# Aramaic/Syriac declensions



## Han86

Hello,

I'd like to know what are the following declensions in Aramaic/Syriac:

Feminine 
Plural
Dual

Adding the verb declensions as well would be great.

Thank you, I hope someone will know these things...


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## modus.irrealis

Hi,

I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but for Syriac, the endings of for the adjectives are, in the order absolute, emphatic, and construct state:

masculine
singular: - / -ā / -
plural: -in / -e / -ay

feminine
singular: -ā / -tā / at
plural: -ān / -ātā / -āt

(The underlined t represents a soft pronunciation, like th in English thing the explanation in my book is a little confused but it seems ā wasn't long but is used to represent a difference sound from a.)

These are also the regular endings for nouns as well, although it seems most nouns don't occur in the absolute state and it's the emphatic state that it is the normal one. No mention of the dual is made so I'm guessing it was no longer used in Syriac.


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## Han86

Thank you! that was great...

I wonder if ā could be _ai_ like in _rail_ ?


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## modus.irrealis

I'm trying to understand what my books say -- it seems in western Syriac ā was pronounced with an o-type sound (in fact, the vowel system used for western Syriac uses small Greek letters placed above/below the consonants and ā is represented by a Greek omicron), and in eastern Syriac it was like the "a" of "father" so I guess ā represents a more back version of a rather than a more forward version.


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## Han86

Thank you. I appreciate your help.


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## Shlama_98

modus.irrealis said:


> I'm trying to understand what my books say -- it seems in western Syriac ā was pronounced with an o-type sound (in fact, the vowel system used for western Syriac uses small Greek letters placed above/below the consonants and ā is represented by a Greek omicron), and in eastern Syriac it was like the "a" of "father" so I guess ā represents a more back version of a rather than a more forward version.



You're correct, western syriac vowels are Greek letters and they do replace the "a" sound into an "o", examples:

Shlama = Shlomo
Maran = Moron
Alaha = Aloho
Malka/Maliktha = Malko/Maliktho

I can't comment which one is more original than the other but as far as vowels go the eastern syriac dialect uses an older eastern version of vowels which is similar to Hebrew I believe, but in the end we know that vowels were not there to begin with and they were only invented to help with pronouncing the original words so without the vowels both eastern and western syriac have the exact same spelling of words, just different pronouncation, that's all.


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## modus.irrealis

Shlama, thank you for the confirmation. I take it by your user name that you use the "a" pronunciation -- if so, is what I mentioned before about ā being like the "a" in "father", and then "a" being like a Spanish "a" correct? For example, in the word malkā, do you pronounce the two a sounds differently?


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## Shlama_98

modus.irrealis said:


> Shlama, thank you for the confirmation. I take it by your user name that you use the "a" pronunciation -- if so, is what I mentioned before about ā being like the "a" in "father", and then "a" being like a Spanish "a" correct? For example, in the word malkā, do you pronounce the two a sounds differently?



No problem modus 

As for the "a" sound, it depends on the word of course, this is why vowels help identify the sound of the letter.

Malka for example would be Mal-ka, but another example would be Shlama where the pronunciation would be Shlaa-ma, so it all depends on the word.


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## Ali Smith

Here are the feminine dual and plural declensions from Coakley.


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## Aleppan

In Hebrew שָׁמַיִם "sky" is plural in the sense that it is treated as plural, i.e. it will take a plural verb and plural adjective. Is the Syriac word ܫܡܰܝܴ̈ܐ "sky" treated the same way? Will it take a plural verb and plural adjective?

It certainly looks plural and even has the seyame dots.


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## radagasty

Nöldeke §146 states of ܫܡܝ̈ܐ that «Der Form nach stets pl.», which is probably correct even though it appears often enough with the _syame_ dots, but in terms of syntactical concord, the picture is a bit more complicated. In the Peshitta, the Old Testament consistently shows masculine plural agreement, but in the New Testament and in non-biblical usage, both masculine and feminine singular agreement are also common.


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## Ali Smith

modus.irrealis said:


> Hi,
> 
> I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but for Syriac, the endings of for the adjectives are, in the order absolute, emphatic, and construct state:
> 
> masculine
> singular: - / -ā / -
> plural: -in / -e / -ay
> 
> feminine
> singular: -ā / -tā / at
> plural: -ān / -ātā / -āt
> 
> (The underlined t represents a soft pronunciation, like th in English thing the explanation in my book is a little confused but it seems ā wasn't long but is used to represent a difference sound from a.)
> 
> These are also the regular endings for nouns as well, although it seems most nouns don't occur in the absolute state and it's the emphatic state that it is the normal one. No mention of the dual is made so I'm guessing it was no longer used in Syriac.


I would like to add just one thing: in Aramaic, the emphatic masculine plural ending is _-ayyā_, not _-e_.

And if an adjective happens to have the gentilic ending āy, its emphatic masculine plural ending will be _-āyē_, not _-ayyā_. Thus, we have יְהוּדָיֵא 'the Judeans', as opposed to מַלְכַיָּא 'the kings'. See A Short Grammar of Biblical Aramaic.


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## Ali Smith

radagasty said:


> Nöldeke §146 states of ܫܡܝ̈ܐ that «Der Form nach stets pl.», which is probably correct even though it appears often enough with the _syame_ dots, but in terms of syntactical concord, the picture is a bit more complicated. In the Peshitta, the Old Testament consistently shows masculine plural agreement, but in the New Testament and in non-biblical usage, both masculine and feminine singular agreement are also common.


Isn't ܫܡܲܝܵܐ actually an emphatic masculine _dual_ form? That's probably why it's usually written without ܣܝ̈ܡܐ.


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## zj73

Ali Smith said:


> Isn't ܫܡܲܝܵܐ actually an emphatic masculine _dual_ form? That's probably why it's usually written without ܣܝ̈ܡܐ.


Yes, it's a rare use of the dual form.


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