Syriac alphabet

The Syriac alphabet (ܐܠܦ ܒܝܬ ܣܘܪܝܝܐ ʾālep̄ bêṯ Sūryāyā) 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 ܐܵܬܘܼܬܵܐ‎, ˀātūṯā). There are optional diacritic marks (called ܢܘܼܩܙܵܐ‎, nuqzā) to indicate vowels (ܙܵܘܥܵܐ‎, zāwˁā) 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 Serṭā 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 (ܓܪܫܘܢܝ‎). 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: ʾEsṭrangēlā, Maḏnḥāyā, and Serṭā.

The oldest form is ʾEsṭrangēlā, which means "rounded." Though it is no longer the main script for writing Syriac, it is still used in scholarly work, titles, and inscriptions. The East Syriac dialect uses the Maḏnḥāyā form, also called "Eastern." It looks more like ʾEsṭrangēlā than the Western form. The West Syriac dialect is written in the Serṭā form, meaning "line." This simpler style became popular from the 8th century because it used less space on parchment.

Summary table

The Syriac alphabet is made up of special letters used for writing the Syriac language. These letters have different shapes when they are alone and when they are joined together in words. Some letters, like kāp̄, mīm, and nūn, are often shown connected in both their starting and ending forms. Other letters, such as ʾālep̄, dālaṯ, hē, waw, zayn, ṣāḏē, rēš, and taw, do not connect to the next letter in a word and are marked with an asterisk (*).

For more details, see below.

Contextual forms of letters

The Syriac alphabet has special shapes for letters depending on their place in a word. These changes help make writing smoother and more efficient.

Some letters also join together in special ways called ligatures, where two or more letters combine into a single shape when they appear next to each other. This makes the script even more interesting and unique.

Letter alterations

Three special letters in the Syriac alphabet can show vowels instead of consonants. The first letter, called ʾālep̄, can sometimes stand for a vowel, especially at the start or end of a word. The letter waw normally means the sound "w" but can also show the vowels "o" and "u". Similarly, the letter yōḏ usually means "y" but can also stand for the vowels "i" and "e".

To show sounds not found in older Syriac, writers sometimes add small marks above or below certain letters. These marks change how the letters sound. For example, adding a mark to the letter gāmal makes it sound like "j", and a mark on kāp̄ makes it sound like "ch". There are also special marks to show when letters can sound softer or harder, using dots above or below them. Additionally, dots above letters can show that a word is plural, like adding an "s" at the end in English. There is also a special line used to show silent letters in some words.

Latin alphabet and romanization

In 1930, a Latin alphabet for Syriac was developed. It was used until around 1938, when it was replaced by a Cyrillic script. Even though the Syriac script is still used, many people in the Assyrian diaspora in Europe and the Anglosphere now use the Latin alphabet.

When writing Syriac using Latin letters, some letters have special marks to show different sounds, like long vowels or certain soft sounds. These special letters help keep the meaning clear in books and formal writing.

Unicode

The Syriac alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in September 1999 with version 3.0. Later, in June 2017, extra letters for Suriyani Malayalam were added in version 10.0.

Blocks

Main articles: Syriac (Unicode block) and Syriac Supplement (Unicode block)

The Unicode block for Syriac is U+0700–U+074F. There is a special control character called the Syriac Abbreviation Mark (U+070F) for Syriac abbreviations. The Syriac Supplement block for Suriyani Malayalam specific letters is U+0860–U+086F.

HTML code table

Note: HTML numeric character references can be in decimal format (&#DDDD;) or hexadecimal format (&#x_HHHH_;). For example, ܕ and ܕ (1813 in decimal) both represent U+0715 SYRIAC LETTER DALATH.

Ālep̄ bēṯ

Vowels and unique characters

Comparison of scripts

The Syriac alphabet has been used to write the Syriac language since the 1st century. It is related to other ancient writing systems like the Phoenician, Hebrew, and Arabic alphabets.

One example of the Syriac script is seen in Matthew 5:8 from the Bible, written in the Urmi dialect. The script is written from right to left in horizontal lines.