Indo-European language of the Armenian s.
It is spoken by perhaps five to six million people worldwide. Armenian has undergone phonetic and grammatical changes that make it completely distinct from other branches of Indo-European; its closest affinity may be with Greek, though this hypothesis has been vigorously disputed. Its long history of contact with Iranian languages has resulted in the adoption of many Persian loanwords. According to tradition, the unique Armenian alphabet was created by the cleric Mesrop Mashtots in AD 406 or 407. Armenian of the 5th9th centuries (Grabar, or Classical Armenian) was employed as the literary language into modern times. A 19th-century cultural revival led to the formation of two new literary languages: West Armenian, based on the speech of Istanbul Armenians, and East Armenian, based on the speech of Transcaucasian Armenians. Because of a long tradition of emigration and the massacres and expulsions during the last decades of Ottoman rule, most speakers of West Armenian live outside Anatolia. East Armenian is the language of the present-day Republic of Armenia.