Middle Armenian

Middle Armenian (Armenian: Միջին հայերէն or կիլիկեան հայերէն), also called Cilician Armenian (although this may be confused to refer to modern dialects), corresponds to the second period of Armenian which was spoken and written in between the 12th and 18th centuries. It comes after Grabar (Classical Armenian) and before Ashkharhabar (Modern Armenian).

Classical Armenian was predominantly an inflecting and synthetic language, but in Middle Armenian, during the period of Modern Armenian influence, agglutinative and analytical forms influenced the language. In this respect, Middle Armenian is a transition stage from Old Armenian to Modern Armenian (Ashkharhabar). Middle Armenian is notable for being the first written form of Armenian to display Western-type voicing qualities and to have introduced the letters օ and ֆ, which was based on the Greek letters "o" and "φ".