The Syriac alphabet ( ) is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language since the 1st century. It is one of the Semitic abjads descending from the Aramaic alphabet through the Palmyrene alphabet, and shares similarities with the Phoenician, Hebrew, Arabic and Sogdian, the precursor and a direct ancestor of the traditional Mongolian scripts.
Syriac is written from right to left in horizontal lines. It is a cursive script where most—but not all—letters connect within a word. There is no letter case distinction between upper and lower case letters, though some letters change their form depending on their position within a word. Spaces separate individual words.
All 22 letters are consonants (called , ). There are optional diacritic marks (called , ) to indicate vowels (, ) and other features. In addition to the sounds of the language, the letters of the Syriac alphabet can be used to represent numbers in a system similar to Hebrew and Greek numerals.
Apart from Classical Syriac Aramaic, the alphabet has been used to write other dialects and languages. Several Christian Neo-Aramaic languages, from Turoyo to the Northeastern Neo-Aramaic language of Suret, once vernaculars, primarily began to be written in the 19th century. The variant has explicitly been adapted to write Western Neo-Aramaic, previously written in the square Maalouli script, developed by George Rizkalla (Rezkallah), based on the Hebrew alphabet. Besides Aramaic, when Arabic began to be the dominant spoken language in the Fertile Crescent after the Islamic conquest, texts were often written in Arabic using the Syriac script as knowledge of the Arabic alphabet was not yet widespread; such writings are usually called Karshuni or Garshuni (). In addition to Semitic languages, Sogdian was also written with Syriac script, as well as Malayalam, which form was called Suriyani Malayalam.
Alphabet forms
There are three major variants of the Syriac alphabet: , and .
Classical
The oldest and classical form of the alphabet is (). The name of the script is thought to derive from the Greek adjective strongýlē (, 'rounded'),Hatch, William (1946). An Album of Dated Syriac Manuscripts. Boston: The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, reprinted in 2002 by Gorgias Press. p. 24. . though it has also been suggested to derive from (, 'gospel character').Nestle, Eberhard (1888). Syrische Grammatik mit Litteratur, Chrestomathie und Glossar. Berlin: H. Reuther's Verlagsbuchhandlung. [translated to English as Syriac grammar with bibliography, chrestomathy and glossary, by R. S. Kennedy. London: Williams & Norgate 1889. p. 5]. Although ʾEsṭrangēlā is no longer used as the main script for writing Syriac, it has received some revival since the 10th century. It is often used in scholarly publications (such as the Leiden University version of the Peshitta), in titles, and in inscriptions. In some older manuscripts and inscriptions, it is possible for any letter to join to the left, and older Aramaic letter forms (especially of and the lunate ) are found. Vowel marks are usually not used with , because it is the oldest form of the script and arose before specialized diacritics were developed.
East Syriac The East Syriac dialect is usually written in the (, 'Eastern') form of the alphabet. Other names for the script include (, 'conversational' or 'vernacular', often translated as 'contemporary', reflecting its use in writing modern Neo-Aramaic), (, 'Assyrian', not to be confused with the traditional name for the Hebrew alphabet), (, 'Chaldean'), and, inaccurately, "Nestorian" (a term that was originally used to refer to the Church of the East in the Sasanian Empire). The Eastern script resembles ʾEsṭrangēlā somewhat more closely than the Western script.
Vowels The Eastern script uses a system of dots above and/or below letters, based on an older system, to indicate vowel sounds not found in the script:
() A dot above and a dot below a letter represent , transliterated as a or ă (called , ), (sometimes a dot above only) () Two diagonally-placed dots above a letter represent , transliterated as ā or â or å (called , ), () Two horizontally-placed dots below a letter represent , transliterated as e or ĕ (called , or , ; often pronounced and transliterated as i in the East Syriac dialect), () Two diagonally-placed dots below a letter represent , transliterated as ē (called , or , ), () The letter waw with a dot below it represents , transliterated as ū or u (called , or , ), () The letter with a dot above it represents , transliterated as ō or o (called , or , ), () The letter yōḏ with a dot beneath it represents , transliterated as ī or i (called , ), () A combination of (usually) followed by a letter yōḏ represents (possibly * in Proto-Syriac), transliterated as ē or ê (called , ).
It is thought that the Eastern method for representing vowels influenced the development of the niqqud markings used for writing Hebrew.
In addition to the above vowel marks, transliteration of Syriac sometimes includes ə, e̊ or superscript e (or often nothing at all) to represent an original Aramaic schwa that became lost later on at some point in the development of Syriac. Some transliteration schemes find its inclusion necessary for showing spirantization or for historical reasons. Whether because its distribution is mostly predictable (usually inside a syllable-initial two-consonant cluster) or because its pronunciation was lost, both the East and the West variants of the alphabet traditionally have no sign to represent the schwa.
West Syriac
The West Syriac dialect is usually written in the or (, 'line') form of the alphabet, also known as the (, 'simple'), 'Maronite'. Most of the letters are clearly derived from ʾEsṭrangēlā, but are simplified, flowing lines. A cursive chancery hand is evidenced in the earliest Syriac manuscripts, but important works were written in ʾEsṭrangēlā. From the 8th century, the simpler Serṭā style came into fashion, perhaps because of its more economical use of parchment.
Vowels The Western script is usually vowel-pointed, with miniature Greek vowel letters above or below the letter which they follow: () Capital alpha () represents , transliterated as a or ă (, ), () Lowercase alpha () represents , transliterated as ā or â or å (, ; pronounced as and transliterated as o in the West Syriac dialect), () Lowercase epsilon () represents both , transliterated as e or ĕ, and , transliterated as ē (, ), () Capital eta () represents , transliterated as ī (, ), () A combined symbol of capital upsilon () and lowercase omicron () represents , transliterated as ū or u (, ), Lowercase omega (), used only in the vocative interjection (, 'O!').
Summary table
The Syriac alphabet consists of the following letters, shown in their isolated (non-connected) forms. When isolated, the letters , , and are usually shown with their initial form connected to their final form (see below). The letters , , , , , , and (and, in early ʾEsṭrangēlā manuscripts, the letter Coakley, J. F. (2002). Robinson's Paradigms and Exercises in Syriac Grammar (5th ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 141. .) do not connect to a following letter within a word; these are marked with an asterisk (*).
LetterSound Value(Classical Syriac) NumericalValue PhoenicianEquivalent Imperial AramaicEquivalent HebrewEquivalent Arabic Equivalent Name Translit. Latin (1930) Cyrillic (pre-1929, 1938) Unicode(typing) TransliterationIPA**a, əə, a or null mater lectionis: or ∅ mater lectionis: 1b, vб, вhard: soft: (also , or )hard: soft: or 2g, x/h, çг, h, dжhard: soft: (also , , or )hard: soft: 3**ddhard: soft: (also , or )hard: soft: 4**hhmater lectionis: (or ) mater lectionis: 5**v, o, uв, o, уconsonant: mater lectionis: or (also or )consonant: mater lectionis: or 6**zз7xx (also , , or ), or 8ţt (also or )9j, ij/ьjj, иj/ыjconsonant: mater lectionis: (also )consonant: mater lectionis: or 10k, x, cq, x, чhard: soft: (also or )hard: soft: 20ll30mм40nн50sc60aə70p, fп, фhard: soft: (also , , or )hard: soft: or 80**sc (also or )90qк (also )100**rp200ş, ƶш, ж (also )300**tтhard: soft: (also or )hard: soft: 400
Contextual forms of letters Letter name (classical) (eastern)Unconnected finalConnected finalInitial or unconnected
medialUnconnected finalConnected finalInitial or unconnected
medial /
Ligatures Letter name (classical) (eastern)Unicodecharacter(s)DescriptionUnconnected finalConnected finalInitial or unconnected
medialUnconnected finalConnected finalInitial or unconnected
medial ܠܐ and combinedat the end of a word / ܬܐ and combinedat the end of a word ܗܝ and combinedat the end of a word ܬܝ and combinedat the end of a word
Letter alterations Matres lectionis
Three letters act as matres lectionis: rather than being a consonant, they indicate a vowel. (), the first letter, represents a glottal stop, but it can also indicate a vowel, especially at the beginning or the end of a word. The letter waw () is the consonant w, but can also represent the vowels o and u. Likewise, the letter represents the consonant y, but it also stands for the vowels i and e.
In modern usage, some alterations can be made to represent phonemes not represented in classical phonology. A mark similar in appearance to a tilde (~), called majlīyānā (), is placed above or below a letter in the Maḏnḥāyā variant of the alphabet to change its phonetic value (see also: Geresh):
Added below : to (voiced palato-alveolar affricate) Added below : to (voiceless palato-alveolar affricate) Added above or below : to (voiced palato-alveolar sibilant) Added above : to
and In addition to foreign sounds, a marking system is used to distinguish (, 'hard' letters) from (, 'soft' letters). The letters , , , , , and , all stop consonants ('hard') are able to be 'spirantized' (lenited) into fricative consonants ('soft'). The system involves placing a single dot underneath the letter to give its 'soft' variant and a dot above the letter to give its 'hard' variant (though, in modern usage, no mark at all is usually used to indicate the 'hard' value):
Name Stop Translit. IPA Name Fricative Translit. IPA Notes Bēṯ (qšīṯā) b Bēṯ rakkīḵtā ḇ or has become in most modern dialects. Gāmal (qšīṯā) g Gāmal rakkīḵtā ḡ Usually becomes [j], [ʔ], or is not pronounced in modern Eastern dialects. Dālaṯ (qšīṯā) d Dālaṯ rakkīḵtā ḏ is left unspirantized in some modern Eastern dialects. Kāp̄ (qšīṯā) k Kāp̄ rakkīḵtā ḵ Pē (qšīṯā) p Pē rakkīḵtā or p̄ or is not found in most modern Eastern dialects. Instead, it either is left unspirantized or sometimes appears as . Pē is the only letter in the Eastern variant of the alphabet that is spirantized by the addition of a semicircle instead of a single dot. Taw (qšīṯā) t Taw rakkīḵtā ṯ is left unspirantized in some modern Eastern dialects.
The mnemonic () is often used to remember the six letters that are able to be spirantized (see also: Begadkepat).
In the East Syriac variant of the alphabet, spirantization marks are usually omitted when they interfere with vowel marks. The degree to which letters can be spirantized varies from dialect to dialect as some dialects have lost the ability for certain letters to be spirantized. For native words, spirantization depends on the letter's position within a word or syllable, location relative to other consonants and vowels, gemination, etymology, and other factors. Foreign words do not always follow the rules for spirantization.