The Magic Alphabet

The name of the first letter of the Armenian alphabet AIB includes the B sound, which is the sound of the letter “BEN” that follows “AIB”. This linking of letter names and sounds makes the recital of the alphabet flow more smoothly. AIB is the most frequently used letter in Armenian writing. It is mostly encountered at the beginning and the middle of words, but occasionally at the end. It could be explained by the fact that the original Indo-European proto-language had two phonetic variations of the vowel [a]–the short and long–which were preserved in the beginning and middle parts of Armenian words, but disappeared in the world endings. Similar trend can be traced in English, where letter and sound “a” at the end of words can be found only in words originated in Latin and Semitic languages

The name of the first letter of the Armenian alphabet AIB includes the B sound, which is the sound of the letter “BEN” that follows “AIB”. This linking of letter names and sounds makes the recital of the alphabet flow more smoothly. AIB is the most frequently used letter in Armenian writing. It is mostly encountered at the beginning and the middle of words, but occasionally at the end. It could be explained by the fact that the original Indo-European proto-language had two phonetic variations of the vowel [a]–the short and long–which were preserved in the beginning and middle parts of Armenian words, but disappeared in the world endings. Similar trend can be traced in English, where letter and sound “a” at the end of words can be found only in words originated in Latin and Semitic languages