Language
Before Armenian alphabet was created Armenians used Aramean and Greek alphabets, the last of which had a great influence on Armenian alphabet. The Armenian alphabet was created by Saint Mesrop Mashtots and Isaac of Armenia (Sahak Partev) in AD 405 primarily for a Bible translation into the Armenian language. Traditionally, the following phrase translated from Solomon's Book of Proverbs is said to be the first sentence to be written down in Armenian by Mashtots:
| “ | Ճանաչել զիմաստութիւն եւ զխրատ, իմանալ զբանս հանճարոյ: Čanačʿel zimastutʿiun yev zxrat, imanal zbans hančaroy. To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding. |
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—Book of Proverbs, 1:2. |
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. Although it's taught, that the Armenian alphabet was created in 405 AD. There was also an alphabet comprising 300 symbols, used only in Pagan temples.
Early in the 5th century, Classical Armenian, or Grabar, was one of the great languages of the Near East and Asia Minor. Although an autonomous branch within the Indo-European family of languages, it had some affinities to Middle Iranian, Greek and the Balto-Slavic languages, but belonged to none of them. It was characterized by a system of inflection unlike the other languages, as well as a flexible and liberal use of combining root words to create derivative and compound words by the application of certain agglutinative affixes. By the 2nd century BC, the population of Greater Armenia spoke Armenian, implying that today’s Armenians are the direct descendants of those speakers.
Read more about this topic: Kingdom Of Armenia (antiquity)
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“Our goal as a parent is to give life to our children’s learning—to instruct, to teach, to help them develop self-discipline—an ordering of the self from the inside, not imposition from the outside. Any technique that does not give life to a child’s learning and leave a child’s dignity intact cannot be called discipline—it is punishment, no matter what language it is clothed in.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)
“Language makes it possible for a child to incorporate his parents’ verbal prohibitions, to make them part of himself....We don’t speak of a conscience yet in the child who is just acquiring language, but we can see very clearly how language plays an indispensable role in the formation of conscience. In fact, the moral achievement of man, the whole complex of factors that go into the organization of conscience is very largely based upon language.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“We have tried so hard to adulterate our hearts, and have so greatly abused the microscope to study the hideous excrescences and shameful warts which cover them and which we take pleasure in magnifying, that it is impossible for us to speak the language of other men.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)