SyriaSyria

Apart from MSA as the only official language of Syria, the most commonly spoken Arabic dialects are North Levantine Arabic in Western Syria and Mesopotamian Arabic in Northeastern Syria, as well as Najdi Arabic and Bedawi Arabic.

As well as South Levantine Arabic, North Levantine Arabic is a subdivision of Levantine Arabic. It includes Aleppo Arabic and Damascus Arabic -also referred to as Syrian Arabic or Syrian Dialect -which is widely spoken and understood by speakers of other Levant countries, owing to its use in the Syrian broadcast media. 

Other language minorities include:

  • Kurdish, which is mostly spoken in Eastern Syria.
  • Aramaic. Aramaic was the lingua franca of the region before the advent of Arabic and is still most widely spoken in few villages north Damascus, due to the Christian religious nature of their inhabitants.
  • Syriac, an Aramaic language that is still spoken in southeastern Syria. 
  • Armenian, mostly spoken in the northern Syrian town of Aleppo.
  • Circassian languages, spoken by immigrants who settled in different areas of Syria after escaping the Russo-Circassian war on the eastern shores of the Black Sea.
  • Turkmen, spoken near the Turkish-Syrian borders by Syrian Turkmens who had originally escaped the Ottoman rule over Turkey.
  • Chechen, which is mostly spoken in some villages in north-eastern Syria by a Chechen population who had originally escaped the Chechen–Russian conflict.