Western Armenian

Homshetsi (Armenian: Հոմշեցի, romanized: Homshetsi lizu; Turkish: Hemşince) is an archaic Armenian dialect or a language spoken by the eastern and northern group of Hemshin peoples (Hemşinli), a people living in northeastern Turkey, Abkhazia, Russia, and Central Asia.

It has some differences from Armenian spoken in Armenia. It was not a written language until 1995, when linguist Bert Vaux designed an orthographic system for it based on the Turkish alphabet; the Armenian alphabet was used by Christian immigrants from Hamshen (Northern Hamshenis)—who refer to the language as Homshetsma (Հոմշեցմա) in Russia and Abkhazia.

Homshetsi is a spoken language amongst the Eastern Hemshinli, also known as the Hopa Hemshinli, who live in a small number of villages in Turkey's Artvin Province and Central Asia. The Western or Rize Hamsheni are a related, geographically separate group living in Rize Province, who spoke Homshetsi until sometime in the 19th century. They now speak only Turkish with many Homshetsi loanwords. A third group, the northern Homshentsik, who live in Russia, Georgia (Abkhazia), Armenia, also speak Homshetsi.

From Wikipedia · Homshetsi dialect · CC BY-SA 4.0