How many letters are in the Armenian alphabet?

38. Mesrop Mashtots created 36 letters around 405 AD, and օ and ֆ were added in the Middle Ages. In the reformed spelling used in Armenia, the ligature և is also counted as a letter, which makes 39.

Who created the Armenian alphabet?

Mesrop Mashtots, a monk and scholar, around 405 AD. He created it so that the Bible and church texts could be read in Armenian.

How do I type the Armenian question mark?

Put ՞ right after the stressed vowel of the word the question is about, not at the end of the sentence: Ինչպե՞ս ես (How are you?). You will find ՞ in the Special popup.

What is the Armenian full stop?

։ (verjaket). It looks like a colon but ends a sentence. A Latin full stop in Armenian text looks wrong to Armenian readers, so use ։ from the Special popup.

Where are the Armenian exclamation and emphasis marks?

Like the question mark, they go over a vowel inside the word: ՜ for exclamation and ՛ for emphasis, as in Ապրե՛ս (Bravo!). Both are in the Special popup.

How do I type the “u” sound in Armenian?

With two letters, ո followed by ւ. Armenian has no single letter for u, so ուր (where) and տուն (house) each use both keys.

What is the letter և?

A ligature of ե and ւ, pronounced “ev”. On its own it means “and”, and it appears inside words like բարև (hello) and Երևան (Yerevan). The reformed spelling counts it as a letter.

What is the difference between Eastern and Western Armenian?

They are the two standard forms of the language. Eastern Armenian is spoken in Armenia and Iran; Western Armenian comes from the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire and is spoken across the diaspora. They differ in pronunciation, grammar and, often, spelling.

Why is Hakob spelled Hagop in Western Armenian?

Western Armenian largely swaps the sounds of pairs like բ/պ and գ/կ compared with Eastern Armenian. The letters are the same, so Հակոբ is read Hakob in Yerevan and Hagop in Beirut or Los Angeles.

What is the Armenian phonetic keyboard layout?

A layout where Armenian letters sit on the Latin keys that sound like them: ա on A, ս on S, դ on D, ք on Q. This page uses it, so typing on a physical keyboard needs no memorising.

Why does my Armenian text show different spellings for the same word?

Armenia uses the spelling reformed in the 1920s, while Western Armenian and the Armenian community of Iran keep the older classical spelling. Both are correct in their own communities.

What does the ʰ in the key hints mean?

They show the Eastern Armenian pronunciation of each letter. ʰ marks an aspirated sound, so թ is tʰ and տ is t. In Western Armenian several of these values are swapped.

Why do people write Armenian in Latin letters?

Often because the phone or computer has no Armenian layout. Messages like “Barev” are quick to type but are not Armenian spelling. This keyboard lets you write բարև without installing anything.

What is the ֏ symbol?

The sign of the Armenian dram, the currency of Armenia. It is in the Special popup with the Armenian punctuation marks.

Do Armenian letters have number values?

Yes. Before Arabic digits were adopted, Armenians wrote numbers with letters: Ա is 1, Բ is 2, and the values climb through tens and hundreds up to Ք, which is 9000. The later additions օ and ֆ were added in the Middle Ages, after the 36-letter number system was already fixed, so they normally have no number value.

Why is Երևան read “Yerevan” and not “Erevan”?

In Eastern Armenian, ե at the start of a word is read “ye” and ո at the start of a word is read “vo”. The exceptions include present-tense forms of “to be”, such as եմ (I am) and ես (you are), read with a plain “e”, and ով (who), read “ov”.

What is the Matenadaran?

The institute of ancient manuscripts in Yerevan, named after Mesrop Mashtots, whose statue stands in front of it. It holds some 23,000 manuscripts and scrolls, including fragments, became a research institute on 3 March 1959, and its collection was added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 1997.

Armenian Keyboard OnlineՀայերեն ստեղնաշար

All 38 Armenian letters plus և on a phonetic layout, with the Armenian full stop, question and exclamation marks one tap away.

38 Letters

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Armenian has used the same alphabet for more than 1,600 years. Around 405 AD the monk and scholar Mesrop Mashtots created a script of 36 letters so that the Bible and church services could be read in Armenian rather than Greek or Syriac. Two more letters, օ (o) and ֆ (f), were added in the Middle Ages, giving the 38 letters of the modern alphabet. In 1922–24, Soviet Armenia reformed the spelling of Eastern Armenian, and a further revision in 1940 made the ligature և a letter of its own. Armenians in the diaspora who speak Western Armenian, and the Armenian community of Iran, kept the older classical spelling, so the same word can still be written two ways today. The core letters stayed the same, but their written shapes evolved: the earliest inscriptions and the oldest surviving manuscripts, from the 9th century, use rounded erkatagir capitals, later scribes developed bolorgir and notrgir hands, and today's print and phone fonts grew out of those styles. Armenian was part of the very first version of Unicode in 1991, with its own block for letters and for the punctuation marks no other script uses.

Armenian punctuation is written inside the word. The question mark ՞ sits over the stressed vowel of the word the question is about, as in Ինչպե՞ս ես (How are you?), and the exclamation mark ՜ and emphasis mark ՛ work the same way. The full stop is ։, which looks like a colon, and ՝ marks a pause. Armenian also has no single letter for the vowel u: it is written with two letters, ո and ւ, as in տուն (house). And և, a ligature of ե and ւ, is both a letter and the everyday word for “and”.

Many Armenians write Armenian in Latin letters because the keyboard is missing. On a phone or laptop set up for English or Russian, a message like “Barev, inchpes es?” is quicker than finding an Armenian layout, and it has become a habit in chats. It is readable, but it is not Armenian spelling, and search engines and spell-checkers do not treat it as Armenian. The layout question is also real: Eastern and Western Armenian keyboards put letters in different places, and the phonetic layout on this page, where ա sits on A, ս on S and ք on Q, is the one most people can use without learning anything new. Ethnologue counts about 3.8 million speakers of Eastern Armenian and 1.58 million of Western Armenian, with the largest Western communities in Lebanon, the United States, Georgia and France. This keyboard shows all 38 letters and և on screen, plus the Armenian punctuation marks in the Special popup.

Armenian Keyboard OnlineՀայերեն ստեղնաշար

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How To Use

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Armenian Keyboard for Any App

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Free Armenian Keyboard Online.
Type from any device — no download, no install.

Punctuation That Sits Inside the Word

՞ ՛ ։ — on the word itself

ու is “u”

և means “and”

Same letters, swapped sounds

Frequently Asked
Questions

Free Keyboards, All Online

Armenian Keyboard OnlineՀայերեն ստեղնաշար

One click to insert — or copy straight to clipboard

How To Use

Type

Copy

Paste

Armenian Keyboard for Any App

Snapchat

WhatsApp

Instagram

TikTok

Free Armenian Keyboard Online.Type from any device — no download, no install.

Punctuation That Sits Inside the Word

՞ ՛ ։ — on the word itself

ու is “u”

և means “and”

Same letters, swapped sounds

Frequently AskedQuestions

Free Keyboards, All Online

Free Armenian Keyboard Online.
Type from any device — no download, no install.

Frequently Asked
Questions