Peculiarities of Armenian Language

Armenian language and its alphabet are unbelievably diverse. You can often see how Armenian names lose their simplicity after being translated to other languages because some letters of the alphabet need to be replaced with multiple characters for the transliteration to represent the characters of the original as closely as possible.

For comparison, English alphabet, which is a Latin alphabet, consists of only 26 letters, while Armenian alphabet has 39 letters! That diversity allows the existence of various phonemes which are not quite seen in relatively simple languages.

Letter ղ is usually replaced with gh, ձ with dz, ժ with zh, and this is not the whole list! Though Armenian language is not the most difficult-to-learn language in the world, it is unique and peculiar as there are no similar languages. Armenian language even occupies an independent branch of the Indo-European language tree.

That versatility not only attaches singular sounding and beauty to the language, but somewhat facilitates the process of learning of foreign languages for native Armenian speakers. For them it is actually easier to distinguish between sounds and phonemes of other languages, though it doesn’t necessarily mean that the grammar of those languages will be any easier to master.

Armenian grammar has certain rules, but it is doesn’t specify where nouns, verbs or adjectives need to be in the sentence as clearly as in, for example, English, making Armenian more flexible and simple in some aspects, but very different as well.

Every language is a distinctive feature of a nation regardless of its level of difficulty or diversity of letters and sounds. But for Armenians in particular, the Armenian language with all its uniqueness, sounding, simplicity, complexity, and diversity is the savior of the national identity, a miracle, the very base of for Armenian individuality.