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Armenian alphabet

The Armenian alphabet was invented by Armenian linguist and theologian Mesrop Mashtots in 405 CE and is primarily used to write the language Armenian. It is a left-to-right script with 39 letters (36 were there originally, 3 more have been added over time). The order of the alphabet suggests that it was modelled on the Greek alphabet, but the letter shapes are rather dissimilar.

Chart showing all letters of the Armenian alphabet, in uppercase and lowercase forms, with Latin transliteration

Image from Wikipedia, licensed under the CC-BY-SA-4.0 licence. Original found here(external link).

Between 1700 and 1950, over 2,000 books in Ottoman Turkish were written and published in the Armenian alphabet. It was seen by some as more linguistically suited to Turkish than the Arabic alphabet, which was more officially used. The Armenian alphabet was also used sometimes to write other languages spoken in the Ottoman Empire, including Kurdish and Syriac.

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