All 39 letters with their names, sounds and a native speaker’s recording. Play a letter to hear it; open an example to see the word in the dictionary.
Ե: ye at the beginning or after vowels, e otherwise
Ը: short neutral vowel between y and e
Թ (t') — like t, but with a light puff of air
Ո: vo at the beginning or after vowels, o otherwise
Չ (ch') — like ch, but with a light puff of air
Ռ: strong rolled rr
Ց (ts') — like ts, but with a light puff of air
Փ (p') — like p, but with a light puff of air
Ք (k') — like k, but with a light puff of air
և: at the beginning, write Եվ; otherwise use և as one letter
Mesrop Mashtots created the Armenian alphabet in 405 AD. It had 36 letters; Օ and Ֆ were added in the Middle Ages, and Eastern Armenian spelling counts the ligature և as a letter too — hence 39. The order and the names of the letters have barely changed in sixteen centuries.
Armenian has three series of stops: voiced (Բ, Գ, Դ), plain (Պ, Կ, Տ) and aspirated (Փ, Ք, Թ), said with a puff of air. Ծ/Ց and Ճ/Չ pair up the same way. Ղ is a throaty sound like the French r, Խ is the ch of Scottish loch, Ռ is a rolled r and Ր a single tap.
The letters are the same, but Western Armenian swaps voiced and plain sounds: բարև is “barev” in Yerevan and “parev” in Beirut or Istanbul. The LearnArmenia dictionary gives both pronunciations for every word.
Ո is “vo” at the start of a word (ոչ — voch) and “o” inside it; Օ is always “o”. The pair ու spells the sound “u”. Ե is “ye” at the start of a word and “e” inside it, and Ը is a short, neutral vowel like the a in “about”.
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