Karabakh dialect

The Karabakh dialect (Ղարաբաղի բարբառ, Ġarabaġi barbař), also known as Artsakh dialect (Արցախի բարբառ, Arc'axi barbař) is an ancient Eastern Armenian dialect with a unique phonetic and syntactic structure mainly spoken in the de facto independent Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and partially in the southern and northeastern parts of the Republic of Armenia, i.e. in the provinces of Artsakh, Utik, Syunik and Gugark of historical Armenia. The dialect was spoken by most Armenians living in Soviet Azerbaijan, particularly in the cities of Baku and Kirovabad (Ganja, Gandzak). As the first Nagorno-Karabakh War escalated, Armenians of Azerbaijan were forced to leave their homes. Today, most of Armenians immigrants and refugees from Azerbaijan live in Armenia and Russia, where along with standard Armenian and Russian, the Karabakh dialect is sometimes spoken. The dialect is considered to be one of the most widely spoken Armenian dialects. No accurate information on the number of speakers is available. The population of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic is around 141,400, according to the 2010 data. An estimated 150,000 diaspora Armenians are originally from Karabakh. According to Strabo (Geographica, Book XI, chapter 4), in the 1st century BC, the population of Armenia, up to Kura River, spoke Armenian. The 8th century Armenian historian Stepanos Syunetsi was the first one to mention the local dialect of Artsakh. In his «Բառք եղերականք» (Words of Tragedy), he wrote about the dialect of զԱրցախային meaning "of Artsakh", the historical Armenian name of Karabakh. According to the prominent linguist Hrachia Adjarian, Armenian dialects, including the Karabakh dialect started to develop in the 12th century. Adjarian argues that the damping of b, ɡ, d, dz, dʒ (բ, գ, դ, ձ, ջ) and their transformation to p, k, t, ts, tʃ (պ, տ, կ, ծ, ճ) took place before the invasion of Turkic people to the Armenian Highlands. In 1711 Karabakh dialect is mentioned by Johann Joachim Schröder.