among younger people. Western Armenian used to be the dominant Armenian variety, but during the Armenian genocide, Western Armenians were forcibly removed from Western Armenian. Those who fled to Eastern Armenia now speak either Eastern Armenian or have a diglossic situation between Western Armenian dialects in informal usage and an Eastern Armenian standard. The only Western Armenian dialect still spoken in Western Armenia is the Homshetsi dialect, since the Hemshin peoples, who were Muslim converts, did not fall victim to the Armenian genocide. On 21 February 2009, International Mother Language Day, a new edition of the Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger was released by UNESCO in which the Western Armenian language in Turkey was defined as a definitely endangered language. To oppose this, VANArmenya prepared a cartoon in Armenian based on Speed Racer. Phonology Vowels Monophthongs Western Armenian has eight monophthongs. Diphthongs Western Armenian has ten environments in which two vowels in the orthography appear next to each other, called diphthongs. By definition, they appear in the same syllable. For those unfamiliar with IPA symbols, represents the English "y" sound. The Armenian letter "ե" is often used in combinations such as (ya) and (yo). If used at the beginning of a word, "ե" alone is sufficient to represent (as in yes). The Armenian letter "յ" is used for the glide after vowels. The IPA (like English long i) and diphthongs are common, while (English long a), (a stretched-out long e), and (oy) are rare. The following examples are sometimes across syllable and morpheme boundaries, and gliding is then expected: Consonants This is the Western Armenian Consonantal System using letters from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), followed by the corresponding Armenian letter in brackets. The in Armenian is rare; the letter "ֆ" was added to the alphabet much later. The glide is not used except for foreign proper nouns, like Washington (by utilizing the "u" vowel, Armenian "ու"). Differences from Classical Armenian Differences in phonology between Western Armenian and Classical Armenian include the distinction of stops and affricates. Firstly, while Classical Armenian has a three-way distinction of stops and affricates (one voiced and two voiceless: one plain and one aspirated), Western Armenian has kept only a two-way distinction (one voiced and one aspirated). For example, Classical Armenian has three bilabial stops ( , , and ), but Western Armenian has only two bilabial stops ( and /). Secondly, Western