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| History of the Armenian language |
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Armenian alphabet Romanization of Armenian |
Although Armenian is one of the oldest Indo-European languages and Armenians one of the oldest Indo-European people, the earliest testimony of the Armenian language dates to the 5th century AD (the Bible translation of Mesrob Mashtots). Many scholars of Indo-European studies (Renfrew, Ivanov, Gamkrelidze, Clackson, Fortson) put Armenian into a larger language family, a "Graeco-Armeno-Aryan", which would date to after 3000 BC and constitute a language group contemporary to, and in language contact with, the Anatolian language family adjacent to the west
The Proto-Armenian sound-laws are varied and eccentric (such as *dw- yielding erk-), and in many cases uncertain.
The Armenian language dates to the early period of Indo-European differentiation and dispersion some 5000 years ago, or perhaps as early as 7,800 years ago according to some recent research.
Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops are aspirated in Proto-Armenian, a circumstance that gave rise to the Glottalic theory, which postulates that this aspiration may have been sub-phonematic already in PIE. In certain contexts, these aspirated stops are further reduced to w, h or zero in Armenian (PIE *pots, Armenian otn, Greek pous "foot"; PIE treis, Armenian erek’, Greek treis "three").
The reconstruction of Proto-Armenian being very uncertain, there is no general consensus on the date range when it might have been alive.
Ar
The word Ar-ma-ni is a compound noun, where the first component Ar is none other than the name of the national sun-god of the Armens, which was also the primary deity in the Indo-European pantheon. AR and the second component -ma-(me a varient) signifies 'build, make, beget, offspring, son'. Ma, with this meaning, was known to the many peoples of the Near East in antiquity. The goddess of birth and fertility, so well known in Asia Minor, was called by this very same name-Ma.(Ma also occurs in its reduplicated from -Mama or Mami in Assyro-Babylonian inscriptions). This root-word (and also its variant -me) is found also in the Sumerian language with the same meaning. It results that Ar-ma (and its variant Ar-me) means 'built by Ar, born of Ar', or 'Ar's offspring', 'Ar's/Ara's son' ('the son of the sun', Arevvordi). The ending -ni (the plural-forming or toponymic suffix-ni is found in Subarian-Hurrian-Nairian place and tribal na is also found in the plural form ni in Armenian as well
It has been attested that the Sumerians used the word Ara for fair and bright, and eventually they labeled all Indo-European (Aryan) people as Ara or Arya (Aryan). Thus, the word Armenian has its origin in AR-MA, i.e. the children of Ara and Ma the fertility Goddess'. Ar or Ari was the Sun God, so it seems that the roots of sun worship in the world had an Aryan origin rather than a Sumerian one. The Armenian root Ari, therefore, is where we get Aryan.
Also, Arman(i), Arman(um), who were situated in the Armenian Highlands, extended at times from the Caucasus up to Anatolia and the North of Mespotamia. The ethnonym Armanu and Armani, as the rederings of the Ari-manu and Ari-mani, which consist of Ari- ("Aryan") and manu -"man" and mani -embellishment respectively. This is another example of how the ethnonym of the Armenians orginally meant "Aryan man" or "adornment of the Aryans".
Notes
- Colin Renfrew, Archaeology and Language, 159-60; Thomas V. Gamkrelidze & Vyacheslav V. Ivanov, Indoevropejskij jazyk i indoevropejtsy (Tbilisi, 1984)
- Thomas V. Gamkrelidze & Vyacheslav V. Ivanov, “The Ancient Near East and the Indo-European Question
- Nicholas Wade, "Biological dig for the roots of language," International Herald Tribune, (March 18, 2004) 10; Gray & Atkinson, "Anatolian Theory of Indo-European origin," 437.
- Martiros Kavoukjian, "The Genesis of Armenian People", Montreal, 1982.
- http://www.armenianhighland.com
- Colin Renfrew, Archaeology and Language, 159-60; Thomas V. Gamkrelidze & Vyacheslav V. Ivanov, Indoevropejskij jazyk i indoevropejtsy (Tbilisi, 1984)
- http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/pdfs/traces_of_aryan.pdf
References
- Martiros Kavoukjian, "The Genesis of Armenian People", Montreal, 1982
- William M. Austin, Is Armenian an Anatolian Language?, Language, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Jan., 1942), pp. 22-25
- Charles R. Barton, The Etymology of Armenian ert’am, Language 39, No. 4 (Oct., 1963), p. 620
- G. Bonfante, The Armenian Aorist, Journal of the American Oriental Society 62, No. 2 (Jun., 1942), pp. 102-105
- I. M. Diakonoff - First evidence of the Proto-Armenian language in Eastern Anatolia, Annual of Armenian linguistics 13, 51-54, Cleveland State University, 1992.
- I. M. Diakonoff, Hurro-Urartian Borrowings in Old Armenian, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 105, No. 4 (Oct., 1985), pp. 597-603
- John A. C. Greppin; I. M. Diakonoff, Some Effects of the Hurro-Urartian People and Their Languages upon the Earliest Armenians, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 111, No. 4 (Oct., 1991), pp. 720-730
- A. Meillet, Esquisse d'une grammaire comparée de l'arménien classique, Vienna (1936)
- Robert Minshall, 'Initial' Indo-European */y/ in Armenian, Language 31, No. 4 (Oct., 1955), pp. 499-503
- J. Alexander Kerns; Benjamin Schwartz, On the Placing of Armenian, Language 18, No. 3 (Jul., 1942), pp. 226-228
- K. H. Schmidt, The Indo-European Basis of Proto-Armenian : Principles of Reconstruction, Annual of Armenian linguistics, Cleveland State University, 11, 33-47, 1990.
- Werner Winter, Problems of Armenian Phonology I, Language 30, No. 2 (Apr., 1954), pp. 197-201
- Werner Winter, Problems of Armenian Phonology II, Language 31, No. 1 (Jan., 1955), pp. 4-8
- Werner Winter Problems of Armenian Phonology III, Language 38, No. 3, Part 1 (Jul., 1962), pp. 254-262