Middle Armenian

History of the Armenian language
Armenian hypothesis Proto-Armenian Classical Armenian (from 405) Middle Armenian (c. 1100 – 1700) Modern Armenian (c. 1700 – present) Eastern, Western, Homshetsi (mixed)
Armenian alphabet Romanization of Armenian
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Middle Armenian (Armenian: Միջին հայերէն or կիլիկեան հայերէն), also called Cilician Armenian (although this may be confused to refer to modern dialects),^[1] corresponds to the second period of Armenian which was spoken and written in between the 12th and 18th centuries. It comes after Grabar (Classical Armenian) and before Ashkharhabar (Modern Armenian).^[2]

Classical Armenian was predominantly an inflecting and synthetic language, but in Middle Armenian, during the period of Modern Armenian influence, agglutinative and analytical forms influenced the language.^[3] In this respect, Middle Armenian is a transition stage from Old Armenian to Modern Armenian (Ashkharhabar). ^[4] Middle Armenian is notable for being the first written form of Armenian to display Western-type voicing qualities and to have introduced the letters օ and ֆ, which was based on the Greek letters "o" and "φ".