Concept

Syriac language

Overview

The Syriac language ( SIRR-ee-ak; Classical Syriac: ܠܫܢܐ ܣܘܪܝܝܐ, romanized: Leššānā Suryāyā), also known natively in its spoken form in early Syriac literature as Edessan (Urhāyā), the Mesopotamian language (Nahrāyā) and Aramaic (Aramāyā), is an Eastern Middle Aramaic dialect. Classical Syriac is the academic term used to refer to the dialect's literary usage and standardization, distinguishing it from other Aramaic dialects also known as 'Syriac', 'Assyrian', or 'Syrian'. In its West-Syriac tradition, Classical Syriac is often known as leššōnō kṯoḇonōyō (lit. 'the written language or the book language') or simply kṯoḇonōyō, or kṯowonōyō, while in its East-Syriac tradition, it is known as leššānā ʔatīqā (lit. 'the old language') or saprāyā (lit. 'scribal or literary').

It emerged during the first century AD from a local Eastern Aramaic dialect that was spoken in the ancient Neo-Assyrian kingdom and region of Osroene, centered in the city of Edessa (Urhai). During the Early Christian period, it became the main literary language of various Aramaic-speaking Christian communities in the historical regions of Ancient Syria, Assyria and throughout the Near East. As a liturgical language of Syriac Christianity, it gained a prominent role among Eastern Christian communities that used both Eastern Syriac and Western Syriac rites. Following the spread of Syriac Christianity, it also became a liturgical language of eastern Christian communities as far as India and China. It flourished from the 4th to the 8th century, and continued to have an important role during the next centuries, but by the end of the Middle Ages it was gradually reduced to liturgical use, since the role of vernacular language among its native largely Assyrian and Aramean speakers was overtaken by several Neo-Aramaic languages.

Classical Syriac is written in the Syriac alphabet, a derivation of the Aramaic alphabet. The language is preserved in a large body of Syriac literature, which comprises roughly 90% of the extant Aramaic literature. Along with Greek and Latin, Syriac became one of the three most important languages of Early Christianity. Already from the first and second centuries AD, the mostly Assyrian inhabitants of the region of Osroene began to embrace Christianity, and by the third and fourth centuries, local Edessan Aramaic language became the vehicle of the specific Christian culture that came to be known as Syriac Christianity. Because of theological differences, Syriac-speaking Christians diverged during the 5th century into the Church of the East that followed the East Syriac Rite under Persian rule, and the Syriac Orthodox Church that followed the West Syriac Rite under Byzantine rule.

As a liturgical language of Syriac Christianity, Classical Syriac spread throughout Asia as far as the Southwestern India (Malabar Coast), and Eastern China, and became the medium of communication and cultural dissemination for the later Arabs, and (to a lesser extent) the other peoples of Parthian and Sasanian empires. Primarily a Christian medium of expression, Syriac had a fundamental cultural and literary influence on the development of Arabic, which largely replaced it during the later medieval period.

Syriac remains the sacred language of Syriac Christianity to this day. It is used as the liturgical language of several denominations, like those who follow the East Syriac Rite, including the Assyrian Church of the East and its offshoots, the Ancient Church of the East, and the Chaldean Catholic Church, the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, and the Assyrian Pentecostal Church, and also those who follow the West Syriac Rite, including: Syriac Orthodox Church, the Syriac Catholic Church, the Maronite Catholic Church, the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church, the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church. Classical Syriac was originally the liturgical language of the Syriac Melkites within the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch in Antioch and parts of ancient Syria. The Syriac Melkites changed their church's West Syriac Rite to that of Constantinople in the 9th–11th centuries, necessitating new translations of all their Syriac liturgical books.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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This is indicated primarily by the fact that these languages lack what we would call grammatical categories. As regards this point, Westermann's grammar of the Ewe language is in entire agreement with the much earlier results which Steinthal reached in his investigation of the Manda language, which is also of the Soudan region. These languages consist of monosyllabic words which follow one another in direct…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
States what Syriac language is.
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The Jews of Middle and Eastern Europe, who are scattered in all parts of the world, finding it necessary to have a common tongue for mutual intercourse, have raised Yiddish to the status of a language, and have succeeded in translating into Yiddish the best books to be found in the world's literature. Even they could not satisfy the soul's yearning through the many foreign tongues of which they are masters; nor did…
Mahatma Gandhi, Third class in Indian railways
Close in meaning to Syriac language; the term itself is not named.
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In the twelfth century there began to be introduced into the language some of the terms of Aristotle's philosophy; and towards the sixteenth century one expressed by Greek terms all the parts of the human body, their diseases, their remedies; whence the words _cardiaque_, _céphalique_, _podagre_, _apoplectique_, _asthmatique_, _iliaque_, _empyème_, and so many others. Although the language then enriched itself from…
Voltaire, Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary
Close in meaning to Syriac language; the term itself is not named.
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Philosophers who discussed Syriac language

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Gnosticism

Place in the tradition

Part of Gnosticism.

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