Karabakh dialect
The dialect was spoken by most Armenians living in Soviet Azerbaijan, particularly in the cities of Baku and Kirovabad (Ganja, Gandzak).
[5] According to Strabo (Geographica, Book XI, chapter 4), in the 1st century BC, the population of Armenia, up to Kura River, spoke Armenian.
[3] In his «Բառք եղերականք» (Words of Tragedy), he wrote about the dialect of զԱրցախային meaning "of Artsakh", the historical Armenian name of Karabakh.
[citation needed] Adjarian argues that the damping of b, ɡ, d, dz, dʒ (բ, գ, դ, ձ, ջ) and their transformation to p, k, t, ts, tʃ (պ, տ, կ, ծ, ճ) took place before the invasion of Turkic people to the Armenian Highlands.
According to Adjarian, it was spoken in the cities of Shusha, Elisabethpol (now Ganja), Nukha (now Shaki), Baku, Derbent, Agstafa, Dilijan, Karaklis (now Vanadzor), Kazak, Lori, Karadagh, Lilava quarter of Tabriz (Iran), Burdur and Ödemiş (in Turkey).
[10] Nagorno-Karabakh (nagorno means "mountainous" in Russian, comes from the Soviet-era name of the region, now used by the Western academia for political purposes of neutrality) has been historically populated by Armenians.
Since the late Middle Ages, Turkic tribes migrated to the region and by the 19th century it was populated by both Armenians and partially by Azerbaijanis (called "Caucasian Tatars" at the time).
After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Karabakh was disputed by independent Armenia and Azerbaijan with none of them completely controlling the claimed area.
The war ended in May 1994 with the Armenian forces establishing de facto control of Nagorno-Karabakh and several Azerbaijani districts surrounding the former NKAO.
[12] Today, practically no Armenians remain in Nagorno-Karabakh as a result of the 2023 Azerbaijani offensive, however the dialect still continues to be used by refugees living in Armenia and abroad.
[20] Unlike the Yerevan dialect (spoken by the majority of Armenians in the Republic of Armenia), the stress falls earlier in the word.
List of unique vowels, expressed with the help of analogous Latin, Latin-derived and Cyrillic characters: æ (ä): similar to a in English words maps, cap, or gap.
List of unique consonants, expressed with the help of analogous Latin, Latin-derived and Cyrillic characters: ɕ similar to Russian щ.
