ARMENIAN LANGUAGE. The translation of the Bible by Miesrob is the earliest monument of the Armenian or Haikan language that has come down to us. The dialect in which this version is written, and in which it is still publicly read in their churches, is called the old Armenian. The modern Armenian not only departs from the elder form by dialectical changes in the native elements of the language itself, but also by the great intermixture of Persian and Turkish words which has resulted from the conquest and subjection of the country. It is, perhaps, this diversity of the ancient and modern idioms which has given rise to the many conflicting opinions that exist as to the relation in which the Armenian stands to other languages. Thus Cirbied and Vater both assert that it is an original language, that is, one so distinct from all others in its fundamental character as not to be classed with any of the great families of languages. Eichhorn, on the other hand, affirms that the learned idiom of the Armenian undoubtedly belongs to the Medo-Persian family. Whereas Pott says that, notwithstanding its many points of relation to that family, it cannot strictly be considered to belong to it; and Gatterer actually
Armenian Version. classed it as a living sister of the Basque, Finnish, and Welsh languages.
As to form it is said to be rough, and full of consonants; to possess ten cases in the noun—a number which is only exceeded by the Finnish; to have no dual; to have no mode of denoting gender in the noun by change of form, but to be obliged to append the words man and woman as the marks of sex—thus to say prophet-woman for prophetess (nevertheless, modern writers use the syllable ouli to distinguish the feminine); to bear a remarkable resemblance to Greek in the use of the participle and in the whole syntactical structure; and to have adopted the Arabian system of metre.
Until the third century of our era, the Armenians used either the Persian or Greek alphabet. In the fifth century, however, the translation of the Bible created the necessity for characters which would more adequately represent the peculiar sounds of the language. Accordingly, after a fruitless attempt of a certain Daniel, and after several efforts on his own part, Miesrob saw a hand in a dream write the very characters which now constitute the Armenian alphabet. The 35 letters thus obtained are chiefly founded on the Greek, but have partly made out their number by deriving some forms from the Zend alphabet. The order of writing is from left to right. Miesrob employed these letters in his translation of the Bible, and thus ensured their universal and permanent adoption by the nation. (Gesenius; article Palæographie, in Ersch and Gruber.) (v. 8.)