Armenian

Հայոց այբուբեն

Alphabet · 39 letters

One letter per sound, vowels included, written in the line like consonants. This is the Latin system: the simplest to learn, and the quickest to pay off.

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What pays off on the road

• Only one country writes it: recognising the texture is enough, it is Armenia.
• փողոց street, պողոտա avenue, մարզ province: three words that cut up a sign.
• Reading a name: the sixteen plain letters first — they are mistaken for nothing, and carry nearly six signs in ten of our names.

How it works

Thirty-nine letters that look like nothing else

The Armenian alphabet was invented in one go, around 405, by a monk tasked with giving his language a script. That is what makes it so regular — one letter, one sound, no exceptions — and so foreign: it descends from no European alphabet and recalls none.

Good news for the learner: there are no false friends. No Armenian letter looks enough like a Latin one to be misread. The only trap is internal, between Armenian letters.

The letters come in threes

Դ, Տ and Թ are three "t"s: the first voiced — our d — the second a dry voiceless one, the third aspirated. There are five such triads, fifteen letters out of thirty-nine.

A European does not hear the difference between the last two, and does not need to: signs and maps transliterate them the same. What matters is knowing they exist, otherwise you wonder why three different signs give the same sound.

Two letters change at the start of a word

Ե reads "ye" when a word starts with it, "e" elsewhere. Ո reads "vo" at the start, "o" elsewhere. It is the only irregularity in the whole alphabet, and it carries the capital's name: Երևան is Yerevan.

Two letters, one rule, and you never come back to it.

ՈՒ is two letters for one sound

The "oo" sound is written ո followed by ւ, as Greek writes ΟΥ. Reading the two separately gives "ow", and Գյումրի becomes "gyowmri" instead of "gyumri".

The letter ւ is never written alone any more: it is met only in this pair and in the ligature և, which is worth "ev".

Cheat sheet

The triads

Five groups of three letters for five sounds: voiced, voiceless, aspirated. Դ, Տ and Թ are three "t"s. Fifteen letters out of thirty-nine, and the only part of the alphabet that must be understood rather than learnt.

The look-alikes

Six letters that get confused with one another — ո and ը, ղ and ր and ռ — two of which change sound at the start of a word. It is the script's only trap, and it is internal.

The plain letters

Sixteen letters that are confused with nothing and never change. You either know them or you do not.

The pair and the ligature

The "oo" sound is written with two letters, as in Greek. Without this pair, Գյումրի transliterates as "gyowmri" instead of "gyumri".

The words on signs

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