Grabar

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Grabar

Classical Armenian ( Grabar, meaning "literary"; also Old Armenian or Liturgical Armenian) is the oldest attested form of 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....
. It was first written down at the beginning of the 5th century, and all Armenian literature from then through the 18th century is in the Grabar Armenian language. Many ancient Greek, Persian

Persian language

Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
manuscripts survive only in their Armenian translation.

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Encyclopedia

Classical Armenian ( Grabar, meaning "literary"; also Old Armenian or Liturgical Armenian) is the oldest attested form of the Armenian language

Armenian language

Persian language

Latin

Armenian Apostolic Church

The Armenian Apostolic Church is the world's oldest national church and one of the most ancient Christianity communities.The official name of the church is the One Holy Universal Apostolic Orthodox Armenian Church ....
and is therefore often learned by Biblical, Intertestamental, and Patristic scholars dedicated to textual studies. Classical Armenian is also important for the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European language

Proto-Indo-European language

The Proto-Indo-European language is the unattested, linguistic reconstruction common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans....
, since it preserves many archaic features.

Phonology

Vowels

Classical Armenian has seven monophthong

Monophthong

A monophthong is a "pure" vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not semivowel towards a new position of articulation; compare diphthong....
vowels:

, , or schwa
Schwa

In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An stress and tone neutral vowel sound in any language, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel....
, or open e, or closed e, , and (transcribed as a, i, ?, e, e, o, and u respectively). The vowel transcribed u is spelled using the Armenian letters for ow, but is not actually a 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...
.

There are also traditionally six diphthongs:

'ay', 'aw' (??, later ?), 'ea', 'ew', 'iw', 'oy'.

Consonants

In the following table there is listed the Classical Armenian consonantal system. The occlusives

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....
and affricates have in addition to the more common voiced and unvoiced

Voice (phonetics)

Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sound, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced....
series also a separate aspirated

Aspiration (phonetics)

In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of Earth's atmosphere that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents....
series (transcribed with a spiritus asper
Spiritus asper

The spiritus asper , is a diacritic used in the polytonic orthography. In ancient Greek, it indicates initial aspiration , or the presence of the voiceless glottal fricative at the beginning of a word....
after the letter): , , , , . For each phoneme there are three symbols in the table. The leftmost indicates the pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet

International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic....
(IPA); in the middle there is the corresponding symbol in the Armenian alphabet

Armenian alphabet

The Armenian alphabet is an alphabet that has been used to write the Armenian language since the year 405 or 406. 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....
; and the rightmost is its transliteration

Transliteration

Transliteration is the practice of transcribing a word or text written in one writing system into another writing system or system of rules for such practice....
in Latin alphabet

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....
(following ISO 9985).

		Labial Labial consonant Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips or with the lower lip and the upper teeth . English is a bilabial nasal consonant sonorant, and are bilabial stop consonant , and are labiodental fricative consonant....	Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the Dental alveolus of the superior teeth....	Post- alveolar / Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate . Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex consonant....	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the Soft palate).... / Uvular Uvular consonant Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the Palatine uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants....	Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricatives, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider them to be consonants at all....
Nasals Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered soft palate in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the tongue....
Plosives	voiced
	unvoiced
	aspirated
Affricates Affricate consonant Affricate consonants begin as stop consonants but release as a fricative consonant rather than directly into the following vowel....	voiced
	unvoiced
	aspirated
Fricatives Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two Place of articulation close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German language , the final consonant of Bach; or the side of the tongue ag...	voiced
	unvoiced
Approximants Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and "typical" consonants. In the articulation of approximants, articulatory organs produce a narrowing of the vocal tract, but leave enough space for air to flow without much audible turbulence....	lateral Lateral consonant Laterals are "L"-like consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue, while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both sides of the tongue....
	central Central consonant A central or medial consonant is a consonant sound that is produced when air flows across the center of the mouth over the tongue.Examples of central consonants are the voiceless velar plosive , the voiced alveolar fricative and the alveolar nasal ....
Trill Trill consonant In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr > as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular trill....

The letter f (or ?) was introduced in the Medieval Period to represent the foreign sound , or the voiceless labiodental fricative

Voiceless labiodental fricative

The voiceless labiodental fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is f....
, and was not originally a letter in the Armenian Alphabet.

Orthography

Classical Armenian uses 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....
.

Reference books

Thomson, Robert W. (1989) An Introduction to Classical Armenian. Caravan Books. (ISBN 0-88206-072-4)

Grabar

Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

Orthography

See also

Reference books

External links