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Armenian alphabet

Armenian alphabet is Armenian alphabet, 40 letters. Mesrop Mashtots' 39 signs — and triplets of consonants where you expect pairs. The characters are grouped: vowels, triplets: voiced — voiceless — aspirated, the other consonants. Every character on this page can be played: the sound is stored as a file and does not depend on the voices installed on your system.

Updated September 1, 2026 · Lingofly

Vowels

Eight signs. Two of them — ե and ո — are read with a y-glide and a v at the start of a word: Ես reads 'yes', Ոչ reads 'voch'. And ը is a fleeting murmur that in writing is often not written at all.

Triplets: voiced — voiceless — aspirated

The main difficulty of Armenian. Where you are used to two sounds (b and p), Armenian has three: բ 'b', պ 'p' without a puff, փ 'p' with a puff. Five such triplets, fifteen letters.

The other consonants

Sixteen signs, each with its own sound and no triplets anywhere. The pair ր and ռ differs by rolling: ր is a soft single tap, ռ is a full trill.

Ligature

ե and ւ grown together. It has no uppercase form: at the start of a word write Եվ.

What to know about the “Armenian alphabet” script

There are 39 letters: thirty-six from Mashtots plus օ, ֆ and the ligature և, added later. There is a register — uppercase and lowercase differ. The alphabet order has been fixed since the 5th century, and the Armenian numerals follow it: Ա is one, Ժ is ten, Ճ is a hundred.

Test yourself

Five characters at random. No need to answer aloud — just pick; the answer appears at once.

  1. Which character reads as “ah (as in father)”?
  2. Which character reads as “yev (ev at word end)”?
  3. Which character reads as “ye at the start, e inside”?
  4. Which character reads as “s (as in sun)”?
  5. Which character reads as “oo (as in food)”?

How to learn letters so they stay

You cannot learn a table by staring at it. What works: see a character, try to recall its sound, get it wrong, see the right answer — and come back to that character in a day, not in an hour.

That is why the alphabet in the app is learned a few characters at a time, not all at once: nobody holds 40 signs in one sitting.

Frequently asked

How many letters in the Armenian alphabet?

40 letters — Armenian alphabet. The characters have capital and small forms.

Can I listen to how the Armenian letters sound?

Yes. 40 signs on this page have sound: click a character to hear it. The sound works on any phone, and nothing needs to be installed.

How long does it take to learn the Armenian alphabet?

A few characters a day — one to two weeks, if you come back to what you covered. The whole alphabet crammed in an evening is remembered for an evening: without reviews the next day and three days later, the characters are almost entirely gone.

Where to start: letters or words?

With the letters. A word in an unfamiliar script cannot be read at all, and a word card tells you no more than a picture.

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Work through Armenian letters one by oneLearn the letters