Armenian Emphasis Mark

It marks the vowel that should carry emphasis. Armenian uses it for commands, direct address, firm confirmation or denial, and contrast: this one, not that one. It is meant to sit above and slightly to the right of the affected vowel, though some fonts and printing show it as a separate stroke.

Կարդա՛ means “read!” A negative command puts it on Մի՛ (“don’t”), before the verb: Մի՛ խոսիր means “don’t speak.” A name called directly may take it too; a polite request may leave it out.

How did ՛ develop?

Armenian emphasis punctuation took shape over centuries. Armenian punctuation rules reach back to the fifth century. Until the 10th century, one account describes a comma-like mark as the main punctuation sign; a broader set became conventional in 12th–13th-century manuscripts. A study of Armenian neumes—signs used in musical notation—dates the wider system of prosody, or patterns of stress and pitch, to the 8th–9th centuries and reports distinctive examples of this mark from 1066, 1070, and an 11th–12th-century manuscript fragment.

Armenian grammatical commentaries used a translation of the work of Dionysius of Thrace, a Greek grammarian. A separate manuscript study says Armenian khaz notation was neither copied from nor revised from Greek prosody. Armenian also has related tonal punctuation marks for exclamation and question intonation.

Does ՛ mean the sender is angry?

No; it marks focus, not mood by itself. A routine command or direct address can carry it without anger. Read the surrounding words before judging how the sender sounds.