Armenian script
| Armenian alphabet |
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Type | |
| Languages | Armenian |
| Creator | Mesrop Mashtots |
|
Time period
|
405 to present |
|
Parent systems
|
|
|
Child systems
|
Caucasian Albanian |
|
Sister systems
|
Latin Coptic Georgian Cyrillic |
| Direction | Left-to-right |
| ISO 15924 | Armn, 230 |
|
Unicode alias
|
Armenian |
|
|
The Armenian alphabet (Armenian: Հայոց գրեր Hayoc' grer or Հայոց այբուբեն Hayoc' aybowben; Eastern Armenian: [haˈjotsʰ ajbuˈbɛn]; Western Armenian: [haˈjotsʰ ajpʰuˈpʰɛn]) is an alphabetical writing system used to write Armenian. It was developed around 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian linguist and ecclesiastical leader, and originally included 36 letters and now includes 39.
The Armenian word for "alphabet" is aybowben, named after the first two letters of the Armenian alphabet: ⟨Ա⟩ Armenian: այբ ayb and ⟨Բ⟩ Armenian: բեն ben. Armenian is written horizontally, left-to-right.
Notes:
Ancient Armenian manuscripts used many ligatures. Some of the commonly used ligatures are: ﬓ (մ+ն), ﬔ (մ+ե), ﬕ (մ+ի), ﬖ (վ+ն), ﬗ (մ+խ), և (ե+ւ), etc. Armenian print typefaces also include many ligatures. In the new orthography, the character և is no longer a typographical ligature, but a distinct letter with a place in the new alphabetic sequence, before "o".
Armenian punctuation is often placed above and slightly to the right of the vowel whose tone is modified, in order to reflect intonation. Armenian punctuation marks include:
ISO 9985 (1996) transliterates the Armenian alphabet for modern Armenian as follows:
In the linguistic literature on Classical Armenian, slightly different systems are in use (in particular note that č has a different meaning). Hübschmann-Meillet (1913) have
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