Series Introduction
Todd B. Krause and Jonathan Slocum
Armenian is the state language of just what in current memory was the tiniest republic associated with previous Soviet Union, now the southernmost republic associated with the Commonwealth of Independent States. The language is talked by about four million individuals nevertheless residing in the boundaries of this republic. a little set of speakers reside in north-western Iran, plus some communities dot the countryside of eastern Turkey. Many emigrees have actually spread the language to any or all corners around the globe. The first documentary evidence of this Armenians is just a sixth century b.c. inscription in Behistun by the Persian master Darius I. It had been almost one thousand years, nevertheless, prior to the Armenians by themselves started to place their language to composing, when in 406 or 407 A.D. a priest MaЕЎtКїocКї (also referred to as Mesrop) developed an alphabet that is armenian. One also discovers mention of a previous alphabet developed because of the Syriac bishop Daniel, purportedly abandoned since it ended up being ill-suited towards the audio system of this language. The language whose documents date back once again to this era is termed traditional Armenian. Much later on, into the twelfth to seventeenth hundreds of years, one discovers the legacy of Middle Armenian, whose writers attempted to emulate the type of the Golden Age of Classical Armenian. Between those two cycles one further differentiates two phases associated with the Armenian language: post-Classical, spanning the sixth and 7th hundreds of years, and Pre-Middle Armenian, through the eighth to twelfth centuries. Following the seventeenth century, Armenian progressed into a contemporary type that has divided into two varieties: West Armenian and East Armenian.
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Note: this group of classes in Armenian uses Romanized letters as opposed to the traditional Armenian alphabet. Classes rendered within the conventional alphabet may be accessed through the Armenian menu product.
Origin and Geographical Location
According to Greek mythic tradition, Armenia had been called after Armenus, one of Jason’s Argonauts. Herodotus, composing within the fifth century B.C., states that the Armenians lived in Thrace after which relocated into Phrygia, from where they crossed into the subsequent Armenian territory. Strabo, composing into the century that is first, states that the Armenians joined the territory from two instructions, one team originating from Phrygia when you look at the western, the other originating from Mesopotamia within the southeast. Although by neither account had been they the first inhabitants regarding the area, Xenophon documents in 400 B.C. which they appear to have consumed a lot of the neighborhood dwellers.
Armenian tradition, recorded between your 5th and eighth centuries A.D., relates the Armenian individuals to the descendants of Noah. Following the Flood, Noah’s household settled in Armenia before going south to Babylon in successive generations. Certainly one of Noah’s descendants, Haik, returned and revolted to Armenia, pursued by the Babylonian Bel. Haik killed Bel and became ruler regarding the Armenian land, and the descendants of Haik later defended Armenia through the forces of Assyria.
Contemporary scholarly views are only as wide-ranging. a common view is the fact that Armenians were of Indo-European stock and joined the region either along with all the Phrygians from the Balkan area or because of the Mitanni from the section of the Aral Sea. They encountered the Urartuan tradition in an amount of decrease and in the end arrived to rule over them as well as other Caucasian teams in your community. Another concept attracts on linguistic similarities involving the language that is armenian the Caucasian languages for the area to express that the Armenians had originally been by by by themselves a Caucasian tribe which adopted an Indo-European tongue, and this Caucasian substrate is in charge of the fact Armenian is pretty genetically separated among the list of Indo-European languages. Just one more concept is the fact that Armenians will be the most sedentary people of the initial speakers of Proto-Indo-European; that the Indo-European languages originated from the region that is transcaucasian however the Armenians https://hookupdate.net/sports-dating-site/, whom opted for never to migrate out from the area, had been marginalized during durations of Hittite and Urartuan dominance. Suffice it to state, the origin that is true of Armenian peoples will remain shrouded in obscurity for quite a while in the future.
The land that actuallyrmenian is a plateau positioned approximately 5000 legs above ocean degree and hemmed in by mountainous areas. It lies roughly southeast of the Ebony Sea and southwest associated with Caspian Sea. The ancient Armenian homeland was somewhat more expansive compared to modern Armenian Republic, also including most of eastern Turkey, the northeastern part of Iran, and elements of Azerbaijan and Georgia. Within the northeast the Kur River separates the highland area from lowlands which sweep into the Caspian Sea. The north edge is proceeded because of the Pontus mountain range, which expands west through the way to obtain the Kur and shields Armenia through the Ebony water. The Taurus and Zagros hill ranges produce a boundary that is natural over the whole southern expanse and cutting Armenia removed from Mesopotamia. The Armenian plateau it self is split by a number of smaller hill ranges that furnish the sources for several unnavigable streams. The northermost part of the Euphrates would be to form the boundary between Greater and Lesser Armenia in the subsequent imperial battles.