Classical Syriac

Overview

Classical Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic (the northwest branch of the Semitic languages), originating in the city of Edessa (Urhay, present-day Sanliurfa in Turkey) in Osrhoene. From the second and third centuries CE onward, this Edessene speech was standardized as the literary and liturgical language of Aramaic-speaking Christianity in the Near East. It became one of the three great vehicles of ancient and medieval Christian culture, alongside Greek and Latin. Its literary golden age spans the fourth to seventh centuries (Ephrem the Syrian, Aphrahat, Narsai, Jacob of Serugh), and continued after the Arab conquest. Syriac was also a major conduit for the transmission of Greek learning (philosophy, medicine, the sciences) to the Arab world through intermediary translations. The language remains in use as a liturgical and scholarly language by the Syriac Churches (Syriac Orthodox, Assyrian Church of the East, Maronites, Chaldeans, Syriac Catholics, Syro-Malabars) to the present day, while living Neo-Aramaic dialects (Turoyo, Sureth/Assyrian Neo-Aramaic) descend from other Aramaic vernaculars and coexist with it.

History of the people

The speakers were the Aramaic-speaking populations of the Near East (Osrhoene, northern Mesopotamia, Syria), largely Christianized from the earliest centuries. Edessa was a major intellectual center (the School of Edessa, closed in 489 by order of the emperor Zeno; the School of Nisibis, refounded by Narsai after his departure from Edessa, took over as the center of the Church of the East). These Syriac Christian communities developed a considerable theological, exegetical, poetic (memre and madrashe), hagiographic, historiographic, and scientific literature. After the christological divisions of the fifth century, they organized themselves into the Syriac Orthodox Church (West) and the Church of the East (East), the latter carrying out a spectacular missionary expansion as far as India (the Saint Thomas Christians), Central Asia, and China (the Xi'an stele, 781). Under Sasanian and then Arab rule, Syriac scholars played a transmitting role: they translated the Greek corpus (Aristotle, Galen, Hippocrates) into Syriac, the basis for later Arabic translations (the circle of Hunayn ibn Ishaq). Their contemporary descendants include Assyrians/Chaldeans, Syriac Orthodox and Catholics, Maronites, and Saint Thomas Christians (Syro-Malabars, Syro-Malankaras), dispersed by persecutions (notably the 1915 genocide, the Sayfo) and recent emigration from the Middle East.

History of the language

Syriac emerged as the Aramaic dialect of Edessa; the oldest Edessene inscriptions and parchments (including dated documents) are attested from the first to third centuries CE. Adopted by the Christian communities, it became a standardized literary language (second-third centuries), then reached its apogee from the fourth to seventh centuries. The christological controversies of the fifth century (Ephesus 431, Chalcedon 451) lastingly split the tradition into a Western branch (Syriac Orthodox/miaphysite) and an Eastern branch (Church of the East, called 'Nestorian'), hence the two scripts and vocalizations. After the Arab conquest (seventh century), Arabic gradually supplanted Syriac as the vernacular and administrative language; Syriac declined as a spoken language between the eighth and thirteenth centuries, with a medieval 'Syriac Renaissance' (twelfth-thirteenth centuries, Bar Hebraeus, Michael the Syrian) as its last great literary flourishing. Classical Syriac has no native speakers today (a 'dead' language in the sense of not being a mother tongue) but remains alive as a liturgical, scholarly, and religious-teaching language. The modern Neo-Aramaic languages (Turoyo, Sureth) are related living Aramaic vernaculars, not direct descendants of classical Edessene Syriac.

The script

Syriac is written with a consonantal alphabet (abjad) of 22 letters derived from Imperial Aramaic, written from right to left, cursive and ligatured (most letters connect to the following one). There are three principal scripts: (1) estrangela (etymology debated: from Greek strongulon 'rounded', or from serta euangeliya 'gospel script'), the oldest, monumental form, used in ancient manuscripts; (2) serto (Western, 'line/stroke'), cursive, used by the Syriac Orthodox/Maronite tradition (West); (3) madnhaya (Eastern, 'of the East', also called Nestorian or swadaya), used by the Church of the East. All three share the same 22 letters and the same alphabetical order (alaph, beth, gamal, dalath, he, waw, zayn, heth, teth, yodh, kaph, lamadh, mim, nun, semkath, 'e, pe, sadhe, qoph, resh, shin, taw), but differ in the shape of the letters and above all in vocalic notation. Certain letters (alaph, dalath, he, waw, zayn, sadhe, resh, taw) never connect to the following letter. The diacritical point is essential: a point above/below distinguishes, for example, dalath (d, point below) from resh (r, point above), two letters of identical shape; the seyame sign (two points above a word) marks the plural of nouns.

Sign system

A consonantal system of 22 signs (abjad) shared by the three scripts. Categories: 6 begadkefat letters with dual realization (beth b/v, gamal g/gh, dalath d/dh, kaph k/kh, pe p/f, taw t/th); emphatics teth, sadhe, qoph; laryngeals/pharyngeals alaph, he, heth, 'e; 3 matres lectionis (alaph, waw, yodh) also serving as vowels. Canonical order and values: alaph('), beth(b), gamal(g), dalath(d), he(h), waw(w/u/o), zayn(z), heth(h), teth(t emph.), yodh(y/i/e), kaph(k), lamadh(l), mim(m), nun(n), semkath(s), 'e('ayin), pe(p/f), sadhe(s emph.), qoph(q), resh(r), shin(sh), taw(t). Superimposed vocalic notation: the Western system (vowels named after Greek vowels: zqapha, ptaha, rvasa, hvasa, 'sasa) placed above/below; the Eastern system by points. Auxiliary signs: seyame (2 points = plural), qushshaya/rukkakha (stop/fricative), diacritical points distinguishing dalath/resh and disambiguating certain readings.

Phonology

A typical Semitic consonantism: the presence of the emphatics teth (t'), sadhe (s'), qoph (q); the pharyngeals heth (h) and 'e ('ayin); the laryngeal he and the glottal stop alaph. Central phonological feature: begadkefat spirantization, inherited from Aramaic. The six stops b, g, d, k, p, t are realized as fricatives ([v], [gh], [dh], [kh], [f], [th]) after a vowel, and as stops at the beginning of a word or after a consonant / in gemination. This alternation is marked by the points qushshaya (stop, hard) and rukkakha (fricative, soft). Vowel system: five main qualities (a, e, i, o/u) with a notable East/West distinction in pronunciation, particularly the vowel marked zqapha, realized as /a(:)/ in the Eastern tradition but /o/ in the Western tradition (e.g. the noun 'malka' king -> 'malko' in the West). Reduction of short vowels in an open pretonic syllable (schwa). The stress generally falls on the last or penultimate syllable. The difference in pronunciation between the Eastern and Western traditions is real but does not affect the consonantal orthography, which remains common to both.

Grammar — essentials

Semitic morphology based on roots (most often triliteral) and patterns. NOUN: two genders (masculine/feminine, feminine often in -a/-ta, written -tā), three states: absolute (indefinite), construct (genitive/annexion relationship), and emphatic (originally definite, in -ā, having become the usual unmarked form). Singular/plural number (masc. emphatic plural in -ē, fem. in -ātā), plural signaled in writing by the seyame. No case declension; relations are expressed by the proclitic particle d- ('of/that/who', genitive and relative) and by prepositions (b- in, l- to/toward, men from/since, 'al on, 'am with). VERB: a system of derived conjugations (binyanim): Pe'al (simple active), Pa''el (intensive/factitive), Aph'el (causative), and their passive-reflexives in Et- (Etpe'el, Etpa''al, Ettaph'al). Two basic aspects/tenses: perfect (completed, personal suffixes) and imperfect (incomplete/future-modal, personal prefixes). Active/passive participles are much used as present/progressive, often with enclitic pronouns. Imperative, infinitive, participles. Independent personal pronouns and suffixes (possessives on nouns, objects on verbs). Word ORDER is flexible, often VSO or SVO; the nominal (copula-less) sentence is common. The enclitic -w/-y (hu, hi) serves as a copula.

Reading tips

A practical reading method: (1) Identify the script (estrangela/serto/madnhaya), since the shape of the letters changes; the alphabetical order and values remain identical. (2) Read from right to left, segmenting into words (the proclitics w-, d-, b-, l-, men- attach to the following word: always detach them to find the root). (3) Distinguish homographic letter pairs by the diacritical point: dalath (point below)=d vs resh (point above)=r. (4) Texts are mostly unvocalized or partially vocalized: restore the vowels from the root and the recognized morphological pattern. (5) Identify the emphatic state in -a (default) and the seyame (two points) that signals a plural even without any other marker. (6) Recognize the triliteral root by removing inflectional prefixes/suffixes and identifying the binyan (Pe'al, Pa''el, Aph'el, Et-). (7) Beware of garshuni (Arabic written in Syriac letters), which can cause a 'Syriac' reading to fail. (8) Take the tradition (East vs West) into account for the restored vocalization (malka/malko), though this does not change the consonantal skeleton.

Pitfalls

Major pitfalls: (1) confusing dalath (d) and resh (r), of identical shape, distinguished only by the position of the point. (2) Failing to detach the proclitics (w-, d-, b-, l-, men-) graphically attached to the following word, which masks the root. (3) Treating garshuni (Arabic written in Syriac letters, or sometimes other languages) as Syriac. (4) Applying a single universal vocalization while ignoring the East/West difference (zqapha a vs o: malka/malko). (5) Missing the seyame (two points) that marks an otherwise unsignaled plural. (6) Forgetting the begadkefat alternation when restoring the pronunciation. (7) Confusing the emphatic state in -a (the default form) with a systematic marker of definiteness. (8) In manuscripts, taking into account abbreviations, ligatures, and degradation that make certain diacritical points ambiguous: flag the uncertainty rather than guessing.

Decipherment history

Syriac was never 'lost' or in need of decipherment: its transmission was continuous through the Syriac Churches, which preserved its liturgical and scholarly use without interruption. In the Latin West, its academic study began in the Renaissance: the first printed edition of the Syriac New Testament (the editio princeps, in fact the Gospels followed by Acts and Epistles) was produced under the direction of Johann Albrecht Widmanstetter (Widmanstadius) in Vienna in 1555, with the help of Moses of Mardin, at the expense of Ferdinand I of Habsburg. European grammars and lexicons developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Reference lexicography culminated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with the monumental Thesaurus Syriacus of Robert Payne Smith (vol. 1 1879, completed in 1901) and the compact dictionary of Jessie Payne Smith (A Compendious Syriac Dictionary, 1903). Modern scholarly grammar was founded by Theodor Nöldeke (Kurzgefasste syrische Grammatik, 1880). There is therefore no history of decipherment in the strict sense (as for hieroglyphs or cuneiform), but rather a history of reception and scholarly editing in the West, backed by an uninterrupted indigenous tradition of grammarians (including Jacob of Edessa in the seventh-eighth centuries and Bar Hebraeus in the thirteenth).

Common formulae & expressions

shlama (Est) / shlomo (Ouest)

Peace; the usual greeting ('peace'), equivalent to Semitic salam/shalom

marya

The Lord (rendering YHWH); a major liturgical term, related to mar 'lord'

maran

Our Lord (mar + suffix -an); e.g. maran atha 'our Lord comes / has come'

alaha (Est) / aloho (Ouest)

God

b-shem aba

In the name of the Father; a liturgical Trinitarian opening (aba, bra, ruha d-qudsha: Father, Son, Holy Spirit)

amin

Amen; closing formula

w-

Proclitic 'and'; an omnipresent coordinating conjunction at the head of a clause

d-

Relative/genitive proclitic 'who, that, of'; one of the most frequent particles

hwa

'he was / used to be'; auxiliary for forming compound tenses and the past

bar / bar nasha

'son' / 'son of man'; bar also serves to form compounds (bar + noun)

Corpora & reference editions

• Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon (CAL, Hebrew Union College) — lexical and textual database of Aramaic including Syriac
• e-GEDSH (Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage, Beth Mardutho) — online encyclopedic reference
• Peshitta (the standard Syriac version of the Bible), Old and New Testament; critical edition by the Leiden Peshitta Institute
• SEDRA (morphological/lexical database, Beth Mardutho)
• Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies (Beth Mardutho) — the leading scholarly journal
• Gorgias Press — the principal academic publisher of Syriac texts and studies

Bibliographic references

• Nöldeke, Theodor, Kurzgefasste syrische Grammatik, 1880 (2e ed. 1898; trad. angl. de J. A. Crichton, Compendious Syriac Grammar, 1904) — The foundational reference scholarly grammar; still cited as an authority. Reference verified.
• Payne Smith, Robert, Thesaurus Syriacus, Oxford, 1879-1901 (2 vol., vol. 2 acheve apres sa mort) — The great reference Syriac-Latin dictionary. Reference verified.
• Payne Smith, Jessie (Mrs. Margoliouth), A Compendious Syriac Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 1903 — An abridged Syriac-English dictionary based on the Thesaurus, the tool most used by students. Reference verified.
• Muraoka, Takamitsu, Classical Syriac: A Basic Grammar with a Chrestomathy, 2e ed. 2005 (bibliographie choisie de S. P. Brock) — A modern teaching grammar with a chrestomathy. Reference verified.
• Coakley, J. F., Robinson's Paradigms and Exercises in Syriac Grammar, 5e ed., Oxford University Press, 2002 (d'apres T. H. Robinson, 1re ed. 1915) — A manual of paradigms and exercises widely used in teaching. Reference verified (attributed to Coakley as reviser of Robinson).
• Brock, Sebastian P., A Brief Outline of Syriac Literature, Kottayam, 1997 — A reference overview of Syriac literature by one of the leading specialists. Reference plausible (author/title established; do not over-interpret the edition details).
• Sokoloff, Michael, A Syriac Lexicon: A Translation from the Latin, Correction, Expansion, and Update of C. Brockelmann's Lexicon Syriacum, Eisenbrauns/Gorgias Press, 2009 — A major modern lexicon, a reworking of Brockelmann's Lexicon Syriacum. Reference verified.