Syriac language

Syriac /ˈsɪriæk/ (ܠܫܢܐ ܣܘܪܝܝܐ Leššānā Suryāyā), also known as Syriac Aramaic, is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent and Eastern Arabia. Having first appeared as a script in 1st century AD Assyria after being spoken there as an unwritten language for five centuries, Classical Syriac became a major literary language throughout the Middle East from the 4th to the 8th centuries, the classical language of Edessa, preserved in a large body of Syriac literature. Indeed, Syriac literature comprises roughly 90% of the extant Aramaic literature.

Old Aramaic was adopted by the Neo Assyrian Empire (911-605 BC) when the former conquered the various Aramean city-kingdoms to its west. The Achemenid Empire which rose after the fall of the Assyrian Empire also adopted Old Aramaic as the language of the empire and Old Aramaic quickly became the lingua franca of the region. However, from the late 4th century BC, the Seleucid Empire (323-150 BC) also applied the term Assyria to the Levant and its largely Aramean and Canaanite inhabitants as well as Assyria, and from this point the term was applied without distinction to both Assyria and the Levant. During the course of the third and fourth centuries AD, the inhabitants of the region began to embrace Christianity. The Aramaic language at this point in history is linguistically the Middle Aramaic but since most Christian scribes of the Christian manuscripts, who wrote in the Middle Aramaic, lived in this region of Assyria, which had come to refer to both the historical Assyria as well as the Levant, this specific dialect of the Middle Aramaic has come to be known as Syriac.

From the 1st century AD Syriac became the vehicle of Syriac Christianity and culture, and the liturgical language of the Syriac Orthodox Church and subsequently Assyrian Church of the East, together with the later offshoots of the Assyrian Church; the Nestorian Church, Chaldean Catholic Church, Ancient Church of the East, Saint Thomas Christian Churches, and Assyrian Pentecostal Church. Syriac Christianity and language spread throughout Asia as far as the Indian Malabar Coast and Eastern China, and was the medium of communication and cultural dissemination for the later Arabs and, to a lesser extent, the Parthian Empire and Sassanid Empire Persians. Primarily a Christian medium of expression, Syriac had a fundamental cultural and literary influence on the development of Arabic, which largely replaced it towards the 14th century. Syriac remains the liturgical language of Syriac Christianity to this day.

Syriac is a Middle Aramaic language, and, as such, it is a language of the Northwestern branch of the Semitic family. It is written in the Syriac alphabet, a derivation of the Aramaic alphabet.

Geographic distribution

Syriac was originally a local Assyrian-Akkadian influenced Aramaic dialect of Assyria in northern Mesopotamia that has evolved under the influence of Eastern Rite Christianity into its current form. Before Arabic became the dominant language, Syriac was a major language among Christian communities in the Middle East, Central Asia and Kerala, and remains so among the Assyrians/Syriacs to this day. It has been found as far afield as Hadrians Wall in Ancient Britain, with inscriptions written by Assyrian and Aramean soldiers of the Roman Empire.

History

The history of Syriac can be divided into three distinct periods:

• Old Syriac/Old Aramaic (the language of Assyria/Athura/Assuristan, and the Neo-Assyrian kingdoms of Assur, Adiabene, Osroene and Hatra).
• Middle Syriac/Middle Syriac Aramaic (ܟܬÜ'ܢܝܐ Kṯāḇānāyā, "Literary Syriac"), which is divided into:
  • Eastern Middle Syriac/Eastern Middle Syriac Aramaic (the literary and ecclesiastical language of the ethnic Assyrian Christians of the Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church, Ancient Church of the East and Assyrian Pentecostal Church),
  • Western Middle Syriac/Western Middle Syriac Aramaic (the literary and ecclesiastical language of the largely Syriac members of the Syriac Orthodox Church, Syriac Catholic Church and Maronite Church).
• "Modern Syriac"/"Modern Syriac Aramaic" is a term occasionally used to refer to the modern Eastern Aramaic languages (see e.g. Lipinski 2001:70). Even if they can't be positively identified as the direct descendants of attested Middle Syriac, they must have developed from closely related dialects belonging to the same branch of Aramaic, and the varieties spoken in Christian communities have long co-existed with, and been influenced by, Middle Syriac as a liturgical and literary language. In this terminology, Modern Syriac is divided into:
  • Modern Western Syriac Aramaic (Turoyo and Mlahsô). Note however that these are sometimes excluded from the category of "Modern Syriac".
  • Modern Eastern Syriac Aramaic (Northeastern Neo-Aramaic, including Assyrian Neo-Aramaic and so called Chaldean Neo-Aramaic (the dialects of the Assyrian people) - but the term usually is not used in reference to Neo-Mandaic, another variety of Eastern Aramaic spoken by Mandaeans).

The name "Syriac", when used with no qualification, generally refers to one specific dialect of Middle Aramaic, but not to Old Aramaic nor to the various present-day Eastern and Central Neo-Aramaic languages that are descended from it or from close relatives. The modern varieties are, therefore, not discussed in this article.

Origins

Syriac began as an unwritten spoken dialect of Imperial Aramaic in Assyria-northern Mesopotamia, an Akkadian influenced version of the Old Aramaic language which was introduced as the lingua franca of the Neo Assyrian Empire by Tiglath-Pileser III (745-727 BC). The first evidence of such dialects that emerge in Assyria, and begin to influence the written Imperial Aramaic from the 5th century BC. After the conquest of Assyria, southern Mesopotamia and Aramea (Syria) by Alexander the Great, Syriac and other Aramaic dialects gradually lost their status as imperial languages but continued to flourish as lingua francas alongside Ancient Greek.

In 132 BC, the Neo-Assyrian kingdom of Osroene was founded in Edessa with Syriac as its official language. Many Syriac-speakers still look to Edessa as the cradle of their language. There are about eighty extant early Syriac inscriptions, dated to the first three centuries AD (the earliest example of Syriac, rather than Imperial Aramaic, is in an inscription dated to AD 6, and the earliest parchment is a deed of sale dated to AD 243). All of these early examples of the language are non-Christian. As an official language, Syriac was given a relatively coherent form, style and grammar that is lacking in other Old Eastern Aramaic dialects.

Literary Syriac

In the 3rd century, churches in Edessa began to use Syriac as the language of worship. There is evidence that the adoption of Syriac, the language of the Assyrian people, was to effect mission. Much literary effort was put into the production of an authoritative translation of the Bible into Syriac, the Peshitta (ܦܫܝܛܬܐ Pšīṭtā). At the same time, Ephrem the Syrian was producing the most treasured collection of poetry and theology in the Syriac language.

In 489, many Syriac-speaking Christians living in the eastern reaches of the Roman Empire fled to the Sassanid Empire to escape persecution and growing animosity with Greek-speaking Christians. The Christological differences with the Assyrian Church of the East led to the bitter Nestorian schism in the Syriac-speaking world. As a result, Syriac developed distinctive western and eastern varieties. Although remaining a single language with a high level of comprehension between the varieties, the two employ distinctive variations in pronunciation and writing system, and, to a lesser degree, in vocabulary.

Western Syriac is the official language of the West Syrian rite, practised by the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Syrian Catholic Church, the Maronite Church, the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, the Malabar Independent Syrian Church, the Mar Thoma Church and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church.

Eastern Syriac is the liturgical language of the East Syrian rite, practised in modern times by the ethnic Assyrian followers of the Assyrian Church of the East, the Assyrian Pentecostal Church, the Ancient Church of the East, the Assyrian-Chaldean Catholic Church, as well as the Syro-Malabar Church in India.

Syriac literature is by far the most prodigious of the various Aramaic languages. Its corpus covers poetry, prose, theology, liturgy, hymnody, history, philosophy, science, medicine and natural history. Much of this wealth remains unavailable in critical editions or modern translation.

From the 7th century onwards, Syriac gradually gave way to Arabic as the spoken language of much of the region, excepting northern Iraq. The Mongol invasions of the 13th century, and the religiously motivated massacres of Assyrian Christians by Tamurlane further contributed to the rapid decline of the language. In many places outside of northern Mesopotamia (the Assyrian homeland), even in liturgy, it was replaced by Arabic.

Current status

Revivals of literal Syriac in recent times have led to some success with the creation of newspapers in written Syriac (ܟܬÜ'ܢܝܐ Kṯāḇānāyā), similar to the Arabic Fuṣḥā has been used since the early decades of the 20th century. Modern literary Syriac has also been used not only in religious literature but also in secular genres often with nationalistic themes.

Syriac has been recognised as an official minority language in Iraq. It is also taught in some public schools in Iraq, Israel, Sweden and Kerala/India.

In 2014, an Assyrian nursery school could finally be opened in Yeşilköy/Istanbul after waging a lawsuit against the Ministry of National Education which had denied a permission, but was required to respect non-Muslim minority rights as specified in the Treaty of Lausanne.

Among the Syriac churches of Kerala, Malayalam often replaces Syriac. Literary Syriac is often used as a spoken language by clerics who do not speak the vernacular dialects.

Grammar

Many Syriac words, like those in other Semitic languages, are built out of triliteral roots, collations of three Syriac consonants with variable vowel (and some consonant) sets as a "glue". For example, the root Ü«Ü©Ü , Å QL, has the basic meaning of taking, and the following are some words that can be formed from this root:

• Ü«Ü©Ü  â€" Å¡qal: "he has taken"
• ܢܫܩܘܠ â€" neÅ¡qōl: "he will take"
• Ü«Ü©Ü  â€" šāqel: "he takes, he is taking"
• Ü«Ü©Ü  â€" Å¡aqqel: "he has lifted/raised"
• ܐܫܩܠ â€" ʾaÅ¡qel: "he has set out"
• ܫܩܠܐ â€" Å¡qālā: "a taking, burden, recension, portion or syllable"
• ܫܩ̈ܠܐ â€" Å¡eqlÄ": "takings, profits, taxes"
• ܫܩܠܘܬܐ â€" Å¡aqlūṯā: "a beast of burden"
• ܫܘܩܠܐ â€" Å¡Å«qqālā: "arrogance"

Nouns

Most Syriac nouns are built from triliteral roots. Nouns carry grammatical gender (masculine or feminine), they can be either singular or plural in number (a very few can be dual) and can exist in one of three grammatical states. These states should not be confused with grammatical cases in other languages.

• The absolute state is the basic form of the noun â€" ܫܩ̈ܠܝܢ, Å¡eqlÄ«n, "taxes".
• The emphatic state usually represents a definite noun â€" ܫܩ̈ܠܐ, Å¡eqlÄ", "the taxes".
• The construct state marks a noun in relationship to another noun â€" ܫܩ̈ܠܝ, Å¡eqlay, "taxes of...".

However, very quickly in the development of Classical Syriac, the emphatic state became the ordinary form of the noun, and the absolute and construct states were relegated to certain stock phrases (for example, Ü'ܪ ܐܢܫܐ/Ü'ܪܢܫܐ, bar nāšā, "man, person", literally "son of man").

In Old and early Classical Syriac, most genitive noun relationships are built using the construct state, but contrary to the genitive case, it is the head-noun which is marked by the construct state. Thus, ܫܩ̈ܠܝ ܡܠܟܘܬܐ, Å¡eqlay malkūṯā, means "the taxes of the kingdom". Quickly, the construct relationship was abandoned and replaced by the use of the relative particle Ü•, d-, da-. Thus, the same noun phrase becomes ܫܩ̈ܠܐ ܕܡܠܟܘܬܐ, Å¡eqlÄ" d-malkūṯā, where both nouns are in the emphatic state. Very closely related nouns can be drawn into a closer grammatical relationship by the addition of a pronominal suffix. Thus, the phrase can be written as ܫܩ̈ܠܝܗ ܕܡܠܟܘܬܐ, Å¡eqlêh d-malkūṯā. In this case, both nouns continue to be in the emphatic state, but the first has the suffix that makes it literally read "her taxes" ("kingdom" is feminine), and thus is "her taxes, [those] of the kingdom".

Adjectives always agree in gender and number with the nouns they modify. Adjectives are in the absolute state if they are predicative, but agree with the state of their noun if attributive. Thus, Ü'ܝܫܝ̈ܢ ܫܩ̈ܠܐ, bÄ«Å¡Ä«n Å¡eqlÄ", means "the taxes are evil", whereas ܫܩ̈ܠܐ Ü'ܝ̈ܫܐ, Å¡eqlÄ" ḇīšÄ", means "evil taxes".

Verbs

Most Syriac verbs are built on triliteral roots as well. Finite verbs carry person, gender (except in the first person) and number, as well as tense and conjugation. The non-finite verb forms are the infinitive and the active and passive participles.

Syriac has only two true morphological tenses: perfect and imperfect. Whereas these tenses were originally aspectual in Aramaic, they have become a truly temporal past and future tenses respectively. The present tense is usually marked with the participle followed by the subject pronoun. However, such pronouns are usually omitted in the case of the third person. This use of the participle to mark the present tense is the most common of a number of compound tenses that can be used to express varying senses of tense and aspect.

Syriac also employs verb conjugations such as are present in other Semitic languages. These are regular modifications of the verb's root to express other changes in meaning. The first conjugation is the ground state, or Pəʿal (this name models the shape of the root). form of the verb, which carries the usual meaning of the word. The next is the intensive state, or Paʿʿel, form of the verb, which usually carries an intensified meaning. The third is the extensive state, or ʾAp̄ʿel, form of the verb, which is often causative in meaning. Each of these conjugations has its parallel passive conjugation: the ʾEṯpəʿel, ʾEṯpaʿʿal and ʾEttap̄ʿal respectively. To these six cardinal conjugations are added a few irregular forms, like the Šap̄ʿel and ʾEštap̄ʿal, which generally have an extensive meaning.

Phonology

Phonologically, like the other Northwest Semitic languages, Syriac has 22 consonants and 3 vowels. The consonantal phonemes are:

Phonetically, there is some variation in the pronunciation of Syriac in its various forms. The various Modern Eastern Aramaic vernaculars have quite different pronunciations, and these sometimes influence how the classical language is pronounced, for example, in public prayer. Classical Syriac has two major streams of pronunciation: western and eastern.

Consonants

Syriac shares with Aramaic a set of lightly contrasted plosive/fricative pairs. In different variations of a certain lexical root, a root consonant might exist in plosive form in one variation and fricative form in another. In the Syriac alphabet, a single letter is used for each pair. Sometimes a dot is placed above the letter (qūššāyā, or strengthening; equivalent to a dagesh in Hebrew) to mark that the plosive pronunciation is required, and a dot is placed below the letter (rūkkāḵā, or softening) to mark that the fricative pronunciation is required. The pairs are:

• Voiced labial pair â€" /b/ and /v/
• Voiced velar pair â€" /É¡/ and /É£/
• Voiced dental pair â€" /d/ and /ð/
• Voiceless labial pair â€" /p/ and /f/
• Voiceless velar pair â€" /k/ and /x/
• Voiceless dental pair â€" /t/ and /θ/

As with other Semitic languages, Syriac has a set of five emphatic consonants. These are consonants that are articulated or released in the pharynx or slightly higher. The set consists of:

• Voiceless pharyngeal fricative â€" /ħ/
• Pharyngealized voiceless dental plosive â€" /tˤ/
• Voiced pharyngeal fricative â€" /Ê•/
• Pharyngealized voiceless alveolar fricative â€" /sˤ/
• Voiceless uvular plosive â€" /q/

Syriac also has a rich array of sibilant consonants:

• Voiced alveolar fricative â€" /z/
• Voiceless alveolar fricative â€" /s/
• Pharyngealized voiceless alveolar fricative â€" /sˤ/
• Voiceless postalveolar fricative â€" /ʃ/

Vowels

As with most Semitic languages, the vowels of Syriac are mostly subordinated to consonants. Especially in the presence of an emphatic consonant, vowels tend to become mid-centralised.

Classical Syriac had the following set of distinguishable vowels:

• Close front unrounded vowel â€" /i/
• Close-mid front unrounded vowel â€" /e/
• Open-mid front unrounded vowel â€" /É›/
• Open front unrounded vowel â€" /a/
• Open back unrounded vowel â€" /É'/
• Close-mid back rounded vowel â€" /o/
• Close back rounded vowel â€" /u/

In the western dialect, /É'/ has become /o/, and the original /o/ has merged with /u/. In eastern dialects there is more fluidity in the pronunciation of front vowels, with some speakers distinguishing five qualities of such vowels, and others only distinguishing three. Vowel length is generally not important: close vowels tend to be longer than open vowels.

The open vowels form diphthongs with the approximants /j/ and /w/. In almost all dialects, the full sets of possible diphthongs collapses into two or three actual pronunciations:

• /É'j/ usually becomes /aj/, but the western dialect has /oj/
• /aj/, further, sometimes monophthongized to /e/
• /aw/ usually becomes /É'w/
• /É'w/, further, sometimes monophthongized to /o/

See also

• Syriac studies
• Syriac alphabet
• Syriac literature
• Peshitta
• Ephrem the Syrian
• Syriac music
• Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium
• Turoyo
• Syriac Malayalam
• Syrian Arabic

Notes

References

• Journal of Sacred Literature, New Series [Series 4] vol. 2 (1863) pp. 75â€"87, The Syriac Language and Literature
• Beyer, Klaus (1986). The Aramaic language: its distribution and subdivisions. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht. ISBN 3-525-53573-2.
• Brock, Sebastian (2006). An Introduction to Syriac Studies. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press. ISBN 1-59333-349-8.
• Brockelmann, Carl (1895). Lexicon Syriacum. Berlin: Reuther & Reichard; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.
• Healey, John F (1980). First studies in Syriac. University of Birmingham/Sheffield Academic Press. ISBN 0-7044-0390-0.
• Maclean, Arthur John (2003). Grammar of the dialects of vernacular Syriac: as spoken by the Eastern Syrians of Kurdistan, north-west Persia, and the Plain of Mosul: with notices of the vernacular of the Jews of Azerbaijan and of Zakhu near Mosul. Gorgias Press. ISBN 1-59333-018-9.
• Nöldeke, Theodor and Julius Euting (1880) Kurzgefasste syrische Grammatik. Leipzig: T.O. Weigel. [translated to English as Compendious Syriac Grammar, by James A. Crichton. London: Williams & Norgate 1904. 2003 edition: ISBN 1-57506-050-7].
• Angold, Michael (2006), O’Mahony, Anthony, ed., Cambridge History of Christianity: Volume 5, Eastern Christianity, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0521811132 .
• Payne Smith, Jessie (Ed.) (1903). A compendious Syriac dictionary founded upon the Thesaurus Syriacus of Robert Payne Smith. Oxford University Press, reprinted in 1998 by Eisenbraums. ISBN 1-57506-032-9.
• Robinson, Theodore Henry (1915). Paradigms and exercises in Syriac grammar. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-926129-6.
• Rudder, Joshua. Learn to Write Aramaic: A Step-by-Step Approach to the Historical & Modern Scripts. n.p.: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011. 220 pp. ISBN 978-1461021421 Includes the Estrangela (pp. 59â€"113), Madnhaya (pp. 191â€"206), and the Western Serto (pp. 173â€"190) scripts.

External links

• Syriac at ScriptSource.com
• The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon