Armenian Letter #1

One of the most important letters of most of the alphabets in the world is the first letter, “A”. And Armenian alphabet isn’t an exception. So, we are going to learn the first letter, “A”.

READING
Typed forms:
Capital Letter: Ա
Small Letter: ա

You can see different types of capital and small letters of Ա on the picture below.

Near Aparan (in Armenia) there is an open-air museum of the Armenian letters. It exhibits huge Armenian stone-letters with different ornaments. Both Armenians and tourists like to make photos near those letters. So, hear you can see one such photo. The man is posing near the letter we have just learned-Ա.

SPEAKING

Pronunciation: [a] (like "a" in English word "answer") in all cases.
To have a general idea how "A" is pronounced in Armenian you can watch the video below. There you will hear a lot of words starting with "A". The letter "A" is pronounced in the beginning, in the middle and in the end of the word the way you will hear in this video:

WRITING

The letter Ա is written above the line, like the English letter "A". Now we will learn how to write the first letter of the Armenian alphabet – “A”. As you have already known all the letters of the Armenian alphabet have capital letter and small letter. Let’s start from the capital letter.

You will need to do 3 simple steps to write this letter.

1. Draw a curve above the line like it is shown on the picture below (step 1). Start from the top, then go down and turn the line to the right. Don’t write it straight (vertical). In written forms of the Armenian alphabet the letters are a little bit tilted to the right. The height of this curve is equal to the height of the capital letters in other languages, for example the capital letter “M” in English.

2. Then draw a tilted straight line like it is shown on the picture below (step 2). This line should touch the end of the curve that you have drowned on step 1.

3.Now start to draw a smaller curve starting from the point where you have finished the curve that you have drowned on step 1, like it is shown on the picture below (step 3). The height of this curve should be nearly 1/3 of the height of the whole letter.

Now you know how to write the capital letter “A” of the Armenian alphabet (number 4 on the picture above).

Let’s learn how to write the small letter “a” of the Armenian alphabet.

You again will need to do 3 simple steps to write this letter. This is easier than the capital letter, as all the steps are the same.

1. Draw a small curve above the line (like the first part of the written form of English “w”), like it is shown on the picture below (step 5). The height of this particle should be the same as the height of the small curve of the capital letter “A” (described above, step 3). Compare those heights (6 on the picture below)

2. Draw the same particle again. The second particle should touch the end of the first one, like it is shown on the picture below (step 7).

3. Draw the same particle again. The third particle should touch the end of the second one, like it is shown on the picture below (step 8).

Now you know how to write the small letter “a” of the Armenian alphabet (number 9 on the picture above).

It’s easier to write the Armenian letters if you compare the written forms and the typed letters. Please, compare these two types of the letter “A”.

Review

Please, do the following:
1. Take a piece of paper and draw the typed forms of the Armenian Capital and Small Letters "A".
2. You may want to repeat the whole writting process, so, here it is.


Now you can go to the Letter #2.