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Middle Armenian
View on Wikipedia| Middle Armenian | |
|---|---|
| Cilician Armenian | |
| Region | Armenian Highlands, Cilicia |
| Era | c. 1100 - 1700 AD developed into modern Armenian |
Indo-European
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| Armenian alphabet | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | axm |
axm | |
| Glottolog | None |
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| History of the Armenian language |
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Armenian alphabet Romanization of Armenian |
Middle Armenian (Armenian: Միջին հայերէն or կիլիկեան հայերէն), also called Cilician Armenian (although this may be confused to refer to modern dialects),[1] corresponds to the second period of Armenian which was spoken and written in between the 12th and 18th centuries. It comes after Grabar (Classical Armenian) and before Ashkharhabar (Modern Armenian).[2]
Classical Armenian was predominantly an inflecting and synthetic language, but in Middle Armenian, during the period of Modern Armenian influence, agglutinative and analytical forms influenced the language.[3] In this respect, Middle Armenian is a transition stage from Old Armenian to Modern Armenian (Ashkharhabar). [4] Middle Armenian is notable for being the first written form of Armenian to display Western-type voicing qualities and to have introduced the letters օ and ֆ, which were based on the Greek letters "o" and "φ".
Additions
[edit]The letter օ, based on the Greek letter o, was added during this period. It originally represented the IPA sound /o/ (close-mid back rounded vowel), which developed out of the Classical Armenian diphthong աւ /ɑw/. Today, in the Armenian alphabet, it represents IPA /ↄ/ (open-mid back rounded vowel) and is indistinguishable in most cases from ո. Therefore, in standard orthography, o is only written word-initially (using ո represents the cluster /vↄ/ initially).
The letter ֆ, based on the Greek letter φ, was added during this period. It represents the IPA sound /f/ (voiceless labiodental fricative), which is not a native phoneme in Armenian. However, it was prevalent in borrowed words, making it necessary to use a letter to write it. It is still used today in the Armenian alphabet.[5]
References
[edit]- ^ Karst, Josef (1901). Historische Grammatik des Kilikisch-Armenischen (in German). E.J. Trübner.
- ^ Melkonian, Zareh (1990). Գործնական Քերականութիւն - Արդի Հայերէն Լեզուի (Միջին եւ Բարձրագոյն Դասընթացք) (in Armenian) (Fourth ed.). Los Angeles. p. 137.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ History of the Armenian Language in the Pre-Written Period, Yerevan, 1987.
- ^ H. Acharian, History of the Armenian Language, parts I-II,
- ^ Dum-Tragut, Jasmine (2009). Armenian: Modern Eastern Armenian. John Benjamins Publishing Company. p. 18. ISBN 9789027238146. Retrieved 19 May 2021.
External links
[edit]- Dictionary of Middle Armenian (Միջին Հայերենի Բառարան), Ruben Ghazarian, Yerevan, 2009.
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