The Armenian alphabet is an alphabet that has been used to write the Armenian language since the year 405 or 406. It was devised by Saint Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian monk. Until the 19th century, Classical Armenian was the literary language; since then, the Armenian alphabet has been used to write the two modern dialects of Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian. The Armenian word for "alphabet" is այբուբեն aybuben (Armenian pronunciation: [ɑɪbub...
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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 devised by Saint Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian monk. Until the 19th century, Classical Armenian was the literary language; since then, the Armenian alphabet has been used to write the two modern dialects of Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian. The Armenian word for "alphabet" is այբուբեն aybuben (Armenian pronunciation: [ɑɪbubɛn]), named after the first two letters of the Armenian alphabet Ա այբ ayb and Բ բեն ben.
In the table above, the superscript "h" ([ʰ]) is the diacritic for aspiration in the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Ancient Armenian manuscripts used many ligatures to save space. Some of the commonly used ligatures are: ﬓ (մ+ն), ﬔ (մ+ե), ﬕ (մ+ի), ﬖ (վ+ն), ﬗ (մ+խ), և (ե+ւ), etc. After the invention of printing Armenian typefaces made a wide use of ligatures as well. It is important to note that in new orthography the և character is not a typographical...
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