Why Armenian deserves its own keyboard

The Armenian alphabet was created at the beginning of the fifth century by Mesrop Mashtots, and Armenian has been written in it ever since: chronicles, poetry, letters, newspapers and now messages. Its letters are part of what it means to be Armenian, in Armenia and in every country where Armenians live.

And yet, on the device where most of today’s writing happens, Armenian letters have been the hard way to write Armenian.

The gap

Apple’s own keyboard has an Armenian layout. But according to Apple’s own list of features by language, Armenian has no autocorrection, no predictive text and no slide-to-type on the iPhone. Every letter is a tap, every typo stays, every word is typed in full.

So people do the sensible thing. Many write Armenian in Latin letters, or switch to another language altogether, because it is faster. Each time, a little less Armenian is written in Armenian.

Armath is built on a simple belief: if writing Armenian in its own letters is as easy as writing English, more people will.

Not translated: built on Armenian

A keyboard can be “translated” by putting Armenian letters on keys designed for another language. Armath went the other way: everything in it that guesses was built from Armenian text and measured on Armenian words.

• A vocabulary of real Armenian. 89,790 words counted in Armenian web text, in today’s spelling, and more than 180,000 further forms for swipe. Armenian is rich in endings, and the list keeps them.
• Its own language model. Trained from scratch on Armenian, it knows how Armenian sentences go on: that «Ես» is followed by «եմ», that «Բարի» is often followed by «լույս».
• Names stay names. Places, people and brands keep their capital letters, and a name written in small letters is not “corrected” into another word.
• Corrections that respect the language. A correct but rare form, and Armenian has many, is left alone. Of all the mistakes a keyboard can make, changing a correct word is the one we work hardest to avoid.

The details that are Armenian

«ու» is written with two letters but is one sound, and it is the most frequent pair of letters in the language. On Armath it is one key. The Armenian full stop «։», the pause «՝», the stress mark «՛», the question mark «՞» and the exclamation «՜» are a hold away on the comma and full-stop keys, and the sign you use most becomes that key’s sign. The ligature «և» has its own key.

The Armenian question mark, by the way, sits on the stressed vowel rather than at the end of the sentence: «Ինչպե՞ս եք». Armath makes that as easy as it should be.

Swipe, for a language of long words

Armenian words are long: a third of the words in our test texts have eight letters or more. That is exactly where swiping helps most, one stroke instead of eight or ten taps, and with Armath a whole sentence in one stroke through the space bar.

Swiping is not new to Armenian everywhere: Google’s Gboard has long offered gesture typing for Armenian on Android. What Armath adds is a keyboard in which the vocabulary, the language model and the corrections were all made for Armenian, on the iPhone, where Apple’s keyboard offers Armenian no swipe at all.

A language lives through those who write it

Tools shape habits. Every message written in Armenian letters keeps the script in daily use, especially for young people, who write far more on phones than on paper. And every Armenian swipe shared voluntarily with the project teaches the next version to read Armenian better. That is the circle Armath wants to start: easier Armenian, more Armenian, better tools for Armenian.

What is not there yet

We would rather say it ourselves. Armath writes Eastern Armenian in the spelling used in Armenia today. Western Armenian, and the classical spelling used by much of the diaspora, are not supported yet. They need their own words, their own texts and their own testing, and we will not pretend otherwise until they have them.

If you would like Armath to go further, here is how you can help.