[38] W. M. Austin (1942) concluded[39] that there was early contact between Armenian and Anatolian languages, based on what he considered common archaisms, such as the lack of a feminine gender and the absence of inherited long vowels.

There are words used in Armenian that are generally believed to have been borrowed from Anatolian languages, particularly from Luwian, although some researchers have identified possible Hittite loanwords as well.

Contemporary linguists, such as Hrach Martirosyan, have rejected many of the Hurro-Urartian and Northeast Caucasian origins for these words and instead suggest native Armenian etymologies, leaving the possibility that these words may have been loaned into Hurro-Urartian and Caucasian languages from Armenian, and not vice versa.

[43] A notable example is arciv, meaning "eagle", believed to have been the origin of Urartian Arṣibi and Northeast Caucasian arzu.

This word is derived from Proto-Indo-European *h₂r̥ǵipyós, with cognates in Sanskrit (ऋजिप्य, ṛjipyá), Avestan (ərəzifiia), and Greek (αἰγίπιος, aigípios).

Antoine Meillet (1925, 1927) further investigated morphological and phonological agreement and postulated that the parent languages of Greek and Armenian were dialects in immediate geographical proximity during the Proto-Indo-European period.

Meillet's hypothesis became popular in the wake of his book Esquisse d'une histoire de la langue latine (1936).

Georg Renatus Solta (1960) does not go as far as postulating a Proto-Graeco-Armenian stage, but he concludes that considering both the lexicon and morphology, Greek is clearly the dialect to be most closely related to Armenian.

Armenian shares the augment and a negator derived from the set phrase in the Proto-Indo-European language *ne h₂oyu kʷid ("never anything" or "always nothing"), the representation of word-initial laryngeals by prothetic vowels, and other phonological and morphological peculiarities with Greek.

Nevertheless, as Fortson (2004) comments, "by the time we reach our earliest Armenian records in the 5th century AD, the evidence of any such early kinship has been reduced to a few tantalizing pieces".

Conceivably, Proto-Armenian would have been located between Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian, consistent with the fact that Armenian shares certain features only with Indo-Iranian (the satem change) but others only with Greek (s > h).

[51][52][53][54][55][56] Early and strong evidence was given by Euler's 1979 examination on shared features in Greek and Sanskrit nominal flection.

An effort to modernize the language in Bagratid Armenia and the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia (11–14th centuries) resulted in the addition of two more characters to the alphabet ("օ" and "ֆ"), bringing the total number to 38.

The thematic shift from mainly religious texts to writings with secular outlooks further enhanced and enriched the vocabulary.

Konsdantin Yerzinkatsi and several others took the unusual step of criticizing the ecclesiastic establishment and addressing the social issues of the Armenian homeland.

Often, when writers codify a spoken dialect, other language users are then encouraged to imitate that structure through the literary device known as parallelism.

The antagonistic relationship between the Russian and Ottoman empires led to creation of two separate and different environments under which Armenians lived.

[67] The introduction of new literary forms and styles, as well as many new ideas sweeping Europe, reached Armenians living in both regions.

This created an ever-growing need to elevate the vernacular, Ashkharhabar, to the dignity of a modern literary language, in contrast to the now-anachronistic Grabar.

Numerous dialects existed in the traditional Armenian regions, which, different as they were, had certain morphological and phonetic features in common.

The proliferation of newspapers in both versions (Eastern & Western) and the development of a network of schools where modern Armenian was taught, dramatically increased the rate of literacy (in spite of the obstacles by the colonial administrators), even in remote rural areas.

Armenian (without reference to a specific variety) is officially recognized as a minority language in Cyprus,[5][6] Hungary,[7] Iraq,[8] Poland,[9][10] Romania,[11] and Ukraine.

[79][80] In Lebanon, Syria and Iran, Armenian communities were given greater autonomy than other groups, namely Assyrians and Kurds.

Exceptions to this rule are some words with the final letter է (ե in the reformed orthography) (մի՛թէ, մի՛գուցե, ո՛րեւէ) and sometimes the ordinal numerals (վե՛ցերորդ, տա՛սներորդ, etc.

[94][95] Both classical Armenian and the modern spoken and literary dialects have a system of noun declensions, with six or seven cases but no gender.

[96] The most distinctive feature of Western Armenian is that it has undergone several phonetic mergers; these may be due to proximity to Arabic- and Turkish-speaking communities.

[97] Fortson notes that the modern standard as well has now attained a subordinate clausal structure that greatly resembles a Turkic language.

Distinct Western Armenian varieties currently in use include Homshetsi, spoken by the Hemshin peoples;[99] the dialects of Armenians of Kessab (Քեսապի բարբառ), Latakia and Jisr al-Shughur (Syria), Anjar, Lebanon, and Vakıflı, Samandağ (Turkey), part of the "Sueidia" dialect (Սուէտիայի բարբառ).

It was introduced around AD 405 by Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian linguist and ecclesiastical leader, and originally contained 36 letters.

Due to extensive loaning, only around 1,500 words (G. Jahukyan) are known to have been inherited from Indo-European by the Classical Armenian stage; the rest were lost, a fact that presents a major challenge to endeavors to better understand Proto-Armenian and its place within the family, especially as many of the sound changes along the way from Indo-European to Armenian remain quite difficult to analyze.