Western Armenian language
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Western Armenian is one of the two modern dialects of Armenian, an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian Diaspora, mainly in North America and Europe, but also in limited pockets of western Turkey (İstanbul), Syria, and Lebanon.
Phonology
The phonology of Western Armenian (WA), unlike Eastern Armenian (EA), features a two-way distinction in its stops and affricates:Armenian consonants:
| Labial | Dental | Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Nasal | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Plosive | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Affricate
| ʦʰ ʣ | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Fricative | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Trill | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Approximant | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lateral Approximant | || ||
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|} There are seven Armenian vowels:
--- The change in Western Armenian, going from a three-way to a two-way distinction, involves the merging of EA /b/ and /pʰ/ as (WA) /pʰ/, etc.; and, the voicing of Eastern /pʻ/ to (WA) /b/, etc. As a result, a word like /ʤuɹ/ (EA, 'water') is cognate with WA /ʧʰuɹ/, /tʰoɹ/ ('grandson') and /kʰaɹ/ ('stone') are pronounced identically in Eastern and Western Armenian. MorphologyNounsWestern Armenian nouns have six cases: Nominative (subject), Accusative (direct object), Genitive (possession), Dative (indirect object), Ablative (origin) and Instrumental (means). Of the six cases, the nominative and accusative are the same, and the genitive and dative are the same, meaning that nouns have four distinct forms for case. Nouns in Armenian also decline for number (singular and plural), but do not decline for gender (i.e. masculine or feminine). Declension in Armenian is based on how the genitive is formed. There are several declensions, but two are the most used (genitive in i, and genitive in u):
ArticlesLike English and some other languages, Armenian has definite and indefinite articles. The indefinite article in Western Armenian is /mə/, which follows the noun: mart mə ('a man', Nom.sg), martu mə ('of a man', Gen.sg) The definite article is a suffix attached to the noun, and is one of two forms, either -ə or -n, depending on whether the final sound is a vowel or a consonant, and whether a preceding word begins with a vowel or consonant:
martə ('the man', Nom.sg)
The indefinite article becomes mən under the same circumstance as -ə becomes -n:
mart mə ('a man', Nom.sg)
AdjectivesAdjectives in Armenian do not decline for case or number, and precede the noun:
lav martə ('the good man', Nom.sg)
VerbsVerbs in Armenian are based on two basic series of forms, a "present" form and a "imperfect" form. From this, all other tenses and moods are formed with various particles and constructions. There is a third form, the preterite, which in Armenian is tense in its own right, and takes no other particles or constructions. (See also Armenian verbs for more detailed information.) The "present" tense in Western Armenian is based on three conjugations (a, e, i):
The present tense (as we know it in English) is made by adding the particle gə before the "present" form, while the future is made by adding bidi:
Yes gə gartam kirk'ə (I am reading the book, Pres)
See also
External links
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