This article will be permanently flagged as inappropriate and made unaccessible to everyone. Are you certain this article is inappropriate? Excessive Violence Sexual Content Political / Social
Email Address:
Article Id: WHEBN0000533521 Reproduction Date:
Sogdian →Orkhon (Turkic) →Old Hungarian →Old Uyghur →Mongolian Nabataean alphabet →Arabic alphabet
Syrc, 135Syre (138, ʾEsṭrangēlā variant) Syrj (137, Western variant)
Syrc, 135
Syre (138, ʾEsṭrangēlā variant) Syrj (137, Western variant)
Syrn (136, Eastern variant)
The Syriac alphabet is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language from the 1st century AD.[1] It is one of the Semitic abjads directly descending from the Aramaic alphabet through the Palmyrene alphabet,[2] and shares similarities with the Phoenician, Hebrew, Arabic, and the traditional Mongolian alphabets.
Syriac is written from right to left. It is a cursive script where some, but not all, letters connect within a word. The alphabet consists of 22 letters, all of which are consonants. The vowel sounds are supplied by the reader's memory or by pointing (a system of diacritical marks to indicate the correct reading).
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.
When Arabic began to be the dominant spoken language in the Fertile Crescent, texts were often written in Arabic with the Syriac script. Malayalam was also written with Syriac script and was called Suriyani Malayalam. These writings are usually called Karshuni or Garshuni (ܓܪܫܘܢܝ). Garshuni is often used today by Neo-Aramaic speakers in written communication such as letters and fliers.
There are three major variants of the Syriac alphabet.
The oldest and classical form of the alphabet is ʾEsṭrangēlā (ܐܣܛܪܢܓܠܐ; the name is thought to derive from the Greek adjective στρογγύλη (strongylē, 'rounded'),[3] though it has also been suggested to derive from ܣܪܛܐ ܐܘܢܓܠܝܐ (serṭā ’ewangēlāyā, 'gospel character')[4]). 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 (for instance, the Leiden University version of the Peshitta), in titles and 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 Ḥeth and the lunate Mem) are found. Vowel marks are usually not used with ʾEsṭrangēlā.
The East Syriac dialect is usually written in the Maḏnḥāyā (ܡܲܕ݂ܢܚܵܝܵܐ, 'Eastern') form of the alphabet. Other names for the script include Swāḏāyā (ܣܘܵܕ݂ܵܝܵܐ, "conversational", 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 Persian Empire). The Eastern script resembles ʾEsṭrangēlā more closely than the Western script, being somewhat a midway point between the two. The Eastern script uses a system of dots above or below letters, based on an older system, to indicate vowels:
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 (see below) 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, neither the East nor West variants of the alphabet have a sign to represent the schwa.
Many Assyrian Revivalists see the Maḏnḥāyā script as the future national script to be used in a future independent Assyria.
The West Syriac dialect is usually written in the Serṭā (ܣܶܪܛܳܐ, 'line') form of the alphabet, also known as the Pšīṭā (ܦܫܺܝܛܳܐ, 'simple'), 'Maronite', or the 'Jacobite' script (although the term Jacobite is considered derogatory). 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. The Nabataean alphabet (which gave rise to the Arabic alphabet) was based on this form of Syriac handwriting. The Western script is usually vowel-pointed with miniature Greek vowel letters above or below the letter which they follow:
Egyptian hieroglyphs 32 c. BCE
The Syriac alphabet consists of the following letters, shown in their isolated (non-connected) forms. When isolated, the letters Kāp̄, Mīm, and Nūn are usually shown with their initial form connected to their final form (see below). The letters ʾĀlap̄, Dālaṯ, Hē, Waw, Zayn, Ṣāḏē, Rēš, and Taw (and, in early ʾEsṭrangēlā manuscripts, the letter Semkaṯ[5]) do not connect to a following letter within a word when written. These are marked with an asterisk (*).
1 In the final position following Dālaṯ or Rēš, ʾĀlap̄ takes the normal form rather than the final form.
Three letters act as matres lectionis: rather than being a consonant, they indicate a vowel. ʾĀlap̄ (ܐ), the first letter, represents a glottal stop, but it can also indicate a vowel at the beginning or the end of a word. The letter Waw (ܘ) is the consonant w, but can also represent the vowels o and u. Likewise, the letter Yōḏ (ܝ) 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 orthography. A mark similar in appearance to a tilde, called Majlīyānā (ܡܓ̰ܠܝܢܐ), is placed either above or below a letter in the Maḏnḥāyā variant of the alphabet to change its phonetic value (see also: Geresh):
In addition to foreign sounds, a marking system is used to distinguish qūššāyā (ܩܘܫܝܐ, 'hard' letters) from rūkkāḵā (ܪܘܟܟܐ, 'soft' letters). The letters Bēṯ, Gāmal, Dālaṯ, Kāp̄, Pē, and Taw, all plosives ('hard'), are able to be spirantized into fricatives ('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):
The mnemonic bḡaḏkp̄āṯ (ܒܓܕܟܦܬ) is often used to remember the six letters that are able to be spirantized (see also: Begadkefat).
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 are not always subject to the rules for spirantization.
The Syriac alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in September, 1999 with the release of version 3.0.
The Unicode block for Syriac is U+0700–U+074F:
The Syriac Abbreviation (a type of overline) can be represented with a special control character called the Syriac Abbreviation Mark (U+070F).
Note: HTML numeric character references can be in decimal format (&#DDDD;) or hexadecimal format (&#xHHHH;). For example, ܕ and ܕ (1813 in decimal) both represent U+0715 SYRIAC LETTER DALATH.
ʾ
b
g
d
h
w
z
ḥ
ṭ
y
k
l
m
n
s
ʿ
p
ṣ
q
r
š
t
Syriac alphabet, Phoenician alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Aramaic language
Ϙ, Greek alphabet, Latin alphabet, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Syriac alphabet
Transliteration, Syriac alphabet, Zero (linguistics), Labio-velar approximant, Voiceless uvular fricative
Semitic languages, Syriac alphabet, Aramaic language, Assyrian Church of the East, Assyrian people
Syriac language, Syriac alphabet, Hebrew language, Jesus, Saint Thomas Christians
Syriac alphabet, Aramaic alphabet, Buddhism, Sogdian language, Alphabet
Arabic script, Arabic language, Unicode, Arabic diacritics, Hamza
Greek alphabet, Latin alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Hangul, Syriac alphabet