Greco-Punic Language

I'm interested at what exactly a Greco-Punic language might look like. I ask this because in my timeline, there will be a Greek ruled empire based at Carthage. Judging how Punic itself is more or less a heavily Berber influenced Phoenician dialect, and Greco-Roman rule in Egypt led to the heavily Greek influenced Coptic language, I assume that a long lived Greek empire in Carthage might result in a unique Greco-Punic language springing up.

Since language is far from my strong suit however, I figured you guys might be of some assistance.

EDIT: Shit, wrong forum.
 
I'm interested at what exactly a Greco-Punic language might look like. I ask this because in my timeline, there will be a Greek ruled empire based at Carthage. Judging how Punic itself is more or less a heavily Berber influenced Phoenician dialect, and Greco-Roman rule in Egypt led to the heavily Greek influenced Coptic language, I assume that a long lived Greek empire in Carthage might result in a unique Greco-Punic language springing up.

Since language is far from my strong suit however, I figured you guys might be of some assistance.

EDIT: Shit, wrong forum.

I wouldn't be too sure about the "springing up of a unique Greco-Punic language" as a result of the conquest.

You see, in OTL the Greeks/Macedonians ruled over Phoenicia proper for hundreds of years after the conquest of Alexander the Great. Some cities were heavily Hellenized, but from all I know no Greco-Phoenician language appeared.
There was a Greek language and there was a Phoenician language. Side by side. There was an extensive borrowing from both sides which is quite natural; but these two stayed mutually distinctly unintelligible.

And in Egypt the Egyptian language stayed the Egyptian language. The borrowings from the Greek language did not make it Greco-Egyptian all of a sudden.
It seems that some Asian languages are immune to becoming "Greco-something". The indigenous elites just spoke two different languages: their native tongue and the fancy Hellenic.

edit:
Even the Jews... You see, the Alexandrian Jews of the Ptolemaic Kingdom were the most heavily hellenized Jews ever, I guess.
And what? - No 'Greco-Jewish' language sprang up IIRC.
They just started speaking Greek, though did not forget their mother tongue.
 
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I'm interested at what exactly a Greco-Punic language might look like. I ask this because in my timeline, there will be a Greek ruled empire based at Carthage. Judging how Punic itself is more or less a heavily Berber influenced Phoenician dialect, and Greco-Roman rule in Egypt led to the heavily Greek influenced Coptic language, I assume that a long lived Greek empire in Carthage might result in a unique Greco-Punic language springing up.

Since language is far from my strong suit however, I figured you guys might be of some assistance.

EDIT: Shit, wrong forum.

Well, it would be... Punic. Really, the evolution of Punic IOTL under Roman rule is probably a decent rough guide to what Punic would look like under Hellenistic rule. Lots of loanwords, some grammatical constructions reflecting Greek influence, quite possibly a change of script (like Coptic) after either a collapse or a long decline (the case IOTL) of the scribal tradition in Phoenician abjad.
Punic, unlike Coptic, is relatively poorly documented though, so its difficult to be more precise.
 
I wouldn't be too sure about the "springing up of a unique Greco-Punic language" as a result of the conquest.

You see, in OTL the Greeks/Macedonians ruled over Phoenicia proper for hundreds of years after the conquest of Alexander the Great. Some cities were heavily Hellenized, but from all I know no Greco-Phoenician language appeared.
There was a Greek language and there was a Phoenician language. Side by side. There was an extensive borrowing from both sides which is quite natural; but these two stayed mutually distinctly unintelligible.

And in Egypt the Egyptian language stayed the Egyptian language. The borrowings from the Greek language did not make it Greco-Egyptian all of a sudden.
It seems that some Asian languages are immune to becoming "Greco-something". The indigenous elites just spoke two different languages: their native tongue and the fancy Hellenic.

edit:
Even the Jews... You see, the Alexandrian Jews of the Ptolemaic Kingdom were the most heavily hellenized Jews ever, I guess.
And what? - No 'Greco-Jewish' language sprang up IIRC.
They just started speaking Greek, though did not forget their mother tongue.

Well, it would be... Punic. Really, the evolution of Punic IOTL under Roman rule is probably a decent rough guide to what Punic would look like under Hellenistic rule. Lots of loanwords, some grammatical constructions reflecting Greek influence, quite possibly a change of script (like Coptic) after either a collapse or a long decline (the case IOTL) of the scribal tradition in Phoenician abjad.
Punic, unlike Coptic, is relatively poorly documented though, so its difficult to be more precise.
Interesting. So the best bet is just a more Hellenized Punic?
 
Interesting. So the best bet is just a more Hellenized Punic?

I would guess so.
Although one might wonder how widespread the language was by the time of your POD, in spoken usage I mean (it was certainly the principal written language of North Africa), particularly outside cities.
Unlike Coptic, Punic has to compete with another major local language, Libyan, which may end up as the main spoken language of the region if Punic is no longer supported by the fact of being the language of the main political power.
This was not really the case IOTL, with Punic being written officially into the second-third century AD, but then, historically Carthage fell a century and half later, and the Libyan polities that came after that, lasting two more centuries, had chosen to adopt Punic as a prestige written medium.
I presume that Punic had penetrated deeper in Africa than it could ITTL.

Historically, Hellenistic rulers were mostly pretty firm about Greek being the sole written prestige language, while the Romans, in general, cared little (you have all those allied and subject cities with internal autonomy who kept official local languages for centuries, including many using Punic, and various languages developing as literary and epigraphic mediums in Roman times in the Near East - Syriac for example).
 
I would guess so.
Although one might wonder how widespread the language was by the time of your POD, in spoken usage I mean (it was certainly the principal written language of North Africa), particularly outside cities.
Unlike Coptic, Punic has to compete with another major local language, Libyan, which may end up as the main spoken language of the region if Punic is no longer supported by the fact of being the language of the main political power.
This was not really the case IOTL, with Punic being written officially into the second-third century AD, but then, historically Carthage fell a century and half later, and the Libyan polities that came after that, lasting two more centuries, had chosen to adopt Punic as a prestige written medium.
I presume that Punic had penetrated deeper in Africa than it could ITTL.

Historically, Hellenistic rulers were mostly pretty firm about Greek being the sole written prestige language, while the Romans, in general, cared little (you have all those allied and subject cities with internal autonomy who kept official local languages for centuries, including many using Punic, and various languages developing as literary and epigraphic mediums in Roman times in the Near East - Syriac for example).
At the same time though, Phoenician rule in North Africa had been a fact of life for around 4-500 years by this point already. Could it be possible that Phoenician was already adopted as the prestige language among Libyan elites?
 
At the same time though, Phoenician rule in North Africa had been a fact of life for around 4-500 years by this point already. Could it be possible that Phoenician was already adopted as the prestige language among Libyan elites?

I don't think we know. IIRC the Libyan public inscriptions in Punic begin under the reign of Masinissa, c. 200 BCE (my "Histoire Generale de la Tunisie" makes a point about the political importance of this move in the context of the overall cultural policies of the Numidian kingdom). Inscriptions in Libyan are earlier, but I am not aware that any of those can be dated to before 300 BCE.
 
I wonder if this may have happened in Malta before the Latin then Arab conquests. It would seem that up until the 19th century, the Maltese alphabet itself used some letters very similar to Greek.
 
Much also depends, I should think, on the number of Greek settlers who are transported to North Africa (although there's a fair number available just in Megale Hellas). But a Hellenistic monarchy that lasts as long as the Lagid dynasty in Egypt will probably create a society that at its upper levels is quite Hellenized.

Whatever Punic elites survive the early era will probably Hellenize as well to increasing degrees over time.
 
I wonder if this may have happened in Malta before the Latin then Arab conquests. It would seem that up until the 19th century, the Maltese alphabet itself used some letters very similar to Greek.

But Maltese is not related to Punic in any direct way (OK, they are both Semitic).
Maltese is clearly a form of spoken Arabic of the Maghribi dialect group. Specifically, it appears to be derived from a Sicilian Arabic vernacular. Also, it looks like the islands were repopulated by Sicilian Arabs sometime around the tenth century, when much of the pre-existing population (descended from people who had spoken Punic at some point, but were probably Romance-speakers in the early Middle Ages) had disappeared to a mix of piracy and plague.
(Going from memory here, not entirely sure, but I vaguely recall some genetic testing pointing to this scenario).
Later, Maltese Arabic underwent considerable influence from Sicilian Romance (and to a lesser extent, Italian).
I suppose that when Latin script was adopted there, some modified Greek letters may have been introduced to mark characteristic sounds (it is not a common strategy for Latin scripts, but there are precedents) and then dropped.

I believe that in Roman times, when Malta was still Punic-speaking, Punic was written in Latin script there (as it was the case in some parts of North Africa after some time). But there's no continuity I know of, nor, to my knowledge, any significant linguistic Greek presence.

NOTE: there are politicized claims that Maltese derives from Punic. This used appeal to some nationalist circles in Malta, but is almost certainly wrong.
 
Much also depends, I should think, on the number of Greek settlers who are transported to North Africa (although there's a fair number available just in Megale Hellas). But a Hellenistic monarchy that lasts as long as the Lagid dynasty in Egypt will probably create a society that at its upper levels is quite Hellenized.

Whatever Punic elites survive the early era will probably Hellenize as well to increasing degrees over time.

North African provincial elites, particularly in the interior, did Romanize quickly in political and cultural terms, but clung to Punic as an official language for a long time. Of course, ITTL there will not be a Numidian native kingdom, which would likely make the position of Punic weaker.
Also, Rome hardly ever had a cultural policy for the provinces. As far as I can tell, no attempt to promote Latin top-down was ever considered.
Hellenistic states were a LOT more proactive in this regard (think Britain vs. France as colonial powers, for a very rough comparison) with promotion of Greek language and culture being a major point in why those states existed in the first place.
So there will be more incentive for local elites to embrace Greek here.
The staying power of Punic depends on the willingness of the local Greeks to regard it as "civilized" language, and on the degree of basic diffusion it had on the ground (about which I think no documents exist).
 
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