Armenian · Հայերեն

About Armenian

Language family

Indo-European (its own branch)

Source: Glottolog

Where it's spoken

Armenia, with a large global diaspora

Speakers

roughly 6–7 million speakers

Estimate source: Ethnologue (SIL International)

Writing

Armenian

Armenian, like Greek and Albanian, forms its own independent branch of the Indo-European family with no close living relatives. Its alphabet was created around 405 AD by the monk Mesrop Mashtots specifically so the Bible and Christian liturgy could be translated and read in Armenian rather than Greek or Syriac, making the script central to Armenian national and religious identity ever since. A long history of empire, trade, and, in the 20th century, genocide and displacement scattered Armenian speakers into large diaspora communities across the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas.

Speaker counts are approximate orders of magnitude for learners, not census figures. Family labels follow Glottolog-style classification; vitality notes (when shown) follow UNESCO WAL / Ethnologue-style framing and should be re-checked for program planning.