Syriac is the Aramaic dialect of Edessa in Mesopotamia. Today it is the classical tongue of the Nestorians and Chaldeans of Iran and Iraq and the liturgical language of the Jacobites of Eastern Anatolia and the Maronites of Greater Syria. Syriac is also the language of the Church of St, Thomas on the Malabar Coast of India. Syriac belongs to the Levantine group of the central branch of the West Semitic languages. Syriac literature flourished from the third century on and boasts of writers like Ephraem Syrus, Aphraates, Jacob of Sarug, John of Ephesus, Jacob of Edessa, and Barhebraeus. After the Arab con-quests, Syriac became the language of a tolerated but disenfranchised and diminishing community and began a long, slow decline both as a spoken tongue and as a literary medium in favor of Arabic. Syriac played an important role as the intermediary through which Greek learning passed to the Islamic world. Syriac translations also preserve much Middle Iranian wisdom literature that has been lost in the original. Here, the language is presented both in the Syriac script and in transcription, which is given so that the pronunciation of individual words and the structure of the language may be represented as clearly as possible. The majority of the sentences in the exercises-and all of the readings in later lessons-are taken directly from the P'itta, the Syriac translation of the Bible. Most students learn Syriac as an ad-junct to biblical or theological studies and will be interested primarily in this text. Biblical passages also have the advantage of being familiar, to some degree or other, to most English-speaking students. For many of those whose interest in Syriac stems from Biblical studies or from the history of Eastern Christianity, Syriac may be their first Semitic language. Every effort has been made in the presentation of the grammar to keep the Semitic structure of the language in the forefront and as clear as possible for those who have no previous experience with languages of that family. Syriac is structurally perhaps the simplest of all the Semitic languages. A chart of correspondences among Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac is given.
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Syriac pass by pass.:
A very good grammar about syriac language. We can learn it pass by pass with clearing and objectivity.
A nice introduction to Syriac:
I found this book to be an excellent introduction to Syriac. For the most part, it is adequate for self-taught students. I worked through the lessons on my own in two months (though I suppose I should add that I have some knowledge of Hebrew and Arabic, and considerable experience in numerous non-Semitic languages, so this was far from my first introduction to a foreign language). The points are presented in an order that is useful to a learner and at a manageable rate. The earlier lessons are rather short,... more info
A First Grammar:
Dr. Thackston has done us a service in this primer, however, there is an organizational disconnect with those who wish to use Syriac versus those who wish to pass an introductory course in its grammatical detail. This book is more a semi-organized "spattering" of grammatical artifacts than a sytematic introduction to the Syriac language. For instance, once would not ordinarily "hide" the peal as an assumed primary form. Also, one would linguistically not follow a discussion on Tense with a section on... more info
It's not Greek to me...:
Many Westerners see the historical split between East and West in Christendom in 1054 as creating a monlithic 'East'; whereas the Western church split into a myriad of sects, from the Western perspective, the East seemed fairly uniform. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth, as increasing attention in history, culture, and language studies complement the study of religion in the Eastern realms. Thackston's book on Syriac is one such study that helps to broaden the understanding of Christian... more info
