Which cues can I listen for to distinguish spoken Georgian and Armenian?

Question

I'm living in an area of Tbilisi Georgia that is traditionally the ethnic Armenian area. I would like to take the opportunity to listen to people in the street to detect whether anybody is speaking Armenian.

From an English speaker's perspective the phonology of Georgian and Armenian are very similar, they both have ejective consonants for instance. Other than some words borrowed from each other or from common sources though, the languages are totally unrelated.

I have been developing a feeling for Georgian as I try to learn it but I'm not at all proficient yet. I also spent a few days in Armenia last year and learned a few words but not enough to have any feeling for the language.

So are there some sounds, morphemes, common words, or intonation clues that I can listen for to know when somebody is speaking Armenian rather than Georgian?

(For instance, I used to have the same problem with Japanese and Korean but now the easiest thing is to listen for lots of "-yo" endings for Korean and lots of "-masu" endings for Japanese.)

Answer 1

The two languages have a similar set of sounds, and both have even intonation. But:

• Armenian has two r, one of which is soft, Georgian r is always the hard one.

• Armenian has k and q but no qʼ.

• Georgian words often end in -o, in Armenian it is rare at the end of a word or sentence, other than nicknames.

• Certain vowel combinations like -au- and -eu- are uncommon in Armenian.

• Certain stop words, function words and elements like -bili or -uli or -utyun or -akan are specific to Georgian or Armenian.

• The rhythm is noticeably different.

We can be more specific, but every dialect sounds a bit different, and in Georgia both Eastern and Western dialects are spoken.

Answer 2

You may distinguish Armenian by two types of R used in a phrase (provided its sound sequence is long enough): there are trilled /r/ ռ = ṙ (similar to Spanish, Swedish or German phoneme) and tapped /ɾ/ ր = r, which is more like English phoneme.

Georgian, on the other hand, uses the rhotic r/რ, which is more like Russian.

The melos of speech also differs in two languages, but I cannot explain it verbally.

Answer 3

Armenian (at least Western Armenian) seems to place stress mainly on the final syllable. From the little I've read about Georgian, it seems to prefer penultimate stress. Overall, Armenian sounds much more "lilting" when spoken than the Georgian I've heard in various video clips (and more lilting than standard English, for that matter).

Also, I think that Georgian has far more words that start with consonant clusters (CC-, CCC-) than Armenian does. Armenian tends -- again, based on the Western Armenian I've heard -- to break up initial consonant clusters with a schwa vowel. For example, տխուր "sad" is spelled as if pronounced [dxur], but is actually pronounced [dəxur], and գծել "to draw (a picture, etc.)" looks as though it would be pronounced [kdzel], but is in fact pronounced [kədzel].

One other thing: you will probably hear a lot of words ending in -ner from Armenian speakers, as it is the plural suffix for nouns, perhaps the most common suffix overall.

(I know that the question is over 3 years old, but I thought I would answer anyway.)

Answer 4

Well, I am trying to learn Georgian and Armenian also, and I think just some Eastern Armenian dialects have ejective consonants. As far as I know Stardard Eastern Armenian has a three way opposition concerning its plosives and affricates, plain voiceless, aspirated voiceless and voiced.

Maybe you should hear some Armenian audios to get used with the differences, the intonation for example, and the stress in Armenian is on the last syllable. Reading some vocabulary will make you get a "feeling" too.