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What’s with this “Wren” thing?
The oldest extant version of the fable
we
are presenting here appeared in 1913 in the first volume of a two-volume anthology
of Low
Saxon folktales (Plattdeutsche
Volksmärchen “Low German Folktales”)
collected by Wilhelm Wisser (1843–1935). Read
more ...
Hayerem
Armenian
Armenian
language, culture and religion have
remained
strong
in the homeland and in the widely scattered
diaspora.
Language information:
Armenian is used by the majority of ethnic Armenians all over the world, in
Armenia and throughout the large Armenian diaspora with sizeable enclaves in
many parts of the Middle East, Europe (especially France), the states once
belonging to the Soviet Union, and also in the Americas, in Australia and in
Southern Africa. Language loyalty has been strengthened in large part by the
Armenian church and by unceasing communication within the widely-scattered
Armenian diaspora.
There
are two major groups of Armenian dialects, each with its own standard language:
Eastern Armenian in and around today’s Armenia,
and Western Armenian of Anatolia, Turkey, now dominating the Armenian diaspora.
Both groups use the same Armenian alphabet created by Saint Mesrop Mashtots
in 406 C.E. Although
several of the letters are pronounced differently, spelling follows the same
Classical-Armenian-based
principles in Western and Eastern
Armenian. This facilitates Armenian reading comprehension across dialect boundaries
and safeguards ethnic and cultural cohesion
all over the world. However, two slightly different Armenian orthographies are still competing
with each other: traditional and reformed.
Situated
on the border between today’s Armenia and Turkey, Mount Ararat has been playing a very important spiritual
and symbolic role for Armenians from long before Christianization.
The mountain can be seen
clearly
not only from the famous Khor Virap Monastery (shown here) but even
from Armenia’s capital Yerevan a good way to the east.
Throughout history,
there have been many Armenian dialects within the east-west division, such as eastern dialects of today’s Armenia, Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Georgia, Iran and
Russia, and western dialects of Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, India,
Greece and Bulgaria. Western Armenian dominates the Armenian diaspora throughout
Europe and in numerous overseas locations, particularly in Canada and the United
States. But both Eastern and Western Armenian communities
and church congregations exist
in
some
locations, such as in the Americas.
Many sacred texts have been handed down
in Classical Armenian, which is also known as Old Armenian, Liturgical Armenian
and Grabar. These are shared by the eastern and western communities.
Armenian dialects have picked up numerous loanwords from languages with which
they have been in contact. Underlying all of them are ancient substrata of influences from Caucasian, Turkic and Western Iranian language varieties.
The
mixture of
foreign-influenced features made it difficult for early European linguists
to recognize Armenian as fundamentally Indo-European. The precise genealogy
of Armenian
remains
an enigma to most. Lately,
some
have
espoused
the
hypothesis
that
Armenian
is
a
relative
or
relic
of the
Thraco-Phrygian
languages once spoken in Thrace and Asia Minor.
Geneology: Indo-European > (Traco-Phrygian > Phrygian >?) Armenian
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