- published: 19 Oct 2013
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The Armenian alphabet is an alphabet that has been used to write the Armenian language since the year 405 or 406. It was reintroduced by Saint Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian linguist and ecclesiastical leader, and contained originally 36 letters. Armenian literature with pre-Mashtotsian letters were burned during the onslaught of Christianity. Two more letters, օ and ֆ, were added in the Middle Ages. Until the 19th century, Classical Armenian was the literary language; since then, the Armenian alphabet has been used to write the two official literary dialects of Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian. The Armenian word for "alphabet" is այբուբեն aybuben (Armenian pronunciation: [ɑjbubɛn]), named after the first two letters of the Armenian alphabet Ա այբ ayb and Բ բեն ben. Its directionality is horizontal left-to-right, like the Latin and Greek alphabets.
Listen to the pronunciation of the letters in Eastern Armenian (help·info) or in Western Armenian (help·info).
In the table above, the superscript "h" ([ʰ]) is the diacritic for aspiration in the International Phonetic Alphabet.