0:00 This language is not making headlines. Yes, it is an official language in its small country, but it's not a major player in global affairs. However, little is known about how ancient this language actually is, how the history of its country is directly linked to the earliest civilisations, and just how exceptional it is, that in this region, where countless empires rose and fell, this language still exists against all odds. Barev dzez (բարև ձեզ), my name is Julie, and welcome to the Armenian language. The Armenian language is spoken by around 5-6 million people - 3.4 of them in Armenia.
0:46 The other half accounts for the Armenian diaspora scattered around the world - the biggest one in Russia with half a million speakers, but also in Lebanon, US, Argentina, Iran, France… I can just list all the countries in the world, wherever it is - there will be Armenians in there. A small population still lives in Turkey, despite the… wait wait wait, that’s for the history section. Teleporting into the airport because being scattered around the world means you need to travel a lot to see your family, like I am travelling right now to see my family in Riga. Now that I live in Dubai the flight is quite long. But I know when I arrive there I don't
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2:18 And here's the best part - you can get 15% off your first purchase with my exclusive code JULINGO. Just download the app and use code JULINGO at the checkout. Alright, teleporting back to the video. -Whoosh- Maybe I shouldn't do that. Alright, teleporting back to the video. There are two major varieties of Armenian: Eastern Armenian with 4 million speakers, spoken in Armenia, Iran, Georgia, and Russia, аnd Western Armenian, spoken by around 2 million people (though depending on how you define “speaker” it could be actually less than a million) in small remaining pockets in Turkey, where it originally comes from, but preserved mostly by the diaspora. The two varieties are more or less mutually intelligible and
3:06 could sometimes even be considered two separate languages. But these are just two literary standards - in reality there are 50 to 60 different dialects. And we couldn’t possibly understand how all of this happened without looking at… The Armenian plateau is exactly adjacent to Anatolia and the Fertile Crescent so whoever inhabited these lands in ancient times, be it the proto-Armenians or some other people group, they were part of one the earliest civilisations in the world. But when does the name ‘Armenia’ actually emerge? The Armenians themselves trace their origins
3:52 to Urartu, a once powerful Iron Age state. In the Ancient Persian inscriptions this state is referred to as ‘Armina’, so yes, we clearly see a connection between Urartu and Armenia. However, it is not clear what language did the people living in Urartu speak, your regular Urartians. All the inscriptions from Urartu are in a language, related to Hurrian - a language isolate spoken in these lands from ancient times, that doesn't have any proven relatives. So did people speak this Neo-Hurrian too? Or was only the elite speaking Hurrian? Or was this just a prestige language that remained in use since the Bronze Age just for writing, while everyone was actually speaking some other,
4:40 new language, much like what happened with Sumerian in ancient Babylon? Whatever the situation was, ancient Armenians did interact with the Hurrian language in some way or another, and the traces of this ancient interaction can be found in Armenian words or Hurrian origin, like խնձոր [χənd͡zóɾ] “apple” or սալոր [sɑlóɾ] “plum”. But there is more. Ancient Hittites, a once powerful Bronze Age empire in Anatolia, whose language is long gone - but on this channel we explore whatever is known about it, check out the video - so, in their texts they mention the state of Hayasa situated around that same area of the Armenian plateau. Why is that interesting? Well did you know that
5:28 Armenia in Armenian is called Hayastan Հայաստան [hɑjɑstɑ́n]. Coincidence? To add to the confusion, Armenian is actually an Indo-European language, yes, from the same family as the language I’m speaking right now, though it’s hiding really really well. Some similarities are still seen with the naked eye like մայր [mɑjɾ] for “mother”, դուստր [dústəɾ] for daughter or կով [kov] (Eastern Armenian) or [gov] (Western Armenian) for “cow”, but some are really not that obvious. How exactly did the Proto-Indo-European “duō” - “two” in English - suddenly become երկու [jeɾkú] is still subject to debate. These significant differences show that the change didn’t actually happen ‘suddenly’ and that Armenian split from other Indo-European languages early on.
6:14 How exactly did that happen? Well, the short answer is, we don’t know for sure, but the two main hypotheses of the Indo-European migration are: First of all, the steppe hypothesis, the main one, - that Indo-Europeans originated from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, and Armenian then arrived to where it is now from the Balkans and Anatolia; and the second one is Anatolian hypothesis, according to which the spread was initiated from Anatolia by the invention of farming. Recently a hybrid hypothesis also gained popularity, which claims that the initial spread started somewhere in Armenia, and then the secondary spread from the Pontic-Caspian steppe occurred. Yes, Armenia could be the origin of Indo-Europeans, and I dive into great detail into the whole problem of the Indo-European
7:06 origin and the Armenian hypothesis in a whole dedicated video, definitely check it out! Position of the Armenian language within its family is a mystery too. At first, researchers thought that it might be related to Persian, but a more careful look concluded that any similarities result from lengthy co-existence. There are a lot of Persian loanwords in Armenian, like (բժիշկ [bəʒíʃk], Persian پزشک (pezešk) - doctor; աշխարհ [ɑʃχɑ́ɾ] - land, country, Persian شهر (šahr) city or դրախտ [dəɾɑ́χt] paradise, garden, Persian درخت (deraxt) - tree. Currently, there are hypotheses that maybe Armenian is related to Greek or Albanian, or
7:51 even Phrygian - a language of which we don’t even know much but which used to be spoken in Anatolia. Herodotus claimed that Phrygians and Armenians were of the same origins, because they wore the same type of cap, that the Phrygians used to call the Armenian cap, and the Armenians used to call the Phrygian cap. Fashion aside, what do other disciplines tell us about the origins of Armenian? Well, genetics tells its own story, according to which Armenians do have some steppe DNA in them, so there was some migration from the steppes. Archaeologists on another hand see continuous settlements in this area, but they also see a clear cultural shift - in the Early Bronze age there is an agricultural society,
8:39 while in the middle Bronze age we see an arrival of pastoralists who also build the very typical burial mounds or kugrans, associated with Indo-Europeans. These nomads changed the archaeological culture there. But did they also change the language? The next centuries and millennia Armenia was at the heart of the action, literally. It seems that all of the great empires have set foot in these lands - Assyria, Persia, the Greeks, a short break for the Great Armenia state, then Rome, then Persia again, then the Arabs, then a short break again for the Kingdom of Cilicia, then the Seljuks, the Ottomans, the Russians, Turkey again and surviving the genocide, or the Great Crime, or the Great Evil as it is
9:29 called in Armenia (Մեծ Եղեռն [met͡s jeʁérn]) arriving finally to a sovereign Armenian state, which is a fraction of the once Great Armenia, but independent, with its language preserved. And all of it thanks to… Armenia was the first state to adopt Christianity as the official religion, and, for the brand new religion, with the brand new exciting texts that are just waiting to be translated, a writing system became a necessity. An Armenian monk, Mesrop Mashtots set out to accomplish this quest. It is said that he saw the future Armenian letters in a divine vision, as if someone’s hand was tracing them in front of him. That’s how, in 405 AD, Armenian got its 36 letters, plus 3 that were added later on.
10:20 The Armenian letters are not like any other alphabet, they are used only for Armenian. The first version of the written Armenian language, or “grabar”, or “the book language” was primarily used, and is still used by the way - by the church. It was the official written standard until the 19th century. Then, people decided that, hey, why don’t we write in a language that is a little bit closer to how we actually speak, and that’s how the two literary norms - Eastern and Western, - appeared (though both of them still don’t exactly represent how people actually talk because of that whole 50+ dialects situation). Armenian has 8 vowels: ա [a], ե [е or ye], another է [e], ը [ə], ի [i], ո [ɔ or vo] and ու [u],
11:10 and the stress falls on the last syllable. 8 vowel sounds seem like a lot, but still, in Armenian words you’ll encounter much more consonants. The consonants are not only split into sets of voiced and voiceless, but they also have a third set of aspirated consonants, so the full set would be like [g], [k], [kh]. In Western Armenian, sounds shifted, and those that were unvoiced are now voiced, and those that were voiced are now unvoiced aspirated. In some dialects the unvoiced and the aspirated consonants may be pronounced as ejectives. More strongly, more pushy like [k] or [ts] which is in general common for the languages in the Caucasus region. But enough of me talking and let’s hear the native speakers.
12:55 So, do you hear any difference between the different versions of Armenian? Does Armenian sound to you like any other language? Write it in the comments and if you want to pick the next language, check out my Patreon, and thank you to my top tier Patrons for picking Armenian. I’m honestly happy to once again explore the region where it all started for me, 7 years ago, believe it or not. My first ever YouTube video was about Georgian. Back to the roots, in a sort. Like and subscribe if you’re curious about languages and you want more language content, and let’s continue to… The basic word order is SVO, but can be also SOV and is in general rather free, thanks to the
13:47 cases - the endings that show exactly what is the function of a word in a sentence and a complete headache for everyone trying to learn the language But at least there is no gender. Armenian verbs follow the same tendency of complexity. They conjugate to indicate person (first, second, third), number (singular, plural), tense (present, past, future), and different moods. The way these tenses form is pretty interesting too: Ես քնում եմ [yes k’num yem] - literally means ‘I sleeping am’ - so like in English, Armenian uses auxiliary verbs, but puts them in a different order. If you want to ask a question, you just change the intonation, not the word order.
14:33 But in writing, the question mark actually goes above the exact word you want to question about, above the exact vowel (the last vowel of the word in question). Intonation changes the whole meaning, as you know, just hear the difference: Does HE have the red shoes? Or does he have the RED shoes? - there is a clear difference in emphasis and thus in the meaning, and Armenian marks this subtle difference in writing. Very efficient and unambiguous. Though Armenian can be ambiguous if it wants to. Armenian has its own unique words for everyday objects like լուսանկար [lusɑnəkɑ́ɾ] for photograph (literally meaning “light
15:18 painting”) or Աստվածաշունչ [ɑstvɑt͡sɑʃúnt͡ʃʰ] for the Bible (literally meaning “God’s breath”). Some expressions cannot be translated in English, like Ցավդ տանեմ [t͡sʰɑ́vəd tɑném] - literally meaning “I will take your pain away”, used to show empathy and compassion. Even basic words are structurally complex, and honestly complex to pronounce - շնորհակալություն [ʃ(ə)noɾɑkɑlut͡sʰjún] is just the basic simple “thank you”. If anyone even tells you that Armenian language is not hard, just tell them ‘thank you’. We can definitely say that the religion of the Armenians (they follow their own branch of Christianity) in combination with their unique writing system is what allowed for the Armenian language to stay alive throughout millenia in the region
16:06 where so many empires rose and fell, and where so many people groups came and went. Entire nations passed through this historical meat grinder that this region is. Where are all of them now? Where are the Hurrians? Where are the Mitanni? Where are the Hittites? I don't see any Hittites! Where are the Phrygians? All we know about them is their Phrygian cap. But the Armenians carried through their stories and traditions in letters, sheltered in the monasteries, and with that they carried over their identity. Thank you so much for watching and see you in our next exploration!
