Classical Syriac Alphabet: The Names of the Letters and the Sounds They Make
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- Опубліковано 5 лют 2025
- This video gives the names of the letters of the Syriac alphabet in the Estrangela script and how they are pronounced. The pronunciation of the names of these letters and the sounds they make will vary depending on whether or not we're using a West Syriac pronunciation or an East Syriac pronunciation. The pronunciation used in this video is close to the pronunciation used in East Syriac, though it reflects a pronunciation that would have been used at an earlier stage of the language. In other words, the pronunciation used here reflects the pronunciation that is generally given in fully vocalized East Syriac texts. For help learning how to write each letter, look for the tracing pages at markfrancois.w....
Hello Mr. Mark. Thanks a lot for your explanation. I'm getting inside Syriac language and it was so hard to find any resource that explain alphabet letters in a easy way. Great job, thanks for your help!!!
Glad it was helpful! Hopefully I'll have time to put up more material soon.
*Dr
Hello Mr. Mark. all the very best for your work. i am an east syrian lives in kerala... i am studying syriac...
Thanks for leaving a comment. I'm glad it was helpful. The history of East Syrians in Kerala is very interesting and it's a great heritage to have. I hope things go well with your study of Syriac.
Aye! I am Tamil ❤
So clutch. Thanks for making these!
This is sooooooo helpful thank you so muchhh
very cool video! Thanks Mr. Francois
Fascinating
Thank you for this.
Love those glottalized emphatics!
However, I would have thought, that at the time in history that the emphatics were glottalized, the Heth would have been pronounced like Arabic ح. You pronounce Heth like خ.
So why is that? Is it because ح turned into خ in ancient times? and therefore the Ashkenazi Chet is closer to Roman times than the Mizrahi حet.
Thanks!
If I enable the automatic caption option for the video, I may be able to understand. Hug, from here in Brazil.
Hope that works!
Is there any way to distinguish (in writing) two different pronunciations of the letters b, g, d, k, p, t?
Good question. Printed editions, like the United Bible Society's edition of the New Testament, normally place a dot above the letter to indicate the hard pronunciation and a dot below to indicate the soft pronunciation. The Mosul Bible (East Syriac) also uses the same dots, but not in every case. East Syriac manuscripts, like M Syr 148, which can be viewed online at dukhrana.com, is very consistent with writing the dots, keeping in mind that in East Syriac, p doesn't have the soft (f) pronunciation anymore and is even sometimes pronounced as a w. So in that particular manuscript, a dot isn't used with p. I'm not as familiar with West Syriac manuscripts that are written with vowels (I normally look at the ones without vowels) but I imagine they use the dots fairly consistently as well.
I hit the like button but I am wondering why certain resources contradict each other im trying to learn this script yet I find discrepancies
Hi Peter. Are you thinking about differences in what the letters look like, differences in how the letters are pronounced, or differences in the names of the letters?
@@markstevenfrancois actually all three especially the first two. Thank you for your response. It seems depending on who you ask you get slightly different information on this subject and it confuses the beginner. I'm not sure why there are differences for the same script.
@@markstevenfrancois iv have been using mostly onmiglot and your channel to start classical Syriac
@@peterwycka7222 1. There are actually three different scripts that are used to write Classical Syriac. That's why it is a bit confusing. The first and oldest script is the Estrangela script. The second script is the Eastern Script, which is used in churches that descend from the Church of the East. The Church of the East, unlike other Syriac churches in the beginning, was located in the Persian Empire. They split from the church in the Roman Empire for both political and christological reasons. The third script is the Western Script, which is used in the Syriac Orthodox Church. This script deviates from the Estrangela script more than the Eastern Script does. You can think of it as a cursive script that developed from the Estrangela script. Many scholarly publications use the Estrangela script. Publications from the Assyrian Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic Church generally use the Eastern Script. And publications from the Syriac Orthodox Church use the Western Script. 2. As for pronunciation, there are several different pronunciations used for letters in Syriac. The two main pronunciations are the western pronunciation and the eastern pronunciation. The differences in pronunciation are due to ecclesiastical differences and the local Aramaic dialects that were used by people who lived in the areas where these pronunciations developed. Scholars sometimes use a third pronunciation based on how Syriac would have been pronounced in an earlier period. Syriac churches in India pronounced Syriac differently as well. Some of this is explained in the draft of chapter 1 of the grammar I am writing, which can be found here: markfrancois.wordpress.com/syriac-grammar/. Hope that helps.
@@markstevenfrancois yes I am speak only of the Estrangela script. Iv noticed difference in how to pronounce and how one or two of the letters look etc. Depending on what resource I look at. Particularly I believe the letter simkath or sheen. Anyway I think clarity will come as I continue to learn. I want to thank you for your response and encourage you to continue teaching Syriac it is an important service to some. Thank you.
Thank you. Where can I listen to the sentence of the Bible, please?
Do you mean where can you listen to the Bible being read in Syriac?
Wow! That was the most helpful explanation of why we should study classical Syriac for both Old and New Testament textual criticism. I'm currently reading "The Qur'an and the Bible" by Dr. Gabriel Said Reynolds. I noticed the name Ephrem comes up quite a bit. I would be curious to know how significant classical Syriac is to textual criticism of the Qu'ran. According to Dr. Reynolds, there would seem to be many words/ideas in the Qu'ran (Arabic) that can be traced back to classical Syriac and the writings of the patristic fathers pre/contemporary Qu'ran. Thoughts?
Normally, textual criticism deals with differences in the wording of manuscripts of a particular text. Since Ephrem's works aren't manuscripts of the Qur'an, they wouldn't really play a role in textual criticism. That being said, it is possible that they could play a role in the source criticism or, more likely, the tradition history of the Qur'an. But I'm not really an expert on the Qur'an so it would be difficult for me to say how much influence there might be. But it's definitely a very interesting question.
@@markstevenfrancois Are You A Jew or A Zoroastrian
@@ADeeSHUPA That's a very interesting question. I'm a Christian. Why do you ask?
@@markstevenfrancois 22 vs 28 letters of semitic sounds
@@ADeeSHUPA
It was anticipated that certain pairs of sounds tended to merge, and those pairs of sounds could be represent by a single letter, like Shin and Sin. Also, Semitic scribes never aspired to perfectly portray the exact pronunciation, as can be seen from the fact that vowels and doubled letters were not originally written.
Finally, the 22 letters have Kabbalistic meanings that reflect creative energies which are 22 in number.
Whats the best way to learn this for people of average intelligence?
Three Steps: 1. Learn the names of the letters in order. The best way is through an alphabet song. The first letter of each name will give you a basic idea of how they sound. 2. Learn how to write the letters of the alphabet. The best way to do this is by using tracing sheets. I have some on my website. 3. Spend a lot of time practicing how to pronounce Syriac words you are learning. It takes time but the best way to learn the pronunciation is to practice it over and over and over again. Hope that helps!
Wow it is extremely similar to Hebrew. Nearly identical. Obviously Jesus would of spoken and known both languages. Arabic has deviated from Aramaic and Hebrew
Hi Sarah. Thanks for leaving a comment. It's definitely similar to Hebrew in terms of the alphabet because both are ultimately derived from the Phoenician alphabet. Plus the Hebrew alphabet that we use in Bibles today was actually adopted from Aramaic. The alphabet that was used in the pre-exilic period looks quite a bit different. I might need some more context to understand what you mean when you say that Arabic has deviated from Aramaic and Hebrew.
Hi Mark. Thanks for your informative reply. Over the past two thousand years, as Hebrew has been lying relatively static, due to its reservation for mainly religious purposes, Arabic has evolved in different directions., splitting into more varied dialects.
Hi Sarah. Thanks for the explanation. There is definitely a lot of truth in that. One thing that's interesting, though, is that for some reason Arabic preserves a lot of archaic sounds and features that Hebrew and Aramaic would have had in the distant past before they are attested in writing. One example is the letter ghay(i)n, which was still be pronounced properly in Hebrew until at least the 3rd century BCE but was no longer being pronounced, for the most, afterwards. Arabic also preserves cases (nominative, genitive, accusative), which Hebrew and Aramaic would have had in the distant past but don't have in the biblical period except in some names.
Hi Mark, it’s all so interesting. Thank you for imparting you’re knowledge. Is the ancient Hebrew ghayin pronounced the same as the guttural Arabic ghayn?
Hi Sarah. It would have been pronounced the same or close to the same as the Arabic ghayn. The reason that we know Hebrew used to have this sound is because of the way that some words with the letter 'ayin are transliterated in the Septuagint. When it was pronounced like the letter 'ayin, it doesn't show up in the transliteration - you simply see a vowel beginning the syllable. However, in some cases it is transliterated with a gamma, which represents the Arabic ghayn. Some of the best examples are the words עזה (Gaza) and עמרה (Gomorrah). In the Septuagint, the word עזה is transliterated as Γαζα (with a gamma at the beginning) and עמרה is transliterated as Γομορρα (with a gamma at the beginning).
Iam native speaker for the formal language
Worth watching...loved it
ابجد۔۔۔ ا ب ج د ہ و ز ح ط ی ک ل م ن س ع ف ص ق ر ش ت ث خ ذ ض ظ غ
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