It is commonly considered a dialect, but is unintelligible to speakers of Standard Eastern Armenian.

Zok is significantly different from other Armenian varieties, leading to myths about its origins.

One common belief is that the Zoks are half-Armenian, half-Jewish merchants who created a secret language to conceal their business dealings from outsiders.

[2] Additionally, Zok has notable morphological and syntactic innovations, particularly in the organization of its tense-aspect-mood system, which is unparalleled in other Armenian dialects.

[citation needed] The language spoken by this group is similar to the neighboring dialects of Karabagh and Julfa.