The largest group of loanwords come from Greek and is followed by Iranian loans, although words from Sumerian, Akkadian, and Latin are also passed on in varying degrees.[2] Several Hebrew loanwords exist (particularly religious terms). The Islamic Conquests changed the demographics of the empire and resulted in an influx of a new corpus of words from Arabic while life under the Seljuk, Ottoman, and Safavid empires introduced Turkic words to the language. Several loanwords in Classical Syriac are also partly taken or additionally rooted to other Semitic, Iranian, and Indo-European families, being rooted across various languages.
Early Greek loans which were administrative in nature became obscure as society changed, although words adopted from translations of Christian and philosophical texts outlived the former and survive to the current day.[2] Many loanwords originally from Greek were philosophical and took the plural stem, and the current-day Syriac language remains rich in these loanwords.[300]
Latin loans appear to have been largely transmitted to Syriac via Greek. This is evident based on the Syriac orthography which demonstrates it was borrowed from the Greek form.[2]
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