Which consonant types are especially characteristic of Armenian?

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The most characteristic consonants of the Armenian language are plosives, which include both stops and affricates.1

In Old Armenian, these plosives formed a system of 15 phonemes categorized by three types of articulation: voiced, voiceless, and voiceless aspirated. This system is represented by the following sets:1

b-p-p‘
d-t-t‘
g-k-k‘
j-c-c‘ (corresponding to dz-ts-ts‘)
ǰ-č-č‘ (corresponding to English j-ch-ch‘)

The development of these sounds is attributed to a consonant shift in Proto-Armenian, involving processes such as palatalization and the devoicing of Proto-Indo-European voiced consonants. Modern Armenian dialects have retained many aspects of this system, though they exhibit significant variation in how these plosives are realized, with Eastern and Western Armenian showing distinct shifts in voicing and aspiration.1