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How is Armenian? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| surfingnirvana Newbie United States Joined 6825 days ago 37 posts - 45 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Turkish, Japanese, Armenian | Message 1 of 18 11 June 2006 at 9:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Is Armenian a difficult language?
Though I doubt anyone may have learned or speaks this elusive language, I was thinking about tackling it ^^;. -Alex 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lady_skywalker Triglot Senior Member Netherlands aspiringpolyglotblog Joined 6891 days ago 909 posts - 942 votes  Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian | Message 2 of 18 11 June 2006 at 10:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've had a look at the language in the past and was tempted to try and learn a little but the lack of resources put me off. The alphabet is very exotic looking and the language itself sounds very different to anything I've ever studied...lots of consonants grouped together.
I believe it shouldn't be too hard to learn as it is an Indo-European language. Some of the sounds may be hard for English speakers to mimic at first and it is easy to confuse the letters of the alphabet as some do look very similar but I guess with some work it's all very doable. There's a Pimsleur course on Eastern Armenian and another for Western Armenian. The Eastern course is the one you'd want if you wanted to learn the language of Armenia proper. The Western dialect is the one most commonly spoken by the Armenian diaspora. You are right about it being a bit of an elusive language at these forums! Any particular reason for wanting to learn the language or is it simply out of curiosity? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| surfingnirvana Newbie United States Joined 6825 days ago 37 posts - 45 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Turkish, Japanese, Armenian | Message 3 of 18 12 June 2006 at 9:04am | IP Logged | ||
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Im part ethnically Armenian and would like to visit the country one day hehe ^_^.
Also I like the script and the sounds of the language. Its very very 'different'. -Alex 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Quackers Triglot Newbie United States Joined 6713 days ago 18 posts - 24 votes Speaks: English*, French, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Bengali, Armenian, Italian, Russian | Message 4 of 18 03 August 2006 at 2:31pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, but it has several features that may make it somewhat difficult for speakers of English, starting with the alphabet, which has either 38 or 39 letters, depending on how you classify "yev". It could be considered a letter, but it also could be considered a written equivalent of the ampersand. Furthermore, Armenian belongs to its own subgroup within the Indo-European family; there are no discounts associated with knowing another Indo-European tongue when learning Armenian. I'm only a quarter of the way through Sakayan's "Modern Western Armenian," but from what I've learned and from the tables in the back of the book, Armenian has some distinctive features. *First, Armenian prefers to use the SOV order, as opposed to the SVO order of English and most Western European languages. *The definite article (-schwa or -n) is added to the end of the noun.The indefinite article (me) also appears after the noun. *There are two plural markers: -er and -ner. As a general rule, -er is used with monosyllabic nouns and -ner with polysyllabic nouns. *Armenian has either six or seven cases, depending on the dialect: Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative, Ablative, Instrumental, and (in Eastern Armenian only) Locative. Fortunately for the student, the nominative and accusative forms are the same for most nouns; likewise, the genitive and dative forms are also the same for most nouns. *Verbs have a number of different tenses: Present, Perfect, Aorist, Perfect I, Perfect II, Pluperfect I, Pluperfect II, Future, Future Perfect (sometimes called Perfect II), Conditional I, Conditional II, Subjunctive Present, and Subjunctive Past. The Indicative and Passive moods are derived from different infinitive forms; however, the infinitive used for the passive can usually be derived from that used for the indicative. *Barry Farber once wrote that Finnish is unique in that, when the negative forms of verbs are used, the Finns change the word for "not" and keep the verb form constant. This is not true, although, to be fair to Farber, he never claimed to study Armenian. In several of the tenses in Armenian, but not all, there is a negative form of the verb that is used, and the word for "not" is conjugated. For instance, the present indicitive form of khosil (to speak) is conjugated as ge khosim, ge khosis, ge khosi, ge khosink, ge khosik, ge khosin. However, the negative present indicative form of khosil is conjugated as chem khosir, ches khosir, chi khosir, chenk khosir, chek khosir, chen khosir. *All Armenian sentences end with the same punctuation, a symbol which looks like our colon. The Armenian versions of the question mark and the exclamation point are placed above and to the right of the vowel in the stressed syllable in the question's stressed word. *In many cases, the "schwa" sound, while pronounced, does not appear in the written version of words. One has to remember where it appears. Sometimes, it is not even written down when it begins a word. *The good news: The student of Armenian does not have to worry about grammatical gender. There is none in Armenian; there are not even different words for "he" and "she." From what I know, I would think that Armenian would be a little more difficult to learn than Russian. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Zorndyke Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6959 days ago 374 posts - 382 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Czech | Message 5 of 18 03 August 2006 at 2:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks a lot, Quackers, although I do not intend studying Armenian I found this very informative!
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sumabeast Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6927 days ago 212 posts - 220 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written) | Message 6 of 18 07 August 2006 at 4:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Good description Quackers.
no "he" or "she" in Armenian? I know that Persian makes do with one pronoun word that's used for male or female. One would think that Armenian would resemble Greek or Persian? guess it would take someone who knew those langs as well to see any relationship. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| HyeLezûn Bilingual Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6684 days ago 33 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English*, Armenian* Studies: French | Message 7 of 18 08 August 2006 at 2:05am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello Sumabeast! You're right, Armenian doesn't have "he" or "she" at all. There's just one word, pronounced 'eenkuh,' that covers both genders.
I've always been SO CURIOUS, what does Armenian sound like to one who doesn't speak or understand it? I know the Armenian letters are really exotic looking and funky, but what language would most people say Armenian resembles? It would depend, in my opinion, on the dialect spoken (Eastern is heavily influenced by russian). Thanks and have a good one. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Darobat Diglot Senior Member Joined 7189 days ago 754 posts - 770 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Latin | Message 8 of 18 08 August 2006 at 9:50am | IP Logged | ||
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Is there a large difference between the Eastern and Western dialects?
1 person has voted this message useful |
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