Karin dialect

The Karin dialect (Armenian: Կարնոյ բարբառ, Karno barbař) is a Western Armenian dialect originally spoken in and around the city of Erzurum (called Karin by Armenians), now located in eastern Turkey.

Before World War I, the Karin dialect was spoken by the local Armenian populations in much of the Erzurum Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire and Kars Oblast of the Russian Empire. After the Armenian genocide of 1915, most of Erzurum's Armenian population took refuge to the Russian-controlled parts of Armenia. The city of Kars and its Russian oblast became part of the First Republic of Armenia in 1918, but was occupied by Kemalist Turkey as a result of the Turkish–Armenian War in fall 1920.

Today, it is one of the most widely spoken Western Armenian dialects, most of which became virtually extinct after the genocide. Nowadays, it is spoken in the northwestern Republic of Armenia (in and around the city of Gyumri) and by the Armenian minority in Georgia's Samtskhe-Javakheti province.