Syriac, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic

Letters

Combining marks

Punctuation

Other

Vowel sounds

Consonant sounds

	labial	dental	alveolar	post- alveolar	palatal	velar	uvular	pharyngeal	glottal
stops	p b		t d			k ɡ	q		ʔ
emphatic			tˤ
affricates				t͡ʃ d͡ʒ
fricative	f v	θ ð	s z	ʃ ʒ		x ɣ		ħ ʕ	h
emphatic			sˤ
nasal	m		n
approximants, trills, flaps	w		l r		j

Among most Assyrian Neo-Aramaic speakers, the pharyngeal ʕ is pronounced as ʔ or ∅, or geminates a previous consonant.

Tone

Assyrian Neo-Aramaic is not a tonal language.

Structure

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Vowel summary table

This table summarises only basic vowel to character assignments. Click on the phonetic transcriptions for more detail.

For additional details see vowel_mappings.

Post-consonant vowels

Modern Aramaic written in Syriac is usually fully pointed, making it more an alphabet than an abjad. There are however obligatory points and optional diacritics. For vowels, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic uses a set of dotted diacritics. (rather than the Greek symbols used in western orthographies).

There are 3 matres lectionis, and 6 vowel diacritics.

Combining marks used for vowels

Two of the following diacritics are only used in combination with a mater lectionis (see vletter). Other vowels are expressed by simply applying diacritics to a consonant letter. This is the complete set of diacritics used for vowels.

◌ܼ,◌ܸ,◌ܹ,◌ܿ,◌ܲ,◌ܵ

Consonant sounds following 0732 and 0738 are usually geminated.

Two diacritics for one base. The sound ija can be written with a single yodh consonant rather than 2, and vowel diacritics both above and below it, eg. see the sequence ܝܼܵ in the word ܐܝܼܛܵܠܝܼܵܐ in fig_italia. Note that both combining marks must follow the YUDH.

show composition

ܐܝܼܛܵܠܝܼܵܐ

Standalone vowels

At the beginning of a word, all vowels are attached to or follow a silent ܐ.

Vowel sounds to characters

Consonant summary table

This table summarises only basic consonant to character assignments. Click on the phonetic transcriptions for more detail.

The second row shows the use of diacritics to disambiguate various sounds.

For additional details see consonant_mappings.

Basic consonants

All the letters in the Syriac block are consonants. There are 22 basic consonants, but these can be combined with one of 3 diacritics to create additional sounds. See consonantSummary for the combinations as well as the simple consonants.

Click on each letter for more details and for examples of usage, especially where more than one sound is indicated.

ܐ is also regarded as a mater lectionis. Its use is described in matres.

Assyrian Neo-Aramaic uses many diacritics to produce additional sounds from the basic set of Syriac consonants. Hard and soft diacritics and the maǧlīyānā extend the consonant repertoire; the marhtana is used with 3-consonant clusters; talqana silences consonants; syame indicates plural forms; and there are some additional marks used to disambiguate words.

Hard and soft sounds

Six Syriac consonant symbols represent two sounds, one 'hard' and one 'soft'. The hard sound is an unaspirated plosive, the soft sound is an aspirated fricative. The intended sound of the letter can be made explicit using diacritics.

In the maḏnḥāyā style, soft form marks may be omitted if they would interfere with the vowel marks. For native words, softening 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 softening.w

Hard form. In principle, a high dot indicates the hard form. The code point to use is 0741. However, in Assyrian it is not normally used.

Soft form. A low dot indicates the soft form for 5 plosives. The code point to use is 0742. However, to produce f use ܦ̮w.

When it is used with ܕ, which already has a dot below, the two dots appear side by side.

ܕ݂ d‐̣

Repertoire extension (maǧlīyānā)

0330, called maǧlīyānā (ܡܲܓ̰ܠܝܼܵܢܵܐ) is used to represent sounds that are not present in Classical Syriac, and is typically found in loan words.

Davisr,35-6 lists only 3 uses, all of which appear below the base consonant:

Hobermand,506 lists one additional combination, but no new sounds, however he places the tilde above the base consonant. In this position, the diacritic is still called maǧlīyānā, but uses the code point 0303.

Plurals (syame)

0308 is used to represent the Syriac syame (ܣܝ̈ܡܐ), which indicates plural nouns, adjectives and participles. It is needed for unpointed text because many plural words would otherwise look the same as the singular word, eg. the following could be read as either malkā king or as malkē kings.

ܡܠܟܐ mlk̋ʾ

Instead, the plural form can be written

ܡܠܟ̈ܐ mlk̋ʾ

Some modern usage omits this diacritic when vowel marks are present, because it is redundant, however it is still generally used.

ܡܲܠܟܵܐ ܡܲܠܟܹ̈ܐ

Although it's not strictly needed, even in unpointed text, for non-regular words, it is also used for them.

ܒܲܝܬܵܐ ˈbaj.tɑ house ܒܵܬܹ̈ܐ bɑtte houses

An author can place this mark above any letter in a word, but if the word contains one or more ܪ the mark is generally placed over the one which is nearest the word end, and replaces the single dot above it, eg.

ܢܘܼܟ݂ܪ̈ܵܝܹܐ

Other likely locations include low rising letters, and letters near the middle or end of a word.w

Disambiguation marks

Diacritics can be used to disambiguate the pronunciation of otherwise identical-looking words in unpointed text.

ܩ̇ܛܠܬ qᵵlt I killed ܩܛ̣ܠܬ qᵵlt you (m.) killed ܩܛܠܬ݀ qᵵlt she killed

Feminine marker

◌݀

ܬ݀ is a feminine marker used with ܬ to indicate a feminine suffix. East Syriac fonts should render as two dots below the base letter, whereas West Syriac fonts render as a single dot to the left of the base, eg. compare in the Eastern (top) and Western (bottom) orthographies in fig_feminine (click on the images to see the underlying code points):

 

There appear to be no words in the Wiktionary list that use this diacritic, and it isn't mentioned in Davis, even though there is a specific shape for eastern script styles.

Isolated forms

Isolated versions of 3 letters, such as may be found in counter styles, are usually presented as a doubled letter, using intial and final forms.

ܟܟ k ܡܡ m ܢܢ n

The letter ܟ when handwritten alone may also look like ܟـ k

Single letter words

Four short, single letter words are written with the word that follows them, not separate. They are:

ܒ    ܕ    ܘ    ܠ

Before a word that begins with a vowel, or a consonant followed by a vowel, these four words have no vowel markings. If the next consonant is not followed by a vowel, however, they are written with a following 0732.

ܒܐܵܗܵܐ

ܘ before ܝ is pronounced u.

Silent letters (talqana)

0747 is used in the Eastern style to indicate letters that are not pronounced. It is frequently used in the modern Aramaic koine to bridge difference in dialects.

ܒܬ݇ܪ is pronounced baθar in some modern dialects, harking back to the classical pronunciation, but bar in Urmi and the koine.

ܐ݇ܟ݂ܵܠ݇ܪܲܡܫܵܐ ܫܹܢ݇ܬܵܐ

The letters ܐ, ܥ, ܗ, and ܝ, when included for etymological reasons, are often silent, though without using the talqana.n

The Unicode Standard says that 0748 is used in a similar way.u

0711 is used in East Syriac texts to indicate an etymological alaph.

ܩܲܖ݄ܡܵܝܑܼܬ̣ qaḋ‒݄māyˈit‒̜

Epenthetic vowels

Two diacritics can be used to indicate epenthetic vowels in consonant clusters containing 3 consonants. They are mostly found in older texts, or the writings of modern authors wanting to adhere to the full rules of Assyrian spelling, and are practically obsolete in everyday use.r,32

Davis describes the different effects as follows: 0331 lengthens the middle consonant, while 0304 adds a short epenthetic sound to aid pronunciation. In Wiktionary, the transcriptions show a schwa in the first case, and an optional schwa in the second.

The difference between the two may have to do which letter the diacritic is attached to. 0331 is only used with the letters shown below, whereas 0304 is not used with them.r,32

ܐ,ܗ,ܘ,ܝ,ܠ,ܡ,ܢ,ܥ,ܪ

ܡܲܕܒ̄ܚܵܐ

ܚܲܪܕ̄ܠܵܐ

ܢܸܫܡ̱ܬܵܐ

ܡܲܕ݂ܢ̱ܚܵܐ

Consonant length

The short a and ɪ vowels are only used in closed syllables, so if they are followed by an intervocalic consonant, it indicates that the consonant is doubled,d

ܣܲܡܲܐ

Native numbering system

The Assyrian Reading Course describes an additive numbering system based on alphabetic letters, which is used for book publishing data, biblical references,r,51 etc.

ܒܪܝܼܬܵܐ ܝܗ: 1-6

You can experiment with these numbers using the Counter styles converter.

There is no mention of the use of the 070F (SAM) to indicate letter-based numbers.

The counting system uses the letters shown below. It is specified for a range between 1 and 9,999,999. However, the code points of the diacritics used here for 500–900, and 100,000–9,000,000 are not confirmed as accurate (though they should look right).

Managing text direction

Unicode provides a set of 10 formatting characters that can be used to control the direction of text when displayed. These characters have no visual form in the rendered text, however text editing applications may have a way to show their location.

202B (RLE), 202A (LRE), and 202C (PDF) are in widespread use to set the base direction of a range of characters. RLE/LRE comes at the start, and PDF at the end of a range of characters for which the base direction is to be set.

In Unicode 6.1, the Unicode Standard added a set of characters which do the same thing but also isolate the content from surrounding characters, in order to avoid spillover effects. They are 2067 (RLI), 2066 (LRI), and 2066 (PDI). The Unicode Standard recommends that these be used instead.

061C (ALM) is used to produce correct sequencing of numeric data. Follow the link and see expressions for details.

There is also 2068 (FSI), used initially to set the base direction according to the first recognised strongly-directional character.

200F (RLM) and 200E (LRM) are invisible characters with strong directional properties that are also sometimes used to produce the correct ordering of text.

For more information about how to use these formatting characters see How to use Unicode controls for bidi text. Note, however, that when writing HTML you should generally use markup rather than these control codes. For information about that, see Creating HTML Pages in Arabic, Hebrew and Other Right-to-left Scripts.

Expressions & sequences

A sequence of European numbers, for example a range separated by hyphens, runs from right to left in the Syriac script (and Arabic or Thaana scripts), whereas for Persian, Hebrew, N’Ko or Adlam scripts it runs left to right.

fig_range shows some Syriac text, which is right-to-left overall, containing a numeric range that is ordered RTL, ie. it starts with 240 and ends with 250.

The Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm automatically produces the expected ordering when a sequence or expression follows Syriac characters. However, a sequence that appears alone on a line doesn't benefit from this, so to make the text appear correctly for Syriac you should add 061C (ALM) at the start of the line (see fig_ALM). This is an invisible formatting character.

Similar special ordering is applied to numbers in equations, such as 1 + 2 = 3, for Syriac language text.

For additional details on how direction of ranges interacts with surrounding characters and separators used, see the section Expressions & sequences in the Modern Standard Arabic orthography description.

Font styles

Syriac has 3 major variant writing styles. The code points for the consonant letters are the same, but the shapes of the letters and code points and shapes of vowel diacritics can vary significantly. fig_writing_styles shows the differences using typical fonts for each style.

Assyrian Neo-Aramaic often uses the Assyrian Estrangela style for headings, which looks like a cross between the typical Assyrian font and the Estrangelo Edessa font.

The style of lettering in the title of fig_heading_styles_east uses a special Assyrian style of Estrangela. fig_assyrian_styles shows typical letter shapes for 2 Assyrian styles and Syriac Estrangela. The top line has shapes typically used for normal Assyrian text, and the middle line shows a style used for headings.

Cursive text

Syriac is cursive, ie. letters in a word are joined up. Fonts need to produce the appropriate joining form for a code point, according to its visual context, but the code point used for a given letter doesn't change.

Eight letters join only to the right.

All other consonants join on both sides.

Context-based shaping & positioning

Context-based shaping

See just above for shaping related to cursive joining.

Ligatures

Apart from the shaping required to support cursive behaviour, there are also typical ligatures, such as those shown in fig_serto_lig, some of which are optional or font-dependent.

	he + yudh	ܐܠܗܝ
	taw + alaph	ܬܫܟܘܚܬܐ
	taw + yudh	ܟܚܬܝ

Alaph shaping

A feature of Eastern and Western Syriac styles is that an unjoined alaph within a word has a different shape according to whether or not it is word-final. For example, fig_alaph_joining shows the word ܡܠܘܿܐܵܐ where the 2 alaph characters at the end have different shapes, although both are unconnected.

Alaph also ligates word-finally with ܬ when following a connecting letter, eg. compare the shaping at the end of ܐܸܓܲܪܬܵܐ and ܐܸܫܬܵܐ (see fig_alaph_ligature).

After ܠ the letter alaph typically has a special, ligated shape, which also appears at word end. fig_alaph_ligature_l shows this in the word ܠܲܝܠܹܐ, however the default font used for Assyrian text on this page (East Syriac Adiabene) doesn't support it (Noto fonts do).

Word boundaries

Syriac uses spaces between words.

There are no one-letter words. One letter conjunctions and prepositions (such as ܘ w- and or ܒ b- by, with) are written contiguous with the word they precede.

ܒܐܵܗܵܐ

Some words may be hyphenated. The hyphen sits on the baseline, and has space around it. It's not clear which Unicode code point should be used: the example that follows uses ـ because the font doesn't move an ordinary hyphen to the baseline.

ܒܹܬ݂ ـ ܟܪ̈ܝܼܗܹܐ

Graphemes

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Phrase & section boundaries

Modern Syriac uses ASCII punctuation and punctuation borrowed from Arabic. For separators at the sentence level and below, the following are used.

Mirrored characters

The words 'left' and 'right' in the Unicode names for parentheses, brackets, and other paired characters should be ignored. LEFT should be read as if it said START, and RIGHT as END. The direction in which the glyphs point will be automatically determined according to the base direction of the text.

The number of characters that are mirrored in this way is around 550, most of which are mathematical symbols. Some are single characters, rather than pairs. The following are some of the more common ones.

(,),<,>,[,],{,},«,»,‹,›

Abbreviation, ellipsis & repetition

What characters are used to indicate abbreviation, ellipsis & repetition?

070F (SAM) indicates that a sequence of characters is an abbreviation (see fig_sam_abbrev). The line would ideally have a small circle at the start, middle and end. It normally starts to the left of the nearest tall letter to the end of the abbreviation.

Modern East Syriac texts use a punctuation mark for contractions of this sort.

Other inline features

Line breaking & hyphenation

Basic line-break opportunities occur between the space-separated words.

They are not broken at the small gaps that appear where a character doesn't join on the left.

Show (default) line-breaking properties for characters in the modern Assyrian Neo-Aramaic orthography.

Text alignment & justification

Does text in a paragraph needs to have flush lines down both sides? Does the script need assistance to conform to a grid pattern? Does the script allow punctuation to hang outside the text box at the start or end of a line? Where adjustments are need to make a line flush, how is that done? Does the script shrink/stretch space between words and/or letters? Are word baselines stretched, as in Arabic? What about paragraph indents?

ـ can be used, as in Arabic, to lengthen the baseline inside Syriac words.

Observation: It's not clear, however, whether the use of that is for justification, or simply for word stretching. Sometimes a word appears to contain a baseline elongation in order to provide more space for wide diacritics on adjacent bases.

Baselines, line height, etc.

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Syriac uses the so-called 'alphabetic' baseline, which is the same as for Latin and many other scripts.

To include the long ascenders and descenders in Syriac, plus the (sometimes stacked) diacritics, line heights need to be slightly larger than for English text.

General page layout & progression

Syriac books, magazines, etc., are bound on the right-hand side, and pages progress from right to left.

Columns are vertical but run right-to-left across the page.

Tables, grids, and other 2-dimensional arrangements progress from right to left across a page.