Syriac alphabet


The Syriac alphabet is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language since the 1st century AD. 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 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, although there are optional diacritic marks 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 dialects of Assyrian and Chaldean, once vernaculars, primarily began to be written in the 19th century. The Serṭā variant specifically has recently been adapted to write Western Neo-Aramaic, traditionally written in a square Aramaic script closely related to 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: ʾEsṭrangēlā, Maḏnḥāyā and Serṭā.

Classical

The oldest and classical form of the alphabet is ʾEsṭrangēlā. The name of the script is thought to derive from the Greek adjective strongýlē, though it has also been suggested to derive from serṭā ʾewwangēlāyā. 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, 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 are found. Vowel marks are usually not used with ʾEsṭrangēlā, being the oldest form of the script and arising before the development of specialized diacritics.

East Syriac

The East Syriac dialect is usually written in the Maḏnḥāyā form of the alphabet. Other names for the script include Swāḏāyā, ʾĀṯōrāyā, Kaldāyā, and, inaccurately, "Nestorian". 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:
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 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 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 Serṭā or Serṭo form of the alphabet, also known as the Pšīṭā, 'Maronite' or the 'Jacobite' script. 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:
The Syriac alphabet consists of the following letters, shown in their isolated forms. When isolated, the letters kāp̄, mīm, and mūn are usually shown with their initial form connected to their final form. The letters ʾālep̄, dālaṯ, hē, waw, zayn, ṣāḏē, rēš and taw do not connect to a following letter within a word; these are marked with an asterisk.

Contextual forms of letters

Ligatures

Letter alterations

''Matres lectionis''

Three letters act as matres lectionis: rather than being a consonant, they indicate a vowel. ʾālep̄, 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 :
In addition to foreign sounds, a marking system is used to distinguish qūššāyā from rūkkāḵā. The letters bēṯ, gāmal, dālaṯ, kāp̄, pē, and taw, all stop consonants are able to be 'spirantized' into fricative consonants. 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 :
The mnemonic bḡaḏkp̄āṯ is often used to remember the six letters that are able to be spirantized.
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.

Syriac uses two horizontal dots above a letter within a word, similar in appearance to diaeresis, called syāmē, to indicate that the word is plural. These dots, having no sound value in themselves, arose before both eastern and western vowel systems as it became necessary to mark plural forms of words, which are indistinguishable from their singular counterparts in regularly-inflected nouns. For instance, the word malkā is consonantally identical to its plural malkē ; the syāmē above the word malkē clarifies its grammatical number and pronunciation. Irregular plurals also receive syāmē even though their forms are clearly plural: e.g. baytā and its irregular plural bāttē. Because of redundancy, some modern usage forgoes syāmē points when vowel markings are present.
There are no firm rules for which letter receives syāmē; the writer has full discretion to place them over any letter. Typically, if a word has at least one rēš, then syāmē are placed over the rēš that is nearest the end of a word. Other letters that often receive syāmē are low-rising letters—such as yōḏ and nūn—or letters that appear near the middle or end of a word.
Besides plural nouns, syāmē are also placed on:
Syriac uses a line, called mṭalqānā, to indicate a silent letter that can occur at the beginning or middle of a word. In Eastern Syriac, this line is diagonal and only occurs above the silent letter. The line can only occur above a letter ʾālep̄, hē, waw, yōḏ, lāmaḏ, mīm, nūn, ʿē or rēš. In Western Syriac, this line is horizontal and can be placed above or below the letter.
Classically, mṭalqānā was not used for silent letters that occurred at the end of a word. In modern Turoyo, however, this is not always the case.

Latin alphabet and romanization

In the 1930s, following the state policy for minority languages of the Soviet Union, a Latin alphabet for Syriac was developed with some material promulgated. Although it did not supplant the Syriac script, the usage of the Latin script in the Syriac community has still become widespread because most of the Assyrian diaspora is in Europe and the Anglosphere, where the Latin alphabet is predominant. As a result of Westernization, the Latin alphabet has been used for Syriac writing. Some letters are altered and would feature diacritics and macrons to indicate long vowels, schwas and diphthongs. The letters with diacritics and macrons are mostly upheld in educational or formal writing.
ABCÇDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSŞTŢUVXZƵЬ

The Latin letters below are commonly used when it comes to transliteration from the Syriac script to Latin:
AĀBCDḎEĒËFGHḤIJKLMNOŌPQRSŠṢTṬUŪVWXYZ

Sometimes additional letters may be used and they tend to be:
The Syriac alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in September, 1999 with the release of version 3.0.
Additional letters for Suriyani Malayalam were added in June, 2017 with the release of version 10.0.

Blocks

The Unicode block for Syriac is U+0700-U+074F:
The Syriac Abbreviation can be represented with a special control character called the Syriac Abbreviation Mark.
The Unicode block for Suriyani Malayalam specific letters is called the Syriac Supplement block and is U+0860–U+086F:

HTML code table

Note: HTML numeric character references can be in decimal format or hexadecimal format. For example, ܕ and ܕ both represent U+0715 SYRIAC LETTER DALATH.

Vowels and unique characters