02-21-2011, 10:05 AM
This is an intriguing theme.
Just as Greek was a lingua franca, for which we know the following.
While Egypt spoke 'egyptian' (coptic) and Italy Latin (mainly), and galatia spoke Celtic, we can be sure that Greek was the lingua franca for them.
The Aramaic of Odessa is the most widespread written eastern language of that time. From this we can conclude that the Peshitta was written in a 'koine' /common understood language of that time.
Of _course_ everybody had their own dialect. But as you noted with Italian/romanian/spanish/french (latinic languages), Semitic languages also are 'look-alikes'. For Arabic/hebrew/semitic people it was not so hard to learn a common aramaic (syriac).
Just as Greek was a lingua franca, for which we know the following.
While Egypt spoke 'egyptian' (coptic) and Italy Latin (mainly), and galatia spoke Celtic, we can be sure that Greek was the lingua franca for them.
The Aramaic of Odessa is the most widespread written eastern language of that time. From this we can conclude that the Peshitta was written in a 'koine' /common understood language of that time.
Of _course_ everybody had their own dialect. But as you noted with Italian/romanian/spanish/french (latinic languages), Semitic languages also are 'look-alikes'. For Arabic/hebrew/semitic people it was not so hard to learn a common aramaic (syriac).