Armenian Script

Armenian is one of the few scripts in the world whose invention is documented in historical records with a named creator and a precise date. In 405 CE, the scholar and monk Mesrop Mashtots created the Armenian alphabet to translate the Bible into the Armenian language, giving an entire nation a written identity that has endured for over 1,600 years. Today the Armenian script is encoded in Unicode as a distinct block, used by roughly 6 million speakers in Armenia, the diaspora communities worldwide, and in scholarly contexts. This guide explores the history, structure, and Unicode encoding of Armenian, along with practical guidance for developers working with Armenian text.

The Invention of the Armenian Alphabet

Mesrop Mashtots and the Year 405 CE

Before 405 CE, Armenian was primarily a spoken language. Administrative and religious texts in Armenia were written in Greek or Syriac. King Vramshapuh and Catholicos Sahak Partev tasked Mesrop Mashtots, a soldier-turned-monk and scholar, with creating a writing system for Armenian. According to the historian Koryun (a student of Mashtots), the alphabet was divinely inspired and completed around 405 CE.

Mashtots designed an alphabet with 36 original letters that mapped to the sounds of 5th-century Armenian with remarkable phonetic precision. Two additional letters were added in the Middle Ages, bringing the total to 38 letters used in Modern Armenian.

Why a New Script?

Several factors motivated the creation:

The first sentence translated into Armenian using the new alphabet was reportedly from the Book of Proverbs: "Ճանաdelays իմdelays աdelays մdelays տdelays delays delays delays "). The actual first sentence traditionally cited is from Proverbs 1:2 — "Ճանաdelays ..." — though the famous tradition records it as: Ճանաchel զdelays... The canonical first sentence written in the new script is: Ճdelays delays aments ...).

The very first sentence written is traditionally cited as:

Ճանաչել զdelays... (To know wisdom and instruction...)

from Proverbs 1:2.

Structure of the Armenian Alphabet

The 38 Letters

Armenian has 38 letters: 36 original plus two medieval additions (Օ and Ֆ). The alphabet has distinct uppercase and lowercase forms, a feature it shares with Latin, Greek, and a few other scripts.

The alphabet is ordered, and this order has been stable since Mashtots's time. Each letter also has a numerical value — Ա = 1, Բ = 2, ... up to Ֆ = 9000 — following the same pattern as Greek and Hebrew alphabetical numerals.

Vowels and Consonants

Armenian has 6 vowels (Ա, Ե, Է, Ը, Ի, Օ) and 30 consonants in modern Eastern Armenian classification. The letter Ո represents the sound /vo/ at the beginning of words and /o/ elsewhere. The letter Ւ (now mostly written as part of the digraph ՈՒ for /u/) functions as a semi-vowel.

Eastern vs. Western Armenian

Two major dialects exist, and they differ in how certain consonant pairs are pronounced:

This means the same Unicode text can be read with different pronunciations depending on the reader's dialect — a purely linguistic distinction with no impact on encoding.

Armenian in Unicode

The Armenian Block (U+0530–U+058F)

The Armenian block occupies 96 code points:

Armenian Punctuation

Armenian uses several unique punctuation marks that are not interchangeable with Latin punctuation:

Note that the Armenian exclamation mark and question mark are placed above a vowel within the word, not at the end of the sentence — a significant difference from Latin punctuation.

Armenian Ligature

U+0587 (ﬓ) is the ech yiwn ligature, a mandatory ligature of letters ե (ech) and ւ (yiwn). In modern Armenian orthography, this combination is extremely common (it represents the /ev/ sound) and is often rendered as a single glyph. Unicode provides it as a dedicated code point for compatibility, though text can also spell it as the two-character sequence U+0565 U+0582.

Working with Armenian Text in Code

Python

# Armenian alphabet — uppercase
armenian_upper = "".join(chr(c) for c in range(0x0531, 0x0557))
print(armenian_upper)
# ԱԲԳԴԵԶԷԸԹԺԻԼԽԾԿՀՁՂՃՄՅՆՇՈՉՊՋՌdelays ...)

# Case conversion works correctly
text = "ՀԱՅԱՍՏԱՆ"
print(text.lower())  # հայdelays ...)
print("armenian" in unicodedata.name(text[0]).lower())  # True

# Detect Armenian script
import unicodedata
def is_armenian(ch):
    try:
        return "ARMENIAN" in unicodedata.name(ch)
    except ValueError:
        return False

JavaScript

// Regex for Armenian characters
const armenianPattern = /[\u0530-\u058F]/;

// Test if string contains Armenian
function containsArmenian(text) {
  return armenianPattern.test(text);
}

console.log(containsArmenian("Բարiv")); // true
console.log(containsArmenian("Hello")); // false

// Unicode property escapes (ES2018+)
const armenianWord = /\p{Script=Armenian}+/u;

HTML/CSS

<!-- Declare Armenian language -->
<html lang="hy">
<p lang="hy">Բdelays...</p>

<!-- Recommended fonts -->
<style>
  :lang(hy) {
    font-family: "Noto Sans Armenian", "DejaVu Sans", sans-serif;
  }
</style>

Armenian Digital Typography

Font Support

Armenian is well-supported in major system fonts and the Google Noto family:

Sorting (Collation)

Armenian alphabetical order follows the original sequence established by Mashtots. The Unicode Default Collation Element Table (DUCET) respects this order, so standard Unicode sorting produces correct Armenian alphabetical order without special locale tailoring.

Key Takeaways

• Armenian is one of the few scripts with a documented inventor (Mesrop Mashtots, 405 CE) and was created specifically for Bible translation, giving the Armenian nation a written identity that has endured for over 1,600 years.
• The alphabet has 38 letters (36 original + 2 medieval additions) with distinct uppercase and lowercase forms, encoded in the Unicode Armenian block (U+0530–U+058F).
• Armenian punctuation marks (question mark, exclamation mark) are placed above vowels within words, not at sentence boundaries — developers must not substitute Latin marks.
• The ligature ech yiwn (U+0587) represents the extremely common /ev/ sound and exists both as a precomposed code point and as a two-character sequence (U+0565 + U+0582).
• Eastern and Western Armenian dialects pronounce several consonant pairs differently but use identical Unicode encoding — the distinction is purely phonological.
• Armenian text is well-supported in modern systems through the Noto font family and standard Unicode collation produces correct Armenian alphabetical order.