For the study of the ancient stages of the formation and development of any language, when written evidence is even more lacking, possible limited sources of study can be the old neighboring and influential languages of the given language, of which written records have been preserved. It should be noted that the influence of a language is not at all due to immediate vicinity, as tribes can split and migrate their parts to distant regions.
About the ancient tribes settled in the territory of Armenia, although in small quantities, information has been preserved from Assyrian, Hittite and Urartian written records. The Armenian language also becomes a historical source and its studies can be a historical basis.
Linguistics has confirmed that Armenian belongs to the language family known in science as "Indo-European Linguistics" and to which belong the languages that are spread from the eastern tip of India to the western tip of Europe (Iceland). There used to be one common language that Indo-Europeans used to communicate in ancient times. Therefore, if we talk about the description of the oldest period of the Armenian language, we must present the language of the pre-Indo-European period and the civilization of the Indo-Europeans. Armenian has an Indo-European profile, which has also influenced the local Asia Minor languages.
Throughout history, tribes and peoples have often been subjected to religious, political-state, cultural pressure, the main goal of which was the assimilation of the given people. Thus, the latter often changed their language, religion and assimilated with other civilizations, at best they called their language "dead" and preserved it in written records. It should be noted that in ancient times, Armenians were also subjected to such influence, and sometimes even became Muslim, but we can clearly say that they did not acquire the classical Armenian language ready-made from someone else, neither from Asia Minor nor from abroad. The Armenian language is connected with the formation of the Armenian nation, and its formation is clearly directly related to the history of the Armenian nation both in its origin and in its final formation and development. The Armenian language is connected with the formation of the Armenian nation, and it is clear that the formation of the latter has a direct connection with the history of the Armenian people both in its origin and in its final formation and development.
In 1875 In his article, the linguist Heinrich Hübschmann proved that Armenian forms a separate branch of the Indo-European language family, like Greek, while the others represent factions of several languages. All this does not mean that Armenian never had related languages, it is possible that, like other language branches, it had one or more related languages, which later assimilated or disappeared, but today they are unknown. Linguistics deals with only one member of the family when studying Armenian.
Armenian belongs to the eastern group of dialects and stands between Aryan, Greek and Slavic languages, it has nothing to do with other European languages.
The languages of a number of peoples belonging to the early period, with whom the Armenians had close ties, such as Chaldean, Mitan, Assyrian, certainly left their influence on the Armenian language. It should also be noted that the centuries-old Persian yoke has left its influence on the Armenian language, which explains the fact that there are a large number of Persian words in the modern Armenian language. With the development of Christianity, Syrian and Greek words became used in the language, and during the rule of the Ottoman Empire, Turkic words began to be used in colloquial and literary Armenian.
Despite all this, the Armenian language has preserved 11,000 root words, 900 of which belong to the Indo-European language group.
Unlike Latin and other ancient languages belonging to the Indo-European language group, the Armenian language has not become a "petrified" language over the centuries, but continues to develop.
The independent development of the Armenian language begins in BC From the beginning of the 3rd millennium. G. Jahukyan uses the term "proto-Armenian" to describe the dialectal state of Armenian during the period of Indo-European unity. And for the prescriptive Armenian, he makes the following division:
Ancient period: Proto-Armenian: BC From the beginning of the 3rd millennium to BC 13th century. There are 2 subperiods in this period:
a. Initial Ancient: BC 3rd millennium
b. Late Ancient: BC From the beginning of the 2nd millennium until BC 13th century.
Old Period: Old Armenian: BC From the 12th century to AD 4th century. 2 subperiods are distinguished here:
a. early old: BC From the 12th century to BC 4th century
b. late old: BC From the 3rd century to AD 4th century.
The division of literary language.
Old period - Old Armenian - from the 5th century to the 11th century. The literary language of this period is called Classical Armenian (Grabar). It was formed on the basis of the speech of Turuberan (the world of Taron) and High Hayk and Airarat, the territories adjacent to Turuberan. Although G. Jahukyan starts the period of ancient Armenian from the 5th century, but based on H. Huebschmann's phonological characteristics, Classical Armenian (Grabar) considers the beginning of the 3rd century as an independent language, and it became written in the beginning of the 5th century. The written language laid the foundation for the translation activity. Spiritual literature from other languages began to be translated. The first Armenian translator was Mesrop Mashtots, and the first book translated into Armenian was the Bible.
The old period is divided into 3 subperiods:
a. early ancient or classical Armenian։ 5th century (at the beginning of the 5th century, 40 works were already written in Armenia)
b. late ancient or post-classical։ 6th-7th centuries
c. pre- medieval: 8th-11th centuries
Middle period: 12-16 centuries. In this period, the Armenian literary language becomes Middle Armenian, which was formed on the basis of the popular colloquial language, the Classical Armenian (Grabar) dialects, but parallel to it, the use of Classical Armenian (Grabar) continued for quite a long time, especially as a written language. Over time, medieval Armenian turned into the modern Armenian language, which is spoken by about 10 million people in the world today.
2 subperiods are distinguished in the middle period:
a. early or Cilician normalization: 12-14 centuries
b. late middle or becoming Modern Armenian: 15-16 centuries
New or Modern Armenian period: 17-20 centuries. In this period, the new literary Armenian or Modern Armenian appeared, although in the first sub-period of Modern Armenian, Grabar still maintained its position as a means of written communication. This situation lasts until the end of the struggle over the Armenian literary language.
3 sub-regions are distinguished in the new period.
a. early Modern Armenian : from the beginning of the 17th century to the middle of the 19th century
b. late or two-branched Modern Armenian: from the middle of the 19th century to 1920
c. modern or contemporary: 20th century to present
The modern Armenian language has two branches: western (with the Constantinople dialect) and eastern (with the Ararat dialect). Today, Western Armenian is the language used by Armenians living in the USA, Italy, France, and Lebanon. Unlike Western Armenian, Eastern Armenian has been considered the state language of the Republic of Armenia since the 1920s.
As literary critic, historian, ethnographer Yervand Shahaziz said: "He who does not know his mother tongue has no right to be proud of his knowledge of many languages...".
Zemfira Hakobyan-Yeganyan