Symbols
85Click a symbol to copy it and open its page.
Syriac alphabet: 22 letters, right to left
Each row is one letter with its usual sounds; the second column holds the extra form encoded beside it. Estrangela, Serto and East Syriac fonts draw the same characters differently.
Vowel points
West Syriac writes small Greek letters above or below a consonant; East Syriac writes dots. Shown alone here, each one sits on the letter before it when pasted.
Pointing marks
Dots and lines added to letters: hard and soft pronunciation, the plural sign seyame and other diacritics.
Syriac punctuation
The block's own stops and colons, the Harklean text-critical signs, and the Arabic marks modern Syriac texts borrow.
Where Syriac is spoken
Iraq and Syria, the two countries in CLDR's count, then Turkey (Tur Abdin) and Iran (Urmia), historic Syriac heartlands.
Syriac crosses and church
The two Syriac cross symbols and the emoji used for Syriac church life.
On the map
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The Syriac alphabet in order: 22 letters
The Syriac alphabet has 22 letters, all consonants, written from right to left in the same order as Hebrew and the other alphabets descended from Aramaic: ܐ alaph, ܒ beth, ܓ gamal, ܕ dalath, ܗ he, ܘ waw, ܙ zain, ܚ heth, ܛ teth, ܝ yudh, ܟ kaph, ܠ lamadh, ܡ mim, ܢ nun, ܣ semkath, ܥ ʿe, ܦ pe, ܨ sadhe, ܩ qaph, ܪ rish, ܫ shin, ܬ taw. There are no capital letters. Three of the letters, ܐ ܘ ܝ, also stand for long vowels: ܘ for o and u, ܝ for i and e.
Syriac is a joined script, like Arabic: in a word most letters link to the letter on either side, and their shape changes with position. Eight letters, ܐ ܕ ܗ ܘ ܙ ܨ ܪ ܬ, connect only to the letter before them, so a small gap follows them inside a word. Your font and phone do the joining by themselves; you always paste the same 22 characters.
The letters ܕ dalath and ܪ rish have exactly the same body and differ only in a dot: below for dalath, above for rish. That is why Unicode also has ܖ, the dotless dalath-rish, for old manuscripts where the dot is missing. The other extra forms in the grid are ܑ superscript alaph, a small alaph written above a letter in pointed texts; ܤ, an end-of-word form of semkath found in some texts; ܧ reversed pe, used in Christian Palestinian Aramaic; ܞ yudh-he; and ܔ ܜ, gamal and teth with marks added for writing Arabic sounds in Garshuni, which is Arabic written in Syriac letters.
Estrangela, Serto and East Syriac: one set of letters, three looks
Syriac is written in three main styles. Estrangela is the oldest, the upright book hand of early manuscripts and of the Syriac Bible, the Peshitta. Serto (Serṭā) is the rounded West Syriac hand used by the Syriac Orthodox, Syriac Catholic and Maronite churches and by speakers of Turoyo. East Syriac, also called Madnhaya, is used by the Assyrian Church of the East, the Chaldean Catholic Church and for modern Assyrian (Sureth).
In Unicode all three are the same characters: ܐ is U0710 whether it looks like an Estrangela, Serto or East Syriac alaph. The look comes from the font. Windows ships the Estrangela font Estrangelo Edessa; Google's free Noto Sans Syriac comes in Eastern and Western versions too, and Beth Mardutho's Meltho fonts cover all three styles. If the letters on this page look different from your prayer book, the characters are still right: switch the font.
Syriac vowels: West Syriac Greek letters and East Syriac dots
Ordinary Syriac text leaves most vowels out, and readers supply them. Bibles, prayer books and learners' texts add vowel points, and the two traditions use different ones. West Syriac writes five small Greek letters above or below the consonant: pthaha ܰ from alpha for a, zqapha ܳ from omicron for o, rbasa ܶ from epsilon for e, hbasa ܺ from eta for i, and esasa ܽ from upsilon for u. On beth they read ܒܰ ܒܳ ܒܶ ܒܺ ܒܽ, ba bo be bi bu.
East Syriac uses dots instead: pthaha ܲ for a, zqapha ܵ for ā, the two zlama marks ܸ (horizontal) and ܹ (angular) for two kinds of e, the dot ܼ, which with yudh writes i and under waw writes u, and the rwaha dot ܿ over waw for o. In the grid each vowel row lines up the West Syriac forms with the East Syriac dots, so you can see which mark writes which sound in each tradition. Pasted after a letter, each point attaches to it; shown alone, it floats over an empty space.
Syriac dots and marks: qushshaya, rukkakha and seyame
Six letters, ܒ ܓ ܕ ܟ ܦ ܬ, each have a hard and a soft sound, as in Hebrew: b or v, g or gh, d or dh, k or kh, p or f, t or th. A dot above, qushshaya ݁, marks the hard sound and a dot below, rukkakha ݂, the soft one: ܒ݁ is b, ܒ݂ is v.
The two dots of seyame mark a plural. Unpointed Syriac often spells singular and plural the same, so ܡܠܟܐ is malkā, king, and ܡܠܟ̈ܐ with seyame is malkē, kings. Unicode writes seyame with the general combining diaeresis U0308 rather than a Syriac character, which is why it sits in the grid beside the Syriac-only marks. The feminine dot ݀ marks the feminine suffix; two vertical dots are accents in ancient manuscripts, three dots mark letters absent from Syriac in Turoyo, and oblique lines can indicate silent letters.
Syriac punctuation, numbers and the Syriac crosses
Syriac has its own stops. ܀, a cluster of four dots, closes a paragraph or a section; ܁ and ܂ are full stops written above and below the line; ܃ to ܉ are colons of different shapes that marked pauses in old texts. ܊ marks a contraction, and the music mark ݉ and ݊ barrekh, whose name means “bless”, belong to liturgical books. The Harklean signs ܋ obelus, ܌ metobelus and ܍ asteriscus come from the Harklean version of the New Testament, revised by Thomas of Harqel in the early 7th century with critical signs inherited from Origen. Modern Syriac also borrows the Arabic comma ،, semicolon ؛ and question mark ؟, and uses the Arabic tatweel ـ to stretch a joined word.
Letters double as numbers, as in Hebrew and Greek: ܐ 1, ܒ 2 up to ܛ 9, then ܝ 10, ܟ 20, ܠ 30 and on to ܩ 100, ܪ 200, ܫ 300 and ܬ 400. Chapters, verses and dates in church books are numbered this way.
Unicode also has two Syriac crosses in its Miscellaneous Symbols: U2670 West Syriac Cross and U2671 East Syriac Cross. People search for a “Syriac cross emoji”, but there is none: and are text symbols that you copy like letters, and in chats people pair them with the emoji .
How to type the Syriac alphabet, and where Syriac is spoken
On Windows, add Syriac in Settings › Time & language › Language & region; Windows offers a Syriac keyboard and a Syriac Phonetic one, where letters sit on the Latin keys that sound like them. On a Mac, an iPhone or an Android phone, install a Syriac keyboard app or use an online Syriac keyboard; or copy the letters from this page. In HTML, write the code point: ܐ is ܐ, ܬ is ܬ. The Syriac block runs from U0700 to U074F and was added in Unicode 3.0 in 1999.
Syriac began as the Aramaic of Edessa (ܐܘܪܗܝ Urhay, today Şanlıurfa in Turkey) and became the language of a great Christian literature: the Peshitta Bible, the hymns of Ephrem the Syrian in the 4th century, and centuries of theology and science. Classical Syriac is still the liturgical language of the Syriac Orthodox, Syriac Catholic, Maronite, Chaldean and Assyrian churches and of the Saint Thomas Christians of Kerala. Modern Aramaic varieties, Assyrian Sureth (ܣܘܪܝܬ), Chaldean Neo-Aramaic and Turoyo, are written in the same letters.
CLDR estimates about 230,000 speakers of Syriac, around 210,000 in Iraq and 20,000 in Syria ; the communities of Tur Abdin in Turkey and Urmia in Iran , and a large diaspora in Europe, the Americas and Australia, write it too. Its close relatives are Hebrew and Arabic, both Semitic and both written right to left from alphabets of the same Aramaic family; see the Hebrew and Arabic letter collections and the Iraq and Syria emoji pages.
How to use them
5 situationsClick to copySyriac Alphabet & Letters combos
12Worth knowing
- Estrangela, Serto and East Syriac letters are the same Unicode characters: change the font and a whole text switches style without a single letter changing.
- ܕ dalath and ܪ rish are told apart only by a dot, below or above; Unicode keeps a dotless ܖ for manuscripts where that dot is missing.
- The West Syriac vowel signs are tiny Greek letters: ܰ comes from alpha, ܳ from omicron, ܶ from epsilon, ܺ from eta and ܽ from upsilon.
- Syriac letters wrote other languages too: Arabic as Garshuni, Sogdian in Central Asia (Unicode has Sogdian letters ݍ ݎ ݏ), and Suriyani Malayalam in Kerala, which uses eleven additional Syriac letters in the Syriac Supplement block.
- There is no Assyrian or Syriac flag emoji: most flag emojis use region codes, while subdivision tag-sequence flags include England, Scotland and Wales, so people use or the crosses instead.
Questions people ask
7syriac alphabet copy and paste?
Click or tap any letter in the grid above to copy it, and paste it before copying the next letter. The 22 letters run from ܐ alaph to ܬ taw, written right to left; vowel points and dots attach to the letter you paste them after.
how many letters are in the syriac alphabet?
Twenty-two, all consonants: ܐ ܒ ܓ ܕ ܗ ܘ ܙ ܚ ܛ ܝ ܟ ܠ ܡ ܢ ܣ ܥ ܦ ܨ ܩ ܪ ܫ ܬ. Vowels are added as points above or below, and ܐ ܘ ܝ also write long vowels.
are aramaic and syriac the same?
Syriac is one form of Aramaic: the Aramaic of Edessa, which became the written and church language of Middle Eastern Christians. Its alphabet is one of several descended from the Aramaic alphabet, and modern Aramaic varieties such as Assyrian Sureth and Turoyo are written in it.
what is the difference between east and west syriac letters?
The letters are the same characters, drawn in two styles: rounded Serto in the West Syriac churches, East Syriac (Madnhaya) in the Assyrian and Chaldean churches. Vowels differ too: West Syriac uses small Greek letters such as ܰ ܳ, East Syriac uses dots such as ܲ ܵ.
how to type syriac on a keyboard?
On Windows, add Syriac under Settings › Time & language › Language & region and choose the Syriac or Syriac Phonetic keyboard. On Mac, iPhone and Android, install a Syriac keyboard app or use an online Syriac keyboard, or copy the letters from this page.
is there a syriac cross emoji?
No. Unicode has two Syriac cross symbols, West Syriac Cross and East Syriac Cross, which you copy and paste like text; the nearest emoji is .
syriac alphabet to english?
ܐ ʾ, ܒ b/v, ܓ g/gh, ܕ d/dh, ܗ h, ܘ w, ܙ z, ܚ ḥ, ܛ ṭ, ܝ y, ܟ k/kh, ܠ l, ܡ m, ܢ n, ܣ s, ܥ ʿ, ܦ p/f, ܨ ṣ, ܩ q, ܪ r, ܫ sh, ܬ t/th. The letters with two sounds take a hard dot ݁ or a soft dot ݂ in pointed texts.
