Armenian alphabet

Armenian letter art and its cultural expressions
Armenian letter art and its cultural expressions
UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage
	Tatev Monastery, 8th century
Country	Armenia
Reference	01513
Region	Europe and North America
Inscription history
Inscription	2019 (14 session)
List	Representative

Armenian
Armenian;
Script type	Alphabet
Creator	Mesrop Mashtots
Period	AD 405 to present
Direction	Left-to-right
Official script	Armenia
Languages	Armenian, Zok, Kurmanji (Partial use) and Lomavren
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto-Sinaitic script Phoenician alphabet Greek alphabet Armenian; ; ; ;
Child systems	Armeno-Turkish; Caucasian Albanian;
Sister systems	Latin; Coptic; Cyrillic;
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Armn (230), Armenian
Unicode
Unicode alias	Armenian
Unicode range	U+0530–U+058F Armenian; U+FB00–U+FB17 Alphabetic Pres. Forms;

The Armenian alphabet (Armenian: Հայոց գրեր, romanized: Hayocʼ grer or Հայոց այբուբեն, Hayocʼ aybuben) or, more broadly, the Armenian script, is an alphabetic writing system developed for Armenian and occasionally used to write other languages. It is one of the three historical alphabets of the South Caucasus. It was developed around 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian linguist and ecclesiastical leader. The script originally had 36 letters. Eventually, two more were adopted in the 13th century. In the reformed Armenian orthography (1920s), the ligature և, ev, is also treated as a letter, bringing the total number of letters to 39.

The Armenian word for 'alphabet' is այբուբեն, aybuben, named after the first two letters of the Armenian alphabet: ⟨Ա⟩ այբ, ayb, and ⟨Բ⟩ բեն, ben. Armenian is written horizontally, left to right.^[5]

^ Maarten van Lint, Theo (2012). "From Reciting to Writing and Interpretation: Tendencies, themes, and demarcations of Armenian historical writing". In Sarah Foot; Chase F. Robinson (eds.). The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 2: 400–1400. Oxford University Press. pp. 180–200. ISBN 978-0-19-923642-8.
^ Cite error: The named reference Sanjian was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ Jost Gippert (2011)."The script of the Caucasian Albanians in the light of the Sinai palimpsests". In Werner Seibt and Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, eds. Die Entstehung der kaukasischen Alphabete als kulturhistorisches Phänomen [The Creation of the Caucasian Alphabets as Phenomenon of Cultural History]. Referate des Internationalen Symposiums (1–4 December 2005). Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
^ Rayfield, Donald (2000). The Literature of Georgia: a history. Caucasus world (2nd ed.). Richmond: Curzon. p. 19. ISBN 978-0-7007-1163-5. The Georgian alphabet seems unlikely to have a pre-Christian origin, for the major archaeological monument of the first century 4IX the bilingual Armazi gravestone commemorating Serafua, daughter of the Georgian viceroy of Mtskheta, is inscribed in Greek and Aramaic only. It has been believed, and not only in Armenia, that all the Caucasian alphabets – Armenian, Georgian and Caucaso-Albanian – were invented in the fourth century by the Armenian scholar Mesrop Mashtots. ... The Georgian chronicles The Life of Kanli assert that a Georgian script was invented two centuries before Christ, an assertion unsupported by archaeology. There is a possibility that the Georgians, like many minor nations of the area, wrote in a foreign language – Persian, Aramaic, or Greek – and translated back as they read.
^ Cite error: The named reference omniglot was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[1] Maarten van Lint, Theo (2012). "From Reciting to Writing and Interpretation: Tendencies, themes, and demarcations of Armenian historical writing". In Sarah Foot; Chase F. Robinson (eds.). The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 2: 400–1400. Oxford University Press. pp. 180–200. ISBN 978-0-19-923642-8.

[Sanjian-2] Cite error: The named reference Sanjian was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[3] Jost Gippert (2011)."The script of the Caucasian Albanians in the light of the Sinai palimpsests". In Werner Seibt and Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, eds. Die Entstehung der kaukasischen Alphabete als kulturhistorisches Phänomen [The Creation of the Caucasian Alphabets as Phenomenon of Cultural History]. Referate des Internationalen Symposiums (1–4 December 2005). Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

[4] Rayfield, Donald (2000). The Literature of Georgia: a history. Caucasus world (2nd ed.). Richmond: Curzon. p. 19. ISBN 978-0-7007-1163-5. The Georgian alphabet seems unlikely to have a pre-Christian origin, for the major archaeological monument of the first century 4IX the bilingual Armazi gravestone commemorating Serafua, daughter of the Georgian viceroy of Mtskheta, is inscribed in Greek and Aramaic only. It has been believed, and not only in Armenia, that all the Caucasian alphabets – Armenian, Georgian and Caucaso-Albanian – were invented in the fourth century by the Armenian scholar Mesrop Mashtots. ... The Georgian chronicles The Life of Kanli assert that a Georgian script was invented two centuries before Christ, an assertion unsupported by archaeology. There is a possibility that the Georgians, like many minor nations of the area, wrote in a foreign language – Persian, Aramaic, or Greek – and translated back as they read.

[omniglot-5] Cite error: The named reference omniglot was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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History of the Armenian language

Armenian hypothesis Proto-Armenian Classical Armenian (from 405) Middle Armenian (c. 1100 – 1700) Modern Armenian (c. 1700 – present) Eastern, Western, Zok, Homshetsi, Lomavren (mixed)
Romanization of Armenian