Aramaic

Aramaic is a Semetic language spoken in much of the Middle East outside the Arabian Peninsula in ancient times. It first entered the region sometime in the 12th century BC and eventually became the major spoken language of Syria, Judea, and Mesopotamia, and along with Greek and (later) Latin, a major language of trade in the Mediterranean. Aramaic was almost certainly the native language of Jesus (Hebrew, by his time, mostly being used for religious purposes by the Jews). Aramaic retained its importance until the conquest of the Middle East by the Arabs in the 7th and 8th centuries. The Arabs made Arabic the dominant language of government, and, over the next several hundred years, most of the population gradually switched from Aramaic to Arabic as a first language. The language is still spoken by several thousand people in isolated villages in Syra and Iraq.