Iranian Armenians
Iranian Armenians (Armenian: իրանահայեր, romanized: iranahayer; Persian: ایرانی های ارمنی), also known as Persian Armenians (Armenian: պարսկահայեր, romanized: parskahayer; Persian: ارامنه فارس), are Iranians of Armenian ethnicity who may speak Armenian as their first language. Estimates of their number in Iran range from 70,000 to 500,000. Areas with a high concentration of them include Tabriz, Tehran, Salmas and New Julfa, Isfahan.
Armenians have lived for millennia in the territory that forms modern-day Iran. Many of the oldest Armenian churches, monasteries, and chapels are in Iran. Iranian Armenia (1502–1828), which includes what is now the Armenian Republic, was part of Qajar Iran up to 1828. Iran had one of the largest populations of Armenians in the world, alongside the neighbouring Ottoman Empire until the beginning of the 20th century.
Armenians were influential and active in modernizing Iran during the 19th and 20th centuries. After the Iranian Revolution, many Armenians emigrated to Armenian diasporic communities in North America and Western Europe. Today, the Armenians are Iran's largest Christian religious minority.
Current status[edit]
The Armenians remain the largest religious minority in Iran, and is still the largest Christian community in the country, far ahead of Assyrians.[44] They are appointed two out of the five seats in the Iranian Parliament reserved for religious minorities (more than any other religious minority) and are the only minority with official observing status in the Guardian and Expediency Discernment Councils. Half of Iran's Armenians live in the Tehran area (where they have been established since at least the Safavid era[45]), most notably in its suburbs of Narmak, Majidiyeh, Nadershah, etc. A quarter live in Isfahan, and the other quarter is concentrated in Northwestern Iran or Iranian Azerbaijan.[46][47][48][49]
Language: The Iranian Armenian dialect[edit]
The Armenian language used in Iran holds a unique position in the usage of Armenian in the world, as most Armenians in the Diaspora use Western Armenian. However, Iranian Armenians speak an Eastern Armenian dialect that is very close to that used in Armenia, Georgia, and Russia. Iranian Armenians speak this dialect due in part to the fact that in 1604 much of the Armenian population in Nakhchivan, which used the eastern dialect, was displaced and sent to Isfahan by Shah Abbas.[54] This also allowed for an older version to be preserved which uses classical Armenian orthography known as "Mashtotsian orthography" and spelling, whereas almost all other Eastern Armenian users (especially in the former Soviet Union) have adopted the reformed Armenian orthography which was applied in Soviet Armenia in the 1920s and continues in the present Republic of Armenia.[53] This makes the Armenian language used in Iran and in the Armenian-Iranian media and publications unique, applying elements of both major Armenian language branches (pronunciation, grammar and language structure of Eastern Armenian and the spelling system of Western Armenian).[54]
The Armenian dialects of Iran are referred to collectively in Armenian as Persian Armenian or Parskahayeren (պարսկահայերէն, պարսկահայերեն), or less commonly as Iranian Armenian or Iranahayeren (իրանահայերէն, իրանահայերեն).[53][54] The modern koine spoken in Tehran serves as the prestige dialect, although many historic varieties existed in Iranian Azerbaijan, Central Iran, Isfahan province, the New Julfa district in Isfahan, Kurdistan, Khorasan, and Khuzestan, some of which have persisted in their respective communities.[54] Iranian Armenian dialects are distinguished phonologically from other Eastern Armenian varieties by the widespread pronunciation of the retroflex approximant ⟨ɻ⟩ for ր, which sounds similar to the American English alveolar approximant ⟨ɹ⟩, while Armenian dialects outside of Iran pronounce it as a flap ⟨ɾ⟩.[54] Many dialects also use a low front vowel as a marginal phoneme ⟨æ⟩, primarily in loanwords from Persian, but also in some native Armenian words such as mæt "one; a bit; for a moment" from մի հատ mi hat.[53][54] There are also many calques from Persian, particularly in cultural phraseology and in compound verbs (e.g. պատճառ ելնել patčaṙ elnel from باعث شدن bā'es šodan “to result in; to cause”).[53]