One of the prominent characteristics of the Armenian identity is its alphabet and also the language. The precise origin of the language could be a little obscure, as it’s considered one amongst the world’s ancient languages. The Armenian alphabet isn't only an enigma when it involves its creation, it also holds many astonishing features. The primary is that it acts as a skilful numbering system used for complex calculations. The second is that, IN 2005 THE ARMENIAN ALPHABET celebrated its 1600th birthday. In commemoration 39 giant curved Armenian letters was given as a present, strategically placed near the ultimate resting placing of the person who created the alphabet, Meshrop Mashtots. To honour his work, Armenian architect J.Torosyan created the stone cravings of each letter. Set against the backdrop of Armenia’s Mount Aragats, the letters and a statue of Mashtots pay tribute to the complex and unique language, a national point of pride for Armenia.
So, coming to the history, the Armenian letter was created within the 4th century AD which was a fundamental step in
strengthening Armenian national identity. The King who ruled Armenia Vramshapuh(reigned in 389-414) requested Meshrop Mashtots one among the bureaucrat in his office and an eminent intellect, to make a replacement alphabet for Armenia. Before then, phonographic writing was used in Armenia which was considered unfitting for the religious works by the Armenian Church.
Mashtots travelled to Egypt; in a Mediterranean port city called Alexandria where he studied the concept of writing and came to the inference that the Greek alphabet was the simplest alphabet in use at that point because there was an almost individualized correspondence between sounds and letters. Mashtots used this illustration to return up with a brand-new alphabet, which he put forward to the king when he came back to Armenia in 4th century. The new alphabet was prominent and agreeable. Also, in 405AD there was a renewal and issue of the Armenian translation of the bible. Other scholarly works soon followed.
From the first 18th century until the 1950s some 2,000 books were published in Turkish written within the Armenian alpha-bet, and the documentation produced during the Ottoman pe-riod were within the Armenian and Arabic scripts. The poet Sayat-Nova used the Armenian to put in writing poems in Azeri, and it had been also the official script for Kurdish in Soviet Armenia from 1921-1928.
Mashtots religious preference were clearly reflected within the script, However, the bible wasn't accessible within the lo-cal language. The fundamental reason for creating their own written language was to convert the holy book and make it available for the natives.
The alphabet consists of 36 original letters and three more were added within the 12th century to accommodate foreign words. Those letters were “և; օ; ֆ”, however it should be noted that essentially two letters were added, as “և” stands for “and” in English. Therefore, there are 31 consonant’s and seven vowels. Natives call their language ‘Hayots Grer’- the language has completely different punctuation marks than western languages. The complete stop, or period in Armenian seems like a colon in English “:”, and also the punctuation mark may be a curvy line placed not at the top of the sen-tence; but above the word in an exceedingly sentence. In an-cient calculations, you'll see Armenian letters rather than numbers, as each letter had a corresponding number. The foremost fascinating thing is that the Armenian calendar made with letters. Natives were so happy with their script that they consider it as a cultural asset and have it framed and hang it within the lounge. They're embellished with jewelled images made out of trchnakir (letters made out of drawn bird shapes) or gold and they honour the legacy of Mash-tots.
Another 5th century historian Ghazar Parpetsi, who wrote History of the Armenian’s, reiterates Koryun on the recovery mission but only mentions that Mashtots with the assistance of Sahak simply rearrange the Armenian letters. Following primal sources, it's clear to me that the structure of the Arme-nian letters (unlike their positioning) was possibly retrieved instead of invented, in order that one would almost should conclude that it absolutely was indeed either comprised by saintly intervention or Mashtots along with Sahak were lin-guistic geniuses far earlier than their time and that’s not a lit-tle achievement by any stretch of the imagination.
Armenian alphabets were also utilized for the Kipchak lan-guage and therefore Kipchak is also a Turkish language, then it was easy to mix up the two. In spite of the fact that it was possibly patterned after the Pahlavi script, which was itself a posterity of the Aramaic alphabet. Armenian script shows definite Greek influence by the presence of alphabets for vowels and in the direction of writing.
