VCE Armenian flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Armenian alphabet creator

Mesrop Mashtots created the Armenian alphabet around 405 CE, giving Armenians a script suited to their sound system and enabling translation of the Bible and liturgy.

Number of Armenian letters

The modern Armenian alphabet contains 38 letters: 7 vowels and 31 consonants, including օ and ֆ, which were added after the original creation.

Grabar

Grabar is Classical Armenian, the literary language of the fifth-century Golden Age, still used in liturgy and the source of many modern word roots.

Eastern vs Western Armenian

These are the two modern standard varieties. Eastern Armenian is spoken in Armenia and Iran; Western Armenian developed among Ottoman Armenians and is now mainly a diaspora language.

Armenian stop contrasts

Eastern Armenian distinguishes voiced, voiceless unaspirated, and voiceless aspirated stops, while Western Armenian merges the latter two, so shared spellings are pronounced differently.

Basic Armenian word order

The unmarked order in Eastern Armenian is Subject-Object-Verb. Adjectives and other modifiers normally precede the noun they describe, and postpositions follow their objects.

Grammatical gender in Armenian

Armenian has no grammatical gender. Nouns, adjectives, and pronouns do not take masculine or feminine forms, so 'he' and 'she' are not distinguished grammatically.

Armenian Apostolic Church

Armenia's national church, tradition traces its founding to Gregory the Illuminator and the conversion of King Tiridates around 301 CE, making Armenia the first Christian state.

Mount Ararat

A 5,137-metre peak in present-day eastern Turkey, regarded as Armenia's national symbol and associated with the biblical ark, though it lies outside the modern republic.

Armenian Genocide date

The mass killing and deportation of Armenians by the Ottoman government occurred in 1915–1918, killing an estimated 1.5 million people and creating the modern diaspora.

April 24 commemoration

Genocide Remembrance Day marks the 1915 arrest of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople, the event widely treated as the start of the genocide.

Armenian independence 1991

The Republic of Armenia declared independence from the Soviet Union on 21 September 1991, following a 1991 referendum; it was the second modern Armenian republic.

First Armenian Republic

The short-lived independent republic of 1918–1920, established after the Ottoman collapse, which was then absorbed into the Soviet Union in 1920.

Armenian diaspora

Communities of Armenians living outside Armenia, concentrated in Russia, the United States, France, Lebanon, Argentina, and Georgia, with a total worldwide population often estimated at 7–11 million.

Catholicos of All Armenians

The supreme patriarch of the Armenian Apostolic Church, resident at Etchmiadzin in Armenia; the church is Oriental Orthodox and does not accept the Chalcedonian formula.

Lavash

A thin Armenian flatbread baked in a tandoor, inscribed on UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage list and central to Armenian hospitality and table customs.

Komitas

An Armenian priest and ethnomusicologist (1869–1935) who collected thousands of folk songs; he survived the 1915 genocide but was psychologically shattered by it.

Sayat-Nova

An eighteenth-century Armenian ashugh, or bard, who composed poetry and songs in Armenian, Georgian, and Azerbaijani and is a central figure in Armenian literary heritage.

Formal and informal 'you'

Armenian distinguishes informal singular դու from polite or plural դուք; formal address uses plural verb agreement even when speaking to one person.

Definite suffix -ը/-ն

Armenian has no separate definite article; definiteness is marked by a suffix on the noun, -ը or -ն depending on the following sound, as in տունը ('the house').

Armenian plural markers

Most nouns form the plural with -ներ, while some stems take -եր; the choice depends on the final sound and the word's declension pattern.

Genitive-dative case

A single Armenian case marks both possession and the indirect object. Its endings attach to the noun stem and also supply the base for possessive constructions.

Ablative case

The Armenian ablative case expresses motion away from or origin, roughly corresponding to English 'from', and has its own set of endings.

Instrumental case

The Armenian instrumental case expresses the means or instrument of an action, roughly 'with' or 'by means of', and also marks accompaniment in some constructions.

Armenian simple past

The simple past (անցյալ կատարյալ) describes completed past actions and is formed from the verb stem with person and number endings, distinct from the imperfect.

Quotation dash in Armenian

Armenian typography marks direct speech with a long dash rather than quotation marks, and reported speech requires shifts in pronouns and verb tense.

Cohesion conjunctions

Words such as և ('and'), բայց ('but'), որովհետև ('because'), and ուրեմն ('therefore') link clauses and signal addition, contrast, cause, and consequence in written Armenian.

Thesis statement

A thesis is a single sentence stating the central claim of an analytical essay; every paragraph should support it with evidence and commentary.

Theme versus motif

A theme is the underlying idea a text explores, while a motif is a recurring image or element that develops that idea; plot is simply the sequence of events.

Direct and indirect characterisation

Direct characterisation states a character's traits explicitly; indirect characterisation reveals them through actions, speech, appearance, and other characters' reactions.

Simile in Armenian

A simile (նման) compares two things using an explicit comparative word such as 'like' or 'as'; its effect should be explained, not merely named.

Comparative essay structure

A comparative essay is organised by point of comparison, so each body paragraph discusses both texts on the same feature rather than treating each work in a separate block.