The Syriac Alphabet

Introduction to the Syriac Alphabet
The Syriac alphabet is a writing system based (like Hebrew and Aramaic) on the 22 letters of the Phoenician alphabet.

The Syriac language, originally known as Christian Aramaic or Aramaic of Edessa, is spoken by Christian communities of the Middle East and the Levant from the second century AD onward. It is still employed today as a liturgical and literary language in traditions like the Maronite Church (Mount-Lebanon), as well as for modern Neo-Aramaic dialects such as Turoyo in Upper Mesopotamia (today’s eastern Turkey).

The script is written from right to left in horizontal lines (sometimes vertical lines).

Most letters connect within words (though not all do). Letters can also represent numerical values, similar to systems in Roman, Hebrew or Greek.

The Scripts: Estranguelo, Serto and Madenkhaya.
The Syriac alphabet has three main variants, but this lesson focuses on Estranguelo as the monumental script (upper case) and common to all traditions.

1. Estranguelo :
This is the monumental script. It is a squarish script similar to squarish Hebrew. Its name derives from sert éwangélion meaning “script of the Gospels”. It is not round at all, as many sites mistakenly associate with the Greek word strongyle (rounded).

It is used for monuments, scholarly publications, titles, and the Peshitta Bible. Letter shapes rarely vary by position (initial, medial, final).

2. Serto:
This is the western (Syria and the Levant) cursive script for more efficient and unofficial writing.

3. Madenkhaya :
This is the eastern (Mesopotamia) cursive script for more efficient and unofficial writing.

Both Eastern (Assyrians and Chaldeans) and western (Syriac Orthodox and Maronites) traditions use the same monumental script: Estranguelo.

The Maronite Script is known as the Squarish Estranguelo. It is seen carved in stone at the patriarchates of Ilige and Bkerké.

The vowels :
Western Syriacs use Greek-derived diacritics (e.g., alpha for a/ā, epsilon for e/ē). Syriac has 5 vowels: A E I O U.

Historically, after the Islamic conquests, Serto was adapted for writing Arabic in Syriac script (known as Garshuné) in regions like the Fertile Crescent. The Maronite Church, centered in Lebanon, continues to use Serto as well as Estranguelo.