The Armenian Communities Department of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation announced that the Armenian spellchecker for iOS has been released and is available free of charge from the App Store. Within a few months, the Android version will also be made available.
In our continuous efforts to revitalize and strengthen the Armenian language, Nayiriboard — the keyboard-spellchecker for iOS — comes to reinforce the presence of Armenian in the digital world through a tool that makes it easier to write in the language on mobile devices and inside any app; from social media and communication apps such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, to productivity apps such as Pages, Notes and beyond.
This revolutionary and indispensable tool has been produced by Nayiri.com and is based on the HySpell engine. In this first version, Nayiriboard supports the traditional Armenian orthography for both branches of the Armenian language — Eastern and Western. It features a 150,000-word vocabulary, resulting in the recognition of over 5 million word forms. The current keyboard is especially designed for Western Armenian; future releases will also have the option to select from a variety of keyboard layouts and have the option to choose the reformed Armenian orthography.
“We are grateful to the team of developers at Nayiri.com for undertaking this challenging work,” said Razmik Panossian, the Director of the Armenian Communities Department, adding, “it is through the interplay of technology and language that Armenian will stay vibrant, relevant and appealing in the 21st century. The spellchecker program will entice more people to write in Armenian on a daily basis.”
Great work. Congratulations.
Is there a timeframe when the Armenian Typewriter keyboard layout will be available?
Very good news. I did a string search for the words Mesrob / Mesrop / Mashdots, and this article does not mention his name. When Armenia became free in 1991, my late friend Aris Sevag, who has translated about 40 books from English to Armenian and vice versa, was very disappointed that the Mashdotsian spelling did not become the standard in Armenia. He lamented that once the chance was passed, it was too late. Do we know which spelling this spell checker uses? Does it use the original Mashdotsian spelling that is used in Western Armenian books or does it use the one that the Communist regime forced on the Eastern Armenians in the past century?
If it uses the Communist version, then what good is it? Are we going to use computing power to nullify 16 centuries of spelling?
Thank you! Gulbenkian, please add to your projects a proposal to Google Translate to have Western Armenian added to their bag of tricks.
Thanks. I downloaded it. I typed in հարաբերութիւն to get the proper spelling in W Armenian.
It did not recognize the Western Armenian spelling of this word, but gave the Eastern:
հարաբերություն. If one does not know that this word starts with in Western Armenian, one cannot find it.
Gulbenkian, please also add to your projects a proposal to Google Translate to have Western Armenian added to their bag of tricks.