Eastern Armenian

Eastern Armenian (Armenian: Արեւելահայերեն, romanized: Arevelahayeren) is one of the two standardized forms of Modern Armenian, the other being Western Armenian. The two standards form a pluricentric language.

Eastern Armenian is spoken in Armenia, Russia, as well as Georgia, and by the Armenian community in Iran. Although the Eastern Armenian spoken by Armenians in Armenia and Iranian-Armenians are similar, there are pronunciation differences with different inflections. Armenians from Iran also have some words that are unique to them. Due to migrations of speakers from Armenia and Iran to the Armenian diaspora, the dialect is now very prominent in countries and regions where only Western Armenian was used. Eastern Armenian is based on the Yerevan dialect.

Eastern Armenian is, for the most part, mutually intelligible by educated or literate users of Western Armenian – and vice versa. Conversely, semi-literate or illiterate users of lower registers of either variety may have difficulty understanding the other.

The official language, according to law, of Armenia is an unspecified "Armenian". In practice, however, Eastern Armenian is the de facto, day-to-day common language of Armenia. For example, commercial translations are generally completed in Eastern Armenian.

Until 2018, both varieties shared the same ISO 639-3 code: hye. However, on 23 January 2018, a code specifically for Western Armenian was added to ISO 639-3: hyw. (The previous code under ISO 639-1 was hy.)

The Armenian Wikipedia is predominantly composed of Eastern Armenian content. As a result of the amendment to ISO 639-3, a campaign to create a separate Wikipedia for Western Armenian has been approved. This has resulted in separate Wikipedia sites for Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian.

Eastern Armenian has six monophthong vowel sounds.

This is the Eastern Armenian Consonantal System using symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), followed by the corresponding Armenian letter in parentheses.