Syriac alphabet

Uncommon card · No. 90037

The Syriac alphabet (ܐܠܦ ܒܝܬ ܣܘܪܝܝܐ ʾālep̄ bêṯ Sūryāyā) is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language since the 1st century. It is one of the Semitic abjads descending from the Aramaic alphabet through the Palmyrene alphabet, and shares similarities with the Phoenician, Hebrew, Arabic and Sogdian, the precursor and a direct ancestor of the traditional Mongolian scripts. Syriac is written from right to left in horizontal lines. It is a cursive script where most—but not all—letters connect within a word. There is no letter case distinction between upper and lower case letters, though some letters change their form depending on their position within a word. Spaces separate individual words. All 22 letters are consonants (called ܐܵܬܘܼܬܵܐ, ˀātūṯā). There are optional diacritic marks (called ܢܘܼܩܙܵܐ, nuqzā) to indicate vowels (ܙܵܘܥܵܐ, zāwˁā) and other features. In addition to the sounds of the language, the letters of the Syriac alphabet can be used to represent numbers in a...

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