Locale Hy 001

Reference data for the Armenian locale — endonym Հայերեն, written in the Armenian script, left-to-right (LTR).

Identifiers

• BCP 47 tag: hy-001
• ISO 639-1: hy
• ISO 639-3: hye
• Script: Armn (Armenian)
• Region: 001 (World)
• Text direction: ltr — left-to-right (LTR)

Speakers (approximate)

• L1 (native): 5,300,000
• L2 (additional): 1,400,000
• L1+L2 (total): 6,700,000

Regional variants

This is the base/macro locale for Armenian. Region-specific variants in this dataset:

• Locale Hy Am (Armenian (Armenia))

Pluralization

CLDR plural categories for this locale: one, other (2 forms).

• one — i = 0,1 (e.g. 0, 1)
• other — everything else (e.g. 2~17, 100, 1000, 10000, …)

See Unicode Messageformat for writing plural messages using these categories.

Translating into this locale

Armenian is an independent branch of the Indo-European family, written in the Armenian alphabet. There are two standard forms: Eastern Armenian (Armenia, Iran) and Western Armenian (the diaspora). They differ in orthography, pronunciation, and verb forms. Confirm the variant before translating. See Locale Hy Am.

Translate ideas, not words.

• Armenian is highly agglutinative-inflected with postpositions and case suffixes. Reorder English sentences; do not translate word for word.
• Do not translate through Russian (Eastern) or Turkish. Use Armenian terms approved by the Armenian language institutions where they exist.
• Re-express idioms by meaning.

Grammar and register.

• Seven cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, instrumental, locative); no grammatical gender. Plural suffix -ներ (Eastern) is not used after a numeral.
• Դուք is the polite or plural "you" for UI and public text; դու is informal.

Orthography and typography.

• Eastern Armenian in Armenia uses the reformed (Soviet-era) orthography in some respects, and the classical orthography (Mashtotsian) is used in the diaspora and by Western Armenian publishers. Follow the project's choice.
• Armenian punctuation marks differ: ։ (verjaket) is the full stop, ՞ (question mark) sits over the stressed vowel, ՜ (exclamation) and ՛ (emphasis). Digital text often uses Latin ? !; follow the project's convention.
• Currency dram (֏); decimal comma; dates 17 հոկտեմբերի 2026; 24-hour clock; quotation marks «…».

Common pitfalls

• Mixing Eastern and Western forms.
• Mixing classical and reformed orthography.
• Using Russian or Turkish syntax.

Learn more

• Locale for BCP 47 identifiers, locale-sensitive formatting, pluralization, and text-direction concepts that apply across all locales.
• Unicode Messageformat for writing plural/selection messages correctly for this locale's grammar.
• Institute of Language after H. Acharyan, Armenian National Academy of Sciences
• Microsoft Localization Style Guide, Armenian (https://aka.ms/armenian-styleguide)