Learn Aramaic

As  you can see in the table below the letters are quite similar. name Arabic Syriac name Arabic Syriac Alaph ا / ء ܐ Lamadh ل ܠ Beth ب ܒ Meem م ܡ Gamal ج ܓ Noon ن ܢܢ Dalath ﺩ ܕ Simkath ܣ Heh ه ܗ 'E ع ܥ Waw ﻭ ܘ Peh ف ܦ Zain ﺯ ܙ Sad'e ص ܨ Heth ح ܚ Qoph ﻕ ܩ Teth ﻁ ܛ Resh ﺭ ܪ Yodh ي ܝ Sheen س / ش ܫ Kaph ﻛ / ك ܟܟ Taw ﺕ ܬ Also take a look at the Arabic-Serto table .

This the initial letter k as in kashta ( ܟܫܛܐ ) archer in its alternative form in Classical Syriac the Estrangelo verdion.The usual form of the letter is ( ܩ ‎ ) as in  ܩܫܬܐ ‎. Related post the Syriac Estrangelo script

After the dissolution of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great as a result Greek influence and culture spread all over the Middle East.It was then that Aramean scholars first became familiar with the Greek alphabet which already had a fully developed and quite accurate vowel system. On the other hand the Aramaic script indicated basically consonants and its weakness was thus exposed due to this contact.So Arameans thought they could use vowels to the benefit of their own script. The result was the development of two vowel systems the Eastern and Western after the split of the Syriac church into the Western branch under Byzantine rule and Eastern branch under Sassanid Persia. The Western borrowed directly the Greek vowels themselves which were written above the letter.The second used one or two dots above or below the letter to indicate vowels.Later appeared a combined system of the two. The Estrangela script originally made no use of vowels and these two systems initially dev...

the Syriac Estrangelo Aramaic alphabet Estrangelo is the oldest of the Syriac scripts used to write Classical Syriac which stopped being widely used since the 10th century. Nowadays some scholarly publications,titles and inscriptions are written in the Estrangelo.Its' name comes from Greek and it means 'rounded'.It later evolved into the cursive Serto -the Western Syriac script   Estrangelo did not use vowel diacritics. They were used later in some cases. In the following image I have put some letters together that look alike for ease of learning them. But two later versions of the Syriac alphabet (Serto and Madnkhaya) that evolved later did use vowel signs. Two vowel systems developed,the western based on Greek vowels under the Byzantines for Serto and the eastern under the Persian Sassanids for Madnkhaya which used dots. More on vowels in Syriac Aramaic here. Now let's give it a try to write the Syriac Estrangelo alphabet. Apart from Syriac various languages use...