Talk:Armenian language

message: Austin's hypothesis of an Anatolian connection is extremely problematic.  According to the article it is based on purely negative evidence, which proves nothing.  Mandarin lacks long vowels and the feminine gender.  Should it be grouped with Armenian and Anatolian?  I wonder if the source provides anything better. It seems like mere outdated speculation that doesn't take into account the importance of synapomorphy for classification.  If not, I am in favor of deleting the reference entirely, or moving it to a new section for fringe theories.μηδείς (talk) 14:35, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: That can be expanded tenfold. Ties between Armenian and Luwian are very interesting and are presented in virtually every single IE studies book. Hardly a fringe theory. Just requires better sources. Another major thing that's missing from this article is a brief analysis of the Hurro-Urartian substrate in Armenian.-- Ευπάτωρ Talk!! 14:56, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you have such sources to recommend?  Sounds very interesting if there are common innovations.  I agree about the need for mention of the possibility of substratum influence.  Unfortunately the local university has limited materials on historical linguistics, and I am very busy - but I intend to get to it.μηδείς (talk) 17:20, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anatolian "connection" 

message: Currently, the article on ARMENIANS describes Armenian as a language isolate.  There is no middle ground here, either it is, or it is not.  Whatever the linguistic subject matter experts conclude the Reliable Sources in the majority state, either this language article, or the article on Armenians has to be adjusted.   Please prioritize this, as currently you have very contradictory information in the Wiki. (adjusted for my mistake)HammerFilmFan (talk) 23:19, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Armenian is not a language isolate and never has been.  Linguists have placed it in the Indo-European language family since the 19th century.  --Taivo (talk) 05:12, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed.  --Taivo (talk) 05:15, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks.  I sort of smelled some nationalism going on there about this.  :-) This was added in the March 2012 timeframe by user Lycurgus. HammerFilmFan (talk) 05:41, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

text: There is no such thing as "an Indo-European language isolate", Eupator.  "Language isolate" is a technical term for a language with no known relatives.  That is not true of Armenian.  You cite Greek and Albanian as other "Indo-European language isolates", but you have obviously not bothered to read either of those articles, and have not read this article either.  None of those articles call these languages "isolates".  Linguistic science simply does not use that term for these three languages or any other language that has been demonstrably placed in a language family.  --Taivo (talk) 11:03, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

text: All three are "family-level isolates", as Wurm would put it.  An "isolate" just means no relatives at a certain level – presumably Basque has relatives too if we were able to go back far enough. — kwami (talk) 18:03, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  language isolate, or not? Articles must be co-ordinated 

message: Eastern and Western Armenian are not mutually intelligible, according to experts from Wikimedia Armenia whom I met in Berlin this past weekend. We discussed vocabulary and paradigms. There will likely be a Western Armenian Wikipedia in due course. However, I'll edit the page with external citations. -- Evertype·✆ 18:32, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The citation from Daniels and Bright is not relevant. That book is about writing systems. -- Evertype·✆ 18:34, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The citation is from Avedis Sanjian, a Professor of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures at UCLA, not Daniels and Bright. I've added several other reputable sources. Did you really cite "wordreference" "reddit" and "100years100facts" as reliable sources on Wikipedia?   --Երևանցի talk  18:52, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: To hell with you. Yerevantsi. They are mutually unintelligible enough that there are live, ongoing requests for a Western Armenian Wikipedia from both Eastern and Western Wikipedians. I, as a linguist, have been convinced by the request by the user community, and we'll go ahead and proceed with it. My Eastern Armenian colleagues indicated clearly that simple nominal and verbal paradigms differed considerably, in addition to the phonology. So go right ahead, Yerevantsi, and summarily delete citations from the Encyclopaedia Britannica and others. (The Reddit one was poor, and I was about to delete it myself.) You're wrong (and you haven't even argued that you yourself find the two languages mutually intelligible in speech and or in writing). But I'm not going to fight with you, because there are real users out there whose linguistic needs can be served without edit warring with you. The fact is that the mutual intelligibility is DISPUTED. If you care about Armenian, why don't YOU do the work to investigate for yourself. Oh, and Daniels and Bright is a book about writing systems, not about grammar, and if Sanjian can understand both that's probably because he's been specially triained to do so, just like the citations which you suppressed said. -- Evertype·✆ 19:11, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Try to stay civil. It's not my job to do original research here. Cite published reliable sources or don't edit at all. Do not cite online forums. --Երևանցի talk  19:26, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

text: Forums and reddit posts are not reliable sources, neither are your tall tales of conversations with supposed experts at Wikimedia Foundation events. You adding such sources to say that there are not sources (which is not the case) is a clear-cut example of WP:DISRUPTION and WP:POINT. Also, please be WP:CIVIL. I suggest you refrain from going down this path. Étienne Dolet (talk) 20:28, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

text: This is utter fringe nonsense. Revert on sight.-- Ευπάτωρ Talk!! 17:14, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: They are definitely mutually intelligible under the meaning of that term, however more content could be added examining the degree of that mutually intelligibility and whether they are increasingly diverging. I suggest that is the route Evertype should take regarding this issue, if they can find appropriate sources. BTW, I think the issue of a Western Armenian Wikipedia is more connected to the preservation and representation of a language and culture under risk than a real difficulty of Western Armenian speakers understanding content on the Armenian-language Wikipedia. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 15:01, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: They are mutually intelligible, but not for all speakers; especially, when considering many words used in Eastern Armenian are not Armenian - i.e. կազար or khaladinik (Russian for refrigerator).  This problem is compounded when the language is written - there are many words which are spelled differently.Clean-up Time (talk) 10:36, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mutual intelligibility of Eastern and Western Armenian 

message: Why armenian language is also a branch of independent of indo european kanguage along with albanian?
If isolated, it would be counted as the one of most unique language ever seen.
I think in my opinion it would be imoossible to have armenian place at just below the indo european kanguage branch. Why armenian language is not claasified as kartvelian language despite being close neighbor? 2404:8000:1027:85F6:4114:B8DC:1B6C:6EF (talk) 03:45, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not isolated? 

message: Why armenian language is vested within the language family called indo european language despite being just 1 branch, make it a language isolate? 182.2.137.92 (talk) 10:56, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't understand what you are trying to say. Are you questioning whether Armenian is an Indo-European language or are you questioning whether it is an isolate? DeCausa (talk) 11:11, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: i think in my brain, the armenian is considered a language isolate with no similiarity and connections to indo european languages family. 2404:8000:1027:2C72:285E:FE91:A2CF:E723 (talk) 08:09, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

text: I've just noticed your edit which I reverted. It is a member of the Indo-European language family. That family is divided into a number of branches each with a number of languages eg the Balto-Slavic branch splits into Russian, Polish, Bulgarian etc. However, the only language on the Armenian branch is the Armenian language. It is an isolate because it is the only language on that branch of the Indo-European language family. DeCausa (talk) 11:38, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: According to me there is no reason to classify armenian as a single branch of indo european languages family? 2404:8000:1027:2C72:285E:FE91:A2CF:E723 (talk) 08:08, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry "according to me" is not something that works in Wikipedia. Reliable sources classify it as an Indo-European language and that's what we follow. DeCausa (talk) 08:41, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Indo european language? 

message: The article says both:
* 
* 
Which one is correct?
Do we have better (recent + scientific) reliable sources on the mutual intelligibility? Those we currently source are weak:
* Rouben Paul Adalian 2010: he's a historian, not a linguist
* Ara Baliozian 1975: old source and he's not a linguist either
* George L. Campbell 2003: looks OK
* Sanjian, Avedis K. (1996): it's an in passing remark in a book about writing systems
I found:
* Bernard Comrie 2008 notes that: "Armenian, spoken primarily in Armenia though also in the Armenian diaspora originating in eastern Turkey, is another branch of Indo-European consisting of a single language, although the differences between Eastern Armenian (spoken mainly in Armenia) and Western Armenian (spoken originally mainly in Turkey) are considerable, and there are two written languages."
* Bert Vaux: "Homshetsma is generally treated as a dialect of western Armenian. The two are generally not mutually intelligible, however,"
* According to this article there are cases of non mutual intelligibility and Western Armenian speakers living in Armenia tend to switch to Eastern Armenian to make sure they're understood.
* In A grammar of Iranian Armenian, Bert Vaux et al. note: "There are two standardized dialects that are mutually intelligible after significant exposure: Standard Western Armenian (SWA) and Standard Eastern Armenian (SEA); henceforth Standard Western and Standard Eastern."
* Keith Brown 2010: "The relationship between the two modern literary dialects is somewhat complicated; there are many grammatical differences [...] and lexical differences [...], and most Western speakers have difficulty understanding Eastern, but many Eastern speakers are relatively comfortable with the Western dialect. This asymmetry in mutual intelligibility most likely results from the fact that large numbers of speakers of Western dialects fled to Eastern Armenia following the Russo-Turkish war in 1828 and the Turkish Genocide in 1915—1920, whereas before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 most Western Armenians had little or no exposure to Eastern Armenian. The fact that there is some mutual intelligibility in both directions can also be linked to the fact that the literary dialects tend to borrow the same forms from Classical Armenian, and (at least in recent decades) employ the same newly coined words." (p. 70) (later republished in the 2013 Encyclopedia of Linguistics published by Taylor & Francis)
Based on the above sources I suggest the following text: 
a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 16:33, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: As no one reacted: I did it. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 19:03, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mutual intelligibility of Eastern and Western Armenian 

message: Thanks for the explanation, a455bcd9 (Antoine), regarding the infobox. Are you going to reinstate the information removed in an existing/new subheading since the content is still topic related? Or shall I? I just don't want to duplicate our efforts. Archives908 (talk) 21:13, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll do it now, sorry I should have done it at the same time, but there wasn't a section about status and usage: I'll add it. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 21:18, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you so much! Archives908 (talk) 21:24, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text:  a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 21:56, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal of sourced content