The languages of Syria: what you hear and where

If you arrive expecting one language you are wrong by the end of the first day. Arabic is the official language and it does work everywhere, but the sound in the street changes from city to city, and in some places it is not Arabic at all. This page draws that map. The phrases you will actually use are on the phrasebook page in this section; here is which language you hear where.

Arabic is not one thing

The written language and the spoken language are two separate things in Syria. Newspapers, signage, official letters and the news are in standard Arabic; the street, the haggling and the jokes are in dialect. The distance between the two is wider than a traveller expects, and someone who studied standard Arabic can struggle in a souq.

The dialect side divides again. The west and centre of the country speak the northern branch of Levantine; the northeast belongs to the Mesopotamian group. The difference is not accent, it is vocabulary and inflection.

Damascus and Aleppo: two city accents

Damascene is the most widely heard dialect in the country: television drama, songs and almost everything informal run largely on it. It is also the easiest for a foreigner to pick up, because there is so much of it to hear.

Aleppo has its own tone and it gives away the city’s neighbours: there are more borrowings from Turkish and Kurdish than in Damascus. Aleppines know this and joke about it. There is no problem of understanding between the two cities, only that everyone’s origin is clear from the first sentence.

The coast, the Hauran and the Jazira

The coastal strip between Latakia and Tartus has its own variety, part of a continuous band running north along the shore towards Hatay. In the south, the Daraa and Hauran speech leans towards Jordan. In the northeast, in the Jazira and along the Euphrates, what you hear belongs to the Mesopotamian branch: close to Iraqi Arabic and far from a Damascene ear.

The practical result for a traveller: learn a word in one city, try it in another, and you may get an odd look. You have not said it wrongly. You have said someone else’s word.

Kurdish

Kurdish is the largest minority language in the country; Kurds are usually put at about 10 per cent of the population. The variety spoken is Kurmanji and it concentrates in three regions: the Jazira in the northeast, Kobani on the Euphrates, and Afrin in the west. Beyond those there are long-established Kurdish quarters in Aleppo and Damascus.

You will mostly hear it in the northeast. Few of the records on this site are in that region, so a traveller is more likely to hear Kurdish in the streets of Aleppo and Damascus.

Armenian

Armenian in Syria is essentially the language of Aleppo. Before the war the Armenian population of the country was estimated at around a hundred thousand, most of it in Aleppo; after 2011 that number fell sharply and current estimates sit in a wide range. Armenian schools, churches and shops are nonetheless working in Aleppo.

On the coast, Kessab was an Armenian-majority town before the war and has a record on this site. Hearing Armenian in a shop in the Jdeideh quarter is entirely ordinary.

Syriac and Turoyo

The liturgical language of the Syriac churches is Classical Syriac and it is still used in the service today. On the spoken side there is Turoyo: the language of the Tur Abdin region, also spoken in northeastern Syria, and counted among languages at risk.

Classical Syriac and Turoyo are not the same thing; one is a language of worship, the other a language of the house. Nor do Turoyo and the Aramaic of Maaloula understand each other — they come from branches separated for more than a thousand years.

Aramaic: Maaloula and two villages

This is the most valuable point on the country’s language map. Western Neo-Aramaic is today spoken in only two villages of the Qalamoun mountains: Maaloula and Jubbadin. The third village, Bakha, was largely destroyed in the war and its community dispersed. Maaloula lies 56 kilometres northeast of Damascus and has a record on this site.

The weight of the language is this: it is held to be the closest living language to the one Jesus spoke. Speakers are few and mostly elderly. Asking someone in the village to “say something in Aramaic” happens often and lands badly; listening is enough.

Circassian, Chechen and Turkmen

Circassians and Chechens came to Syria in the 19th century, after the wars and expulsions in the Caucasus. Their share of the population is small, and some returned to the Caucasus after 2011, but the languages are still spoken at home.

Turkmen — the local form of Turkish — is heard along the Idlib and Aleppo line, on the Turkmen Mountain behind Latakia, around Homs and Hama, and in the south towards Daraa and Quneitra. For a traveller arriving from Turkey it can be a surprise: you recognise the words.

What a traveller does with this

Knowing the map is useful in five practical ways.

• Arabic opens everything. Learn a few set phrases; whatever region you are in, they land.
• Match the greeting to the place. The same word works in Aleppo and Damascus; in the northeast you may hear a second language as well.
• Do not ask about identity. “What do you speak” sounds harmless and turns into a question about identity here; people who want to explain will explain.
• English is narrow. Hotels, younger shopkeepers and guides have it; do not rely on it in a souq or on an intercity road.
• Sign language is a language too. Syrian Sign Language is the language of the deaf community, and writing things down always works.

None of this amounts to learning a language. It is only knowing what the sound around you is — and on the road that turns out to matter more than it sounds.