerals

The system of Armenian numerals is a historic numeral system created using the majuscules of the Armenian alphabet.There was no notation for 0 in the old system, and the numeric values for individual letters were added together....
Pronunciation
Name Pronunciation Transliteration


ent Armenian manuscripts used many ligatures to save space.






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The Armenian alphabet is an alphabet
Alphabet

An alphabet is a standardized set of letter basic written symbols each of which roughly represents a phoneme, a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past....
 that has been used to write the Armenian language
Armenian language

The 'Armenian language' is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenians. It is the official language of the Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh....
 since the year 405
405

Sorry, no overview for this topic
 or 406
406

Sorry, no overview for this topic
. Up to the 19th century, Classical Armenian had been the literary language; since then, the Armenian alphabet has been used to write the two modern dialects of Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian. ?? The Armenian word for "alphabet" is , named after the first two letters of the Armenian alphabet and .

The alphabet

Letter Name Pronunciation Transliteration
Romanization of Armenian

There are various systems of romanization of the Armenian alphabet....
 Numerical value
Armenian numerals

The system of Armenian numerals is a historic numeral system created using the majuscules of the Armenian alphabet.There was no notation for 0 in the old system, and the numeric values for individual letters were added together....
Traditional Reformed Pronunciation Classical Eastern Western Classical ISO 9985
Classical Eastern Western
? ? ??? 1
? ? ??? 2
? ? ??? 3
? ? ?? 4
? ? ?? , initially 1 5
? ? ?? 6
? ? ? 7
? ? ?? 8
? ? ?? ?? 9
? ? ?? ?? 10
? ? ??? 20
? ? ???? ????? 2 30
? ? ?? ?? 40
? ? ?? c ç 50
? ? ??? 60
? ? ?? ?? 70
? ? ?? 80
? ? ??? 90
? ? ?? ?? c c? 100
? ? ??? 200
? ? ?? ?? 3, 300
? ? ??? 400
? ? ?? 500
? ? ? , initially 4 600
? ? ?? 700
? ? ?? ?? 800
? ? ?? ?? 900
? ? ?? 1000
? ? ?? ?? 2000
? ? ??? ??? 3000
? ? ???? ?????5 4000
? ? ?? ??6 6 r 5000
? ? ?? ?? 6000
? ? ???? N/A7 8 7000
? ? ???? ????? 9 8000
? ? ?? ?? 9000
Added during the thirteenth century
? ? ? N/A
? ? ?? ?? N/A
Letter Traditional Reformed Classical Eastern Western Classical Eastern Western Classical ISO 9985 Numerical value
Armenian numerals

The system of Armenian numerals is a historic numeral system created using the majuscules of the Armenian alphabet.There was no notation for 0 in the old system, and the numeric values for individual letters were added together....
Pronunciation
Name Pronunciation Transliteration


Ligatures

Ancient Armenian manuscripts used many ligatures to save space. Some of the commonly used ligatures are: ? (?+?), ? (?+?), ? (?+?), ? (?+?), ? (?+?), ? (?+?), etc. After the invention of printing Armenian typefaces made a wide use of ligatures as well. It is important to note that in new orthography the ? character is not a typographical ligature anymore, and must never be treated as such. It is a distinct letter and has its place in the new alphabetic sequence.

Punctuation marks


In Armenian ( , ) is a comma
Comma

A comma is a type of punctuation mark .Comma may also refer to:* Comma , a type of interval in music theory* Comma , a species of butterfly...
, ( : ) is the ordinary period
Full stop

A full stop or period , is the punctuation mark commonly placed at the end of several different types of Sentence s in English language and many other languages....
, and ( ' ) is used as period for abbreviations
Full stop

A full stop or period , is the punctuation mark commonly placed at the end of several different types of Sentence s in English language and many other languages....
. The question mark
Question mark

The question mark , also known as an interrogation point, question point, query, or eroteme, is a punctuation that replaces the Full stop at the end of an interrogative sentence....
 ( ? ) is placed between the last and the penultimate letters of the question word. The short stop ( ? ) placed in the same manner as the question mark, indicates a short pause that is longer than that of a comma, but shorter than that of a semicolon. The interjection
Interjection

An interjection is a part of speech that usually has no grammatical connection with the rest of the Sentence and simply expresses emotion on the part of the speaker, although most interjections have clear definitions....
 sign ( ? ) is placed between the penultimate and last letter of the interjection. ( « » ) are used for quotation mark
Quotation mark

Quotation marks or inverted commas are punctuation marks used in pairs to set off speech, a quotation, a phrase or a word. The pair consists of an opening quotation mark and a closing quotation mark, which may or may not be the same character....
s. ( ? ) is used as the exclamation mark
Exclamation mark

An exclamation mark or exclamation point is a punctuation mark: ! It is usually used after an interjection or exclamation to indicate strong feelings or high volume, and often marks the end of a sentence....
.

Transliteration

ISO 9985 (1996) transliterates the Armenian alphabet for modern Armenian as follows:
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?? ?
a b g d e z e ë t’ ž i l x ç k h j g c? m y n š o c p s v t r c’ w p’ k’ ò fow ew


In linguistic literature on Classical Armenian, slightly different systems are in use (in particular note that c has a different meaning). Hübschmann-Meillet (1913) have
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?? ?
a b g d e z ê ? ž i l x c k h j l c m y n š o p s v t r c? w p? k? ô f u ev


History and development

The Armenian alphabet was created by Saint Mesrop Mashtots in AD 405
405

Sorry, no overview for this topic
 primarily for a Bible translation in the Armenian language. Medieval Armenian sources also claim that Mashtots invented the Georgian
Georgian alphabet

The Georgian alphabet is the writing system currently used to write the Georgian language and other South Caucasian languages , and occasionally other languages of the Caucasus ....
 and Caucasian Albanian alphabets around the same time.

Various scripts have been credited with being the prototype for the Armenian alphabet. Pahlavi was the priestly script in Armenia before the introduction of Christianity, and Syriac
Syriac alphabet

The Syriac alphabet is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language from around the 2nd century BC. It is one of the Semitic languages abjads directly descending from the Proto-Canaanite alphabet and shares similarities with the Phoenician alphabet, Aramaic alphabet, and Hebrew alphabet alphabets....
, along with Greek, was one of the alphabets of Christian scripture. It has also been suggested that Ge'ez script had an influence on certain letters of the alphabet. Armenian shows some similarities to all of these. However, the general consensus is that Armenian is modeled after the Greek alphabet
Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th century BC or early 8th century BCE....
, supplemented with letters from a different source or sources for Armenian sounds not found in Greek. The evidence for this is the Greek order of the Armenian alphabet; the ow ligature for the vowel /u/, as in Greek; and the shapes of some letters which "seem derived from a variety of cursive Greek."

There are four forms of the script. The erkatagir "ironclad letters", seen as Mesrop's original, were used in manuscripts from the 5th to 13th century and are still preferred for epigraphic inscriptions. Bolorgir "cursive" was invented in the 10th century and became popular in the 13th. It has been the standard printed form since the 16th. Notrgir "minuscule" was invented for speed, was extensively used in the Armenian diaspora in the 16th to 18th centuries, and later became popular in printing. Sheghagir "slanted writing" is now the most common form.

Although the two dialects of modern Armenian—Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian—use the same alphabet, due to the Western Armenian sound shift some letters are pronounced in a different way. This matters for the following letters (further information in the chart below):

  • Stop consonant
    Stop consonant

    A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. The terms plosive and stop are usually used interchangeably, but they are not perfect synonyms....
    s
    • ? ( to ) and ? ( to )
    • ? ( to ) and ? ( to )
    • ? ( to ) and ? ( to )


  • Affricate consonant
    Affricate consonant

    Affricate consonants begin as stop consonants but release as a fricative consonant rather than directly into the following vowel....
    s
    • ? ( to ) and ? ( to )
    • ? ( to ) and ? ( to )


Matenadaran Armenian Alphabet
The number and order of the letters have changed over time. In the Middle Ages two new letters (? , ? ) were introduced in order to better represent foreign sounds; this increased the number of letters from 36 to 38. Furthermore, the diphthong
Diphthong

In phonetics, a diphthong, or , is a contour vowel?that is, a unitary vowel that changes vowel quality during its pronunciation, or "glides", with a glissando of the tongue from one articulation to another, as in the English words eye, boy, and cow. This contrasts with "pure" vowels, or monophthongs, where the tongue is held s...
 ?? followed by a consonant used to be pronounced [au] (as in down) in Classical Armenian, f.e. ??? (awr, , day). Due to a sound shift
Sound shift

Sound shift can refer to:* Sound/Shift A multi-performer improvised music event organized in 2002 in Baltimore, Maryland by John Berndt.* Chain shift...
 it became pronounced , and since the 13th century it is written as ?? (or). In Classical Armenian, ?? followed by a consonant represented the diphthong au; e.g. hawr (father's), arawr (plough), now written hôr, arôr; one word has kept aw, now pronounced av: ?????? pigeon; there are also a few proper names still having aw before a consonant: ?????? Taurusn, ??????? Faustus, etc. For this reason, today there are native Armenian words beginning with the letter ? (o) although this letter was taken from the Greek alphabet
Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th century BC or early 8th century BCE....
 to express the pronunciation of foreign words beginning with o .

From 1922 to 1924, Soviet Armenia adopted a Reformed spelling
Spelling reform of the Armenian language 1922-1924

The Spelling reform of the Armenian language 1922-1924 was a spelling reform of the Armenian alphabet conducted in the Armenian SSR. However, it is barely practiced outside of Armenia and the Post-Soviet states because it was not adopted by Armenians in the Armenian diaspora, which make up about half of the Armenian population....
 of the Armenian language. This generally did not change the pronunciation of individual letters, with some exceptions. The Armenian Diaspora (including Armenians in Lebanon
Lebanon

Lebanon , officially the Republic of Lebanon or Lebanese Republic , is a country in Western Asia, on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea....
 and Iran
Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran and formerly known internationally as Persian Empire until 1935, is a country in Central Eurasia, located on the northeastern shore of the Persian Gulf and the southern shore of the Caspian Sea....
) have rejected the Reformed spelling and continue to use the classical Mashtotsian spelling. They criticize some aspects (see the footnotes of the chart) and allege political motives behind the reform.

Use of the Armenian alphabet for other languages

As Bedross Der Matossian from Columbia University
Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York , is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights, Manhattan neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City....
 informs, for about 250 years, from the early 18th century until around 1950, more than 2000 books were printed in the Turkish language
Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe....
 using letters of the Armenian alphabet. Not only Armenians read Armeno-Turkish, but also the non-Armenian (including the Ottoman
Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299?1923. It was Treaty of Lausanne by the Republic of Turkey, which was officially proclaimed on October 29, 1923....
 Turkish) elite. The Armenian alphabet was also used alongside the Arabic alphabet on official documents of the Ottoman Empire, but was written in Ottoman Turkish. For instance, the first novel
Novel

File:2009 stapelweise Neuerscheinungen im Buchladen.JPGA novel is today a long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern Romance and in the tradition of the novella....
 to be written in the Ottoman Empire was 1851's Akabi Hikayesi, written in the Armenian script by Hovsep Vartan. Also, when the Armenian Duzoglu family managed the Ottoman mint during the reign of Abdülmecid I
Abdülmecid I

Abd?lmecid I, Abdul Mejid I, Abd-ul-Mejid I or Abd Al-Majid I Ghazi was the 31st Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and succeeded his father Mahmud II on July 2 1839....
, they kept records in the Armenian script, but in the Turkish language.

The Armenian alphabet, along with the Georgian alphabet
Georgian alphabet

The Georgian alphabet is the writing system currently used to write the Georgian language and other South Caucasian languages , and occasionally other languages of the Caucasus ....
, was used by poet Sayat-Nova
Sayat-Nova

Sayat-Nova , meaning 'King of Songs', was the name given to the Armenian poet and ashik Harutyun Sayatyan. His mother, Sara, was born in Tbilisi, and his father, Karapet, either in Aleppo or Adana....
 in the poems written in Azeri
Azerbaijani language

Azerbaijani is a language belonging to the Turkic languages language family, spoken in southwestern Asia, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran....
.

The Kipchak
Kipchak language

The Kipchak language is an extinct Turkic languages language of the Kipchak group.The descendants of the Kipchak language include the majority of Turkic languages spoken in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus today, as Kipchak was used as a lingua franca in Golden Horde-ruled lands....
-speaking Armenian Orthodox Christians of Podolia
Podolia

The region of Podolia is a historical region in the west-central and south-west portions of present-day Ukraine, corresponding to Khmelnytskyi Oblast and Vinnytsia Oblast....
 and Galicia
Galicia (Central Europe)

Galicia is a historical region in East Central Europe, currently divided between Poland and Ukraine, named after Ukra?ni?n city of Halych.The nucleus of historic Galicia is formed of three regions of western Ukraine: Lvivska oblast, Ternopilska oblast and Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast....
 used the Armenian alphabet to produce extensive amount of literature between 1524 and 1669.

The Armenian alphabet was an official script for the Kurdish alphabet
Kurdish alphabet

The Kurdish alphabet is a writing system for the Kurdish language. Three systems currently exist. The form used in Turkey was derived from the Latin alphabet by Jaladat Ali Badirkhan in 1932, and thus is also called the Bedirxan script or more properly Hawar....
 in 1921–28 in Soviet Armenia.

Character Encodings


Unicode

The Armenian alphabet is one of the five modern European alphabetic scripts identified in the Unicode
Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate Character expressed in most of the world's writing systems....
 standard version 4.0. (The other modern European alphabets are Latin
Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumae alphabet, and was initially developed by the Ancient Romes to write the Latin....
, Greek
Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th century BC or early 8th century BCE....
, Cyrillic
Cyrillic alphabet

The Cyrillic alphabet is a family of alphabets, subsets of which are used by five Slavic languages national languages as well as non-Slavic . It is also used by many other languages of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Siberia and other languages in the past....
, and Georgian
Georgian alphabet

The Georgian alphabet is the writing system currently used to write the Georgian language and other South Caucasian languages , and occasionally other languages of the Caucasus ....
.) It is assigned the range U+0530–058F.

Five Armenian ligatures are encoded in the "Alphabetic presentation forms" block (code point range U+FB13–FB17)

Obsolete


ArmSCII-8
ArmSCII
ARMSCII

ARMSCII or ArmSCII is the acronym of the Armenian alphabet Standard Code for Information Interchange. It refers to several single-byte character encodings defined by Armenian national standard 166-97....
-8 is the 8-bit encoding of the Armenian Standard Code for Information Interchange, developed between 1991 and 1999. It uses part of the upper 128 codes in an 8-bit encoding to represent the Armenian alphabet, leaving the lower 128 codes for another alphabetic script (often Latin or Cyrillic). This allows a single font to represent two alphabetic scripts. For example, the Latin characters could occupy part of the first 128 codes (e.g. ASCII
ASCII

American Standard Code for Information Interchange , is a coding standard that can be used for interchanging information, if the information is expressed mainly by the written form of English words....
) while the Armenian characters would occupy part of the upper 128 codes.

ArmSCII-8 was popular on the Windows 95 and Windows 98 operating systems. To be able to read in Armenian, users had to download a font that implements the ArmSCII-8 encoding. To be able to write in Armenian, users first had to download and install a freeware program that ran in the taskbar. There were two popular programs, one named KD Win, and the other called "Armenian National Language Support." With these programs, a user would be able to type in both Armenian and another alphabetic script without having to change fonts, switching between writing scripts and keyboard layouts by invoking a keyboard shortcut (often Alt + Shift).

With the development of the more advanced Unicode
Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate Character expressed in most of the world's writing systems....
 standard and its availability on the Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista, Linux and Mac OS X operating systems, the ArmSCII-8 encoding has been rendered obsolete. Nevertheless, ArmSCII-8 can still be found in use on some websites, which have not yet made the transition to Unicode.

Arasan-compatible
Arasan-compatible fonts are based on the encoding of the original Arasan font, which simply replaces the Latin characters (amongst others) of the ASCII
ASCII

American Standard Code for Information Interchange , is a coding standard that can be used for interchanging information, if the information is expressed mainly by the written form of English words....
 encoding with Armenian ones. For example, the ASCII code for the Latin character (65) represents the Armenian character .

An advantage of Arasan-compatible fonts over ArmSCII-8 fonts is that writing does not require the installation of a separate program; once the font is installed and selected for use, one can use their QWERTY
QWERTY

QWERTY is the most used modern-day keyboard layout on English-language computer keyboard and typewriter keyboards. It takes its name from the first six Graphemes seen in the far left of the keyboard's top row of letters....
 keyboard to type in Armenian. A disadvantage over ArmSCII-8 is that an Arasan-compatible font can only be used for one alphabetic script; therefore, the user must change the Font family when creating a multi-script document (e.g. both Armenian and English). Another disadvantage is that Arasan-compatible fonts only come in one keyboard layout: Western Armenian phonetic.

While Arasan-compatible fonts were popular among many users on Windows 95 and 98, it has been rendered obsolete by the Unicode standard. However, a few websites continue to use it.

The Arasan font's legacy is the phonetic Armenian keyboard layouts that ship with Windows 2000/XP/2003, which are almost identical to the Arasan keyboard layout.

Computer Fonts

The Armenian alphabet is available for use on personal computers in a variety of operating system
Operating system

An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer....
s as installable fonts. The following fonts implement the Unicode Armenian character set and come installed by default on the noted operating system:
  1. Sylfaen (Windows XP)
  2. DejaVu fonts
    DejaVu fonts

    The DejaVu fonts are modifications of the Bitstream Vera typeface designed to extend this original for greater coverage of Unicode, as well as providing more styles....
     (open source, popular on Linux
    Linux

    Linux is a generic term referring to Unix-like computer operating systems based on the Linux kernel. Their development is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software collaboration; typically all the underlying source code can be used, freely modified, and redistributed by anyone under the terms of the GNU GPL license...
    )
  3. Mshtakan
    List of fonts in Mac OS X

    This list of fonts contains every font shipped with Mac OS 10.0 through to 10.4, including any that shipped with language-specific updates from Apple ....
     (Mac OS X
    Mac OS X

    Mac OS X is a line of computer operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc., and since 2002 has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems....
    , since version 10.3; iPhone OS
    IPhone OS

    The iPhone OS or OS X iPhone is the operating system developed by Apple Inc. for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Like Mac OS X, from which it was derived, it uses the Darwin foundation....
    )


Note that since they are portable, fonts from one operating system (e.g. Windows) may be installed on another (e.g. Linux).

Keyboard Layouts

An operating system can be configured to use a variety of keyboard layout
Keyboard layout

A keyboard layout is any specific mechanical, visual, or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key?meaning associations of a Computer keyboard, typewriter, or other alphanumeric keyboard keyboard....
s to suit the user's needs. For example, both English and Western Armenian keyboard layouts may be configured, with the user being able to switch between the two using a keyboard shortcut (often alt + shift).

Windows 2000/XP/2003

Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows 2003 ship with two Armenian language keyboard layouts: Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian. They are both based on the keyboard layout of a popular Armenian font for Windows 95 named Arasan. These keyboard layouts are generally phonetic. However, since some letters in the Armenian alphabet do not have an obvious corresponding character in the Latin alphabet, they are often approximated (for example, ? maps to Q). Also, since there are more letters in the Armenian alphabet (38) than in Latin (26), some Armenian characters appear on non-alphabetic keys on a conventional
QWERTY

QWERTY is the most used modern-day keyboard layout on English-language computer keyboard and typewriter keyboards. It takes its name from the first six Graphemes seen in the far left of the keyboard's top row of letters....
 English language keyboard (for example, ? maps to ,).

Armenian keyboard layouts for Windows 2000/XP/2003 created by third parties include the Armenian Phonetic Eastern and the Armenian Typewriter Eastern.

Use of Armenian keyboard layouts on Windows 2000/XP/2003 systems require explicit configuration by the user.

Linux

Each Linux distribution
Linux distribution

A Linux distribution is a member of the family of Unix-like software distributions built on top of the Linux kernel. Such distributions consist of a large collection of software applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, media players and database applications....
 may come pre-configured with a unique set of keyboard layouts. To provide some consistency amongst themselves, Linux distributions often pull their layouts from the XKeyboard Configuration component of Freedesktop.org
Freedesktop.org

freedesktop.org is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free software desktop environments for the X Window System on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems....
. As of November, 2006, Freedesktop.org contains 5 Armenian keyboard layouts, including 2 layouts identical to the ones from Windows XP. As of version 10.1, SUSE Linux
SUSE Linux

SUSE is a major retail operating system, produced worldwide and supported by Novell, Inc. SUSE is also a founding member of the Desktop Linux Consortium....
 supports 2 Armenian keyboard layouts; it does not include the Windows XP layouts, but it is possible to manually install these.

Use of Armenian keyboard layouts on Linux usually requires explicit configuration by the user. Users of the GNOME desktop may do so by using the GNOME Keyboard Indicator applet.

See also


External links

  • A chart that compares the Armenian alpabet to some early and prehistoric scripts
Armenian Transliteration
  • : Converts Latin letters into Armenian and visa versa. Supports multiple transliteration tables and spell checking.
  • (transliteration.eki.ee)
Unicode Support for Armenian
  • Converts MS Word documents between armscii and unicode while conserving the formatting.
  • : Freeware armscii to unicode converter (Windows only)
Armenian Online Dictionaries
  • Armenian<->English Dictionary, more than 17000 terms.
  • Armenian<->English Dictionary, more than 9000 terms.
  • in Armenian, also includes a spell checker.


Related articles

  • Armenian language
    Armenian language

    The 'Armenian language' is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenians. It is the official language of the Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh....
  • Traditional Armenian orthography
    Traditional Armenian orthography

    Traditional Armenian orthography is the orthography developed during the early 19th century for the two modern dialects of the Armenian language - Eastern Armenian language and Western Armenian language....
  • Reformed Armenian orthography
  • Armenian calendar
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  • Romanization of Armenian
    Romanization of Armenian

    There are various systems of romanization of the Armenian alphabet....
     (includes ISO 9985)
  • ArmSCII
    ARMSCII

    ARMSCII or ArmSCII is the acronym of the Armenian alphabet Standard Code for Information Interchange. It refers to several single-byte character encodings defined by Armenian national standard 166-97....
     (single-byte encodings of the Armenian alphabet, also discusses ISO 10585 and the mapping to Unicode)