Suriyani or Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, is the language that was widely used in the Middle East until 8th century, before Arabic replaced it. East Syriac and West Syriac are the two dialects of Syriac. East Syriac was the living language in Persian Sassanids (3rd-7th century) and west Syriac was developed in the emperoros of Greek Byzantium, who waged war against each other. There are differences in the scripts, vowel system and pronunciation for these two dialects, but both these dialects have similar vocabulary grammatical structure.
Saint Thomas, the Apostle introduced Christianity in India. It is natural that St Thomas used Syriac for spreading gospel as it was the mother tongue of Jesus and his twelve disciples. Even today, Syriac is the liturgical language of a number of Christian Churches in India. Even Malayalam was polularly written using Syriac alphabets until the end of nineteenth century. Parts of their liturgy are still sung in Syriac.
We focus on East Syriac in our website since the language used in the ancient rite of Mar Thoma Nasranis East Syriac.
East Syriac
Alphabets |
East Syriac Vowels
and Pronouns |
Our Father in
East Syriac |
East Syriac Words |
East Syriac Words |
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