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Often I encounter arguments that Armenian is in fact not an Indo-European language. The claims assert that the regular correspondences between Armenian and PIE are too unrealistic, too rare and too irregular. The basic vocabulary is quite different, including the numerals up to ten and words for relatives. The existing correspondences may be explained by Persian borrowings or by a distant genetic relation between the languages through a pre-Indo-European super-family (that is, Euroasiatic/Nostratic, or even earlier).

So, are there solid arguments to prove that Armenian is in fact Indo-European?

Some Armenian words compared to Lithuanian, Latin and Sanskrit:

  • Lith. and Skt. sūnus (son) Arm. ordi
  • Lith. and Skt. avis and Lat. ovis (sheep) Arm. ochxari
  • Lith. dūmas and Skt. dhūmas and Lat. fumus (smoke) Arm. c'owx
  • Lith. antras and Skt. antaras (second, the other) Arm. myows
  • Lith. vilkas and Skt. vṛkas (wolf) Arm. gayl
  • Lith. ratas and Lat. rota (wheel) and Skt. rathas (carriage). Arm. aniv
  • Lith. senis and Lat. senex (an old man) and Skt. sanas (old). Arm. c'erowk
  • Lith. vyras and Lat. vir (a man) and Skt. vīras (man, hero). Arm. tghamard
  • Lith. angis (a kind of snakes) and Lat. anguis (snake) Arm. o'd'
  • Lith. linas and Lat. linum (flax, compare with English 'linen') Arm. vowsh
  • Lith. jungiu and Lat. iungo (I join) Arm. harakic linel
  • Lith. gentys and Lat. gentes (tribes) and Skt. jánas (genus, race). Arm. cegh
  • Lith. mėnesis and Lat. mensis and Skt masa (month) Arm. amis
  • Lith. dantis and Lat. dentes and Skt dantas (teeth) Arm. atam
  • Lith. naktis and Lat. noctes and Skt. naktis (night) Arm. gisher
  • Lith. sėdime and Lat. sedemus (we sit) and Skt. siedati (sits). Arm. nstel
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There's a complement to this that apparently some people think that Georgian is in fact Indo-European too! – hippietrail Jan 7 at 17:37
It's not really obvious which sounds are meant by the romanizations of Armenian here: ch, x, c, w, ow, y, o'. – hippietrail Jan 8 at 4:52
Your problem is that you compare wrong words, for example, the Armenian word "gisher" should have Latin "vesper"(and Russian "vecher") as its cognates. That's why you fail to see Indo-European reflexes in Armenian. – Alex B. Jan 10 at 13:47
And try to use Greek data; e.g., in the above-mentioned example, Armenian "gisher" and Greek "hesperos". – Alex B. Jan 10 at 14:01
"@Alex, this could be a borrowing – Anixx Jan 10 at 14:30
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3 Answers

up vote 9 down vote

When it comes to distant relatives, simply comparing words or grammar is of no use. What should be done instead is establishing regular sound correspondences between cognates.

Here's a table that shows something like that (though it doesn't show the underlying material)

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This table does not include the most notorious or Armenian correspondencies such as dv->erk – Anixx Jan 11 at 12:12
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2.1.22.6 PIE *dw‑ > Arm. ‑rk‑ or ‑k‑: Pedersen 1906: 176‑177, 178; AčaṙLiak 6, 1971: 402‑403; Grammont 1918: 251-252; Pisani 1934: 185; Dumézil 1938b: 51-52; Belardi 1950: 148; Schmitt 1972/74: 10‑11; J̌ahukyan 1982: 75; Ivanov 1983: 27‑29 (*dw‑ > *rkw‑> erk‑); Szemerényi 1985: 788‑795; Vennemann 1986: 33‑34, 41‑42; Kortlandt 2003: 2‑3, 7, 28, and especially 88‑95 (= 1989); Ravnæs 1991: 162-166; de Lamberterie 1992: 257; Bolognesi 1994: 34‑35; Harkness 1996; Olsen 1999: 270‑271; Beekes 2003: 199‑200, 209; Viredaz 2003. – Alex B. Jan 11 at 16:45
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up vote 6 down vote

I have never seen a serious linguist claiming that Armenian didn't belong to the IE family (it is a satem language). Where did you read that?

I strongly recommend chapter 16, Armenian, in Fortson 2010 textbook, esp. parts "The Introduction" and "From PIE to Classical Armenian", pp. 382-393. It's a good idea to read it thoroughly!

Also, have a look at http://iedo.brillonline.nl/dictionaries/content/armenian/2-2-aspects.html (it's a chapter from an excellent etymological dictionary of Armenian lexicon inherited from the IE)

Some of the claims you made are in fact incorrect (e.g. words for relatives; also see Basic Words from Wikipedia, posted by Daniel Briggs):

Arm. mayr ‘mother’

Arm. hayr ‘father’

Arm. khoyr ‘sister’

Arm. eġbayr 'brother'

Arm. dowstr 'daughter'

Arm. taygr 'brother-in-law' (cf. Sanskrit devar-)

Arm. nu 'daughter-in-law' (cf. Greek nuos, Old Church Slavonic snuxa)

some other common examples are:

Arm. kov ‘cow’

Arm. tun ‘house’

Arm. em ‘I am’

Also, it's a good idea to compare Armenian with Greek:

Arm. get 'water' - Greek hydor

Arm. ayr 'man'- Greek aner

Re: numerals, your assumption is also wrong; here's a quote from Matasovic 2009 (Winter 1992 is of the same opinion):

"Here are the numerals from 1 to 10: mi, erku, erekc, čcorkc, hing, vecc, ewtcn, utc, inn, tasn. Although this is not obvious at first sight, their forms are inherited from PIE (*smi-yo-, *dwoh1, *treyes, *kwetwores, *penkwe, *(k's)wek's, *septm, *h3ek'toh1, *newn, *dek'm)."

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water - IE *vodor, Eurasiatic *wetV, Borean *WVTV. No evidence that it could only come directly from PIE (for example, Nenets, Mansi *wit.) – Anixx Jan 21 at 0:39
The reconstructed forms you mentioned (Eurasiastic, Borean) are highly questionable since they make certain highly questionable assumptions. And what use is the form with two unspecified (i.e. any) vowels, like in *WVTV? Also, a comment on methodology. If you dispute the IE origin of that particular word, the burden is on you, not on me. So far, I have seen nothing. – Alex B. Jan 21 at 20:14
Also, it seems you don't really understand how IE languages developed from PIE. Think (time-wise) about when PIE existed and when Classical (Old) Armenian emerged. – Alex B. Jan 21 at 20:16
And why do you have "v" in your PIE form? It should be "w" (sometimes also written as "u"). The voiced (labio)dental fricative isn't usually reconstructed for PIE. – Alex B. Jan 21 at 23:09
Yes. This is just another spelling for the same phoneme. Like in classical Latin they used v for both. – Anixx Jan 21 at 23:11
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up vote 5 down vote

I requested entries for all of the words listed by the OP on the English Wiktionary.

My Armenian friend in Yerevan who contributes Armenian and Old Armenian to Wiktionary and has an impressive collection of Armenian etymological dictionaries has now made (or added etymology to) the entries on every word plus provided these notes which I've copied verbatim thanks to both Vahagn and Wiktionary:

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Thanks. Still the question remains as the number of cognates is not that big and the correspondencies are either too far or represented by only a few examples (there are some correspondencies which were attested on no more than 4 words). – Anixx Jan 9 at 11:50
I know next to nothing about Armenian, so I'm just going to leave this as a comment, but it seems like on the one hand, a great majority of Armenian basic words and verb conjugation comes from Indo-European and so there's really no question that it is an Indo-European language; on the other, the path from Proto-Indo-European to Armenian is windy. It seems like a wealth of past and future articles can be written shedding light on comparative linguistics in terms of the evolution of Armenian. Unfortunately, I cannot point you to any. – Daniel Briggs Jan 10 at 22:26
There are only 500 words thought to be inherited to Armenian from PIE. Definitely not a majority. – Anixx Jan 11 at 1:55
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Basic words – Daniel Briggs Jan 11 at 14:02
Well, we don't have to convince Anixx that Armenian is an IE language. Professional linguists solved that problem a long time ago. There is so much written on Armenian that it will take a couple of years just to read it: mostly in German, some in Russian and English, and, of course, in Armenian. – Alex B. Jan 11 at 16:41
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