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vowels in Syriac Aramaic

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 The Estrangela script originally made no use of vowels and these two systems initially dev...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 Nestorian Syriac script (Madnkhaya)

The eastern Syriac script is called Madnkhaya or Nestorian, eastern, after Nestorus-founder of the Eastern Syriac Church.It was used in the eastern Syriac Church in Persia and it started developing after the split of the Syriac Church which resulted not only to two different Churches,but to the developed of different scripts as well. The Nestorian script came from the Estrangela and it is very similar to it with minor differences.Though an innnovation was introduced-dots above or below the letters to mark vowels.In the Estrangela vowel signs are not used at all.