The Armenian language (հայերեն [hɑjɛˈɾɛn] hayeren) is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenians. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora. It has its own script, the Armenian alphabet, and is of interest to linguists for its distinctivephonological developments within the Indo-European family of languages.\r
Linguists classify Armenian as an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. Armenian shares a number of major innovations with Greek, and some linguists group these two languages together with Phrygian and the Indo-Iranian family into a higher-level subgroup of Indo-European, which is defined by such shared innovations as the augment. More recently, others have proposed a Balkan grouping including Greek, Armenian, Phrygian, and Albanian. \r