Arabic is the official language, but it isn't the only one. In Syria you can still hear Aramaic, Syriac, Kurdish, Armenian, Adyghe, and Turkish, sometimes on the same street.
What language is spoken in Syria? Arabic is the official and majority language, spoken in daily life as Syrian Arabic, a dialect of Levantine Arabic. Kurdish is second by number of speakers, concentrated in the north and northeast. Armenian, Syriac, Aramaic, Adyghe, and Turkish are each spoken by established communities.
Each language has its own page: its history in Syria, who speaks it today, the script, and its outlook.
Modern Standard Arabic in writing and broadcast; Syrian Arabic, a Levantine dialect, in every conversation.
Kurmanji Kurdish, the language of Syria's largest ethnic minority, now taught openly again.
The classical language of the Syriac churches, used in liturgy and revived as a spoken tongue in the northeast.
Western Armenian, with its own schools and newspapers, especially in Aleppo.
Western Neo-Aramaic, spoken as a mother tongue in Maaloula and two neighboring villages, and nowhere else on earth.
Brought by Circassians who settled in Syria in the 1870s, still spoken in several villages.
Spoken among Syrian Turkmen families in the north and around Aleppo and Homs.
Ugaritic, Palmyrene, Akkadian, Eblaite: the written languages Syria's excavations recovered.
Aramaic was the common tongue of the Near East for a thousand years, the language of the Babylonian court, of large parts of the Hebrew Bible, and of Jesus of Nazareth. Arabic replaced it almost everywhere after the seventh century.
Almost. In Maaloula, Jubb'adin, and Bakh'a, in the mountains an hour north of Damascus, a direct descendant of that language is still spoken at home. Perhaps a few thousand speakers remain, and the war scattered many of them, but children in Maaloula are learning it again.
Read the full page on Aramaic →Plus the ancient ones that came out of the ground here, including the world's first.
Right to left, cursive, 28 letters. On every street sign, shopfront, and official document.
A descendant of Aramaic script, still used in church liturgy and in the northeast.
Created in 405 CE, unique to Armenian, visible on Aleppo's shopfronts and schools.
Used for Kurdish in Syria, and increasingly for transliteration and signage.
Syrian Arabic, with transliteration. Attempting even a few is met with genuine delight.
Syria's languages record every migration, conquest, and refuge in its past: Aramaic from antiquity, Armenian from 1915, Adyghe from the 1870s, Kurdish from the mountains that cross three borders. Thirteen years of displacement scattered many of these communities. Since 2024 some are returning, and minority language teaching is being restored in ways that were not possible before.
Maaloula's Aramaic speakers were displaced in 2013 and 2014. Armenian schools in Aleppo closed. Whole villages emptied.
Kurdish and Syriac are being taught in schools in the northeast. Aramaic classes have restarted in Maaloula.
Learn a few words. Buy from the villages. Ask people about their language; almost everyone is proud to tell you.
Arabic, officially and by a large majority, in the form of Syrian Arabic. Kurdish is the second most spoken, followed by Armenian, Syriac, Aramaic, Adyghe, and Turkish.
Yes. Western Neo-Aramaic survives as a living mother tongue in Maaloula, Jubb'adin, and Bakh'a, the only places in the world where it does.
Some, especially younger people in Damascus and Aleppo and anyone working in tourism. French is also present from the Mandate era. A guide solves the problem entirely.
Considerably, in pronunciation and everyday vocabulary. Syrian Arabic is also the prestige dialect of the Levant, familiar across the Arab world from television drama.