ARMENIAN LANGUAGE. The Armenian language is an independent member of the Indo-European family of languages (q.v.) which, spoken in a moun tainous region, has never spread widely or permanently. It pos sesses great vitality despite many persecutions. It was not reduced to writing until the spread of Christianity in Armenia when, according to tradition, in the 5th century, an alphabet was drawn up to suit it. In the language as then written were composed translations of the Bible and other pious works as well as original compositions such as that by Bishop Eznik. This lan guage is still preserved as the ritual language of the Gregorian or Armenian Church, and up to the 19th century was the lan guage used by Armenian scholars.
The spoken language mean while evolved independently and in all parts of the country dif fered widely from the literary language. Lay writers used the forms current in their region, so that from the time of the Cru sades we have historic texts in the vulgar speech of the Ar menian Kingdom in Cilicia as then constituted. When in the 19th century modern literary lan guages appeared, there was great diversity in form. Some Ar menians were then Russian sub jects, others under Ottoman rule, yet others under Persia. One literary language developed at Erivan under Russian rule and was used by the numerous Ar menians settled at Tiflis. An other was formed at Constanti nople, where from the days of the Byzantine empire there had been an important Armenian colony. Both these languages deliberately eliminated words brought in under Islamic and Turkish domination and replaced them by true Armenian words largely taken from the old writ ten language, and thus in vocabu lary both agree in many points. Pronunciation and grammar have diverged considerably though true to the general linguistic type. Thus in Erivan Armenian, Jacob is pronounced Hakob and in Turkish Armenian is Hagop.
Armenian is the continuation of a group of Indo-European languages intermediate between Indo-Iranian (Aryan) and Greek but distinct from both. As a result of contact with other lan guages, Armenian has developed in its own way and is widely removed from the early Indo-European type.
The consonantal system coincides largely with that of the southern group of Caucasian languages, represented by Georgian. The so-called occlusive consonants, p, t, k, and b, q, g, have under gone complete mutation, so that where Indo-European has a d, there is a t, thus the numeral tasn for ten corresponds to the ancient form decem as in Latin, cf. Armenian hayr=father, Gothic fadar and Latin pater. The changes from the original form have been considerable as in the numerals two and three, which in Latin are duo and tre and in Armenian are erku and erekh.
The grammatical forms are traceable to Indo-European origins but assumed new shapes. Thus grammatical gender had disap peared from Old Armenian. A good number of old words has been preserved, such as kev = cow, showing the mutation of g to k. The old form had a g as in the Sanskrit gay. Words of higher culture are mainly borrowed since Armenian has always been ex posed to foreign influence. From the 3rd century B.C. to the 3rd century after Christ the country was ruled by a Parthian aris tocracy, so that the language has many Iranian words. The ter minology of Christianity came with the spread of the Syrian and Byzantine Churches, and there are Greek words and from the time of the Crusades French words.