Many theories have been told about the origins of the armenian nation before, here in this forum, and outside of it. We have been related to: Sumerians, American Indians, Chinese, Atlantians, Martians, etc......
Well..... This is my theory, based in some research and my own knowledge of history and idioms (it is my passion).
Some time ago people used to believe, that our language was a very "rare" dialect of Iranian. The scholars that proposed this weren’t Armenian and probably didn’t know the language too well, they just based their theory in some lexical parallelisms. Later on, this was proven wrong, Armenian was in deed indo-European, but from a quite distinct branch of the family, one where there was only one language: Armenian (in recent times they have added Phrygian, Thracian, and maybe Dacian to this group).
When the scholars tried to group Indo-European language they created two groups: Satem and Kentum, based in just one fonetic shift: k to s…… for example, the way to pronounce the word 100, Centum in Latin (c is pronounced k) or satem in Sanskrit. If we take a look at this classification, it is just another attempt from the proud Europeans or Americans to split east from west. Satem languages were conveniently: Indo-Iranians, Armenian and Baltic-Slavic; and Kentum were Latin, German, Greek, and Celts. Again, later on, this theory was proved wrong for many reasons. Some of them were:
- Germanic and Baltic language were too close linguistically and genetically speaking to be considered separated at that early stage.
- There were close relation between Greek (kentum) and Iranian (satem)
- In many languages originated from Latin the word 100 is pronounced with and “s” or “z” sound (cien, in Spanish, pronounced “zien”), are they satem ????; generally speaking the shift from c to z or s, occurred in relatively recent times.
- What is the position of Germanic languages, were the shift isn´t to k, nor to s…… but to h (hundert in geman)??????; They were tied to kentum group just because they were “western” when they had more common characteristic with the “satem” group). By the way, the Armenian word for 100 we all know it and doesn´t start whit an “s”.
- At last but not least, there were many other “shifts”. You can compare them and make your own conclusions here:
http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/indoeuropean.html
At this point Indo European families are classified as follows:
- Tocharian, Celts, Latins, Hitites (Anatolian), Ilirians.
- Germanic, Armenians, Greek, Iranians, Slavics.
Armenian is considered close related to Greek and Iranian. To Greek because of our grammar, the fun fact is that our grammar is in deed Greek, it was copied from Greek grammar in the V century by Surp Mesrop Mashtots, but again only “we” know that . And apart most of our vocabulary is Parthian (Iranian) or Greek.
If we want to compare vocabulary we must compare the most basic words:
- root: ut (Armenian) / eat, et, es (Germanic).
- Dzov / See, Zee, Sea.
- Yes – Es, Ys /I, Ik, Ich.
- Du – Tun /Du (german)
- Tun, Dun (house, Armenian) / Town (Englisch)
- Ir (to him, something like that, Armenian) / Ihr (to him, something like that), er (german)
- Em / I am
- Wotk / voed (dutch)
- Root: ëse, ase- / say, sagen
- Lsel / listen
- Mard, man
- Hink, fijf (we lost the initial “f”)
- Hayr, Fayr (Icelandic, something like that) (again we lost the initial “f”)
- Sev, Schwartz.
- Vad, Bad
- Kidel – Kennen (german)
- I cold simplely go on for hours
Well enough of linguistics, lest go to history:
At this point it is clear that we are a mixture of various prehistoric groups, the three mayors were:
- Urartians
- Hayassa-Azi
- Armens.
Again, we cannot forget and many other groups left a genetic proof on us: Cimmerians, Scythians, Parthians, Assyrians, Greeks, Celts, Goths, Crusaders, and like or not, Tartars. But it is true that our main ground is from the mixture of these three peoples. Now what are they????.
Urartians: were aboriginal to the Caucasus, linguistically are related to Georgians, and Caucasian people, they formed the main seed of our great nation.
Hayassa-Azi: we know very little about them, but we can assure that they were related to the Hittites, and the first Indo-Europeans that reached Anatolia. The name we give our nation comes from them “Hay”.
Armens: They came to the region somewhere between the 11 and VI century B.C. from central Europe. They contributed to the fall of the empires of the area; their invasion in the area is compared to the period of the fall of the Roman Empire. The Armens were like savage. Their gods were similar to the central Europeans (Tork, Thor, etc….). They weren’t the more numerous of the tribes, but somehow they imposed their language (which was very distortioned) and culture to the others.
Now, this is interesting: we were know to Greeks and Persians by “Armenoi, Arman, Ermen, Erman”. While we called ourselves always “Hay”. If you take in considerations that the peoples called “Germans, our Germanic” never called themselves like that (Germans call themselves Deutsche; Dutch, Nederlandse; Anglosaxons, English; and so on). The name “German”, and its form “Erman” or “Yerman” was a name that other peoples gave to a large number of tribes with similar characteristics.
This doesn’t mean we Armenians are “German” this mean that part of our origin is German, as part is Urartian, Hittite, Assyrian, Greek, Tartar, Celt, etc…. By the way, a blonde, tall north Italian is as “Latin” as the rather brown, darked haired, darked eyed, south Andaluzan Spaniard. In this aspect I like to compare Armenians with Italians, we are so mixed as they are. In Italy a Sicilian or Napolitan with dark hair, dark eyes and dark skin is as Italian as the blonde, blue eyes from Milan. We Armenians are just as diverse; some of us have light eyes and skin, while others are a little darker; WE ARE ALL ARMENIANS, and have ALL THE ABOVE MISTURE
