OTL Question: What was the dominant language of pre-Islamic North Africa?

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Punic was the language of North Africa during the Republic, but it was largely phasing out at the time of the dying of the Empire in favor of Latin and Greek. At the time of the conquests, Greek was taking precedence because of Justinian. Overall, the place was ripe for a language shift, and did so more quickly than Egypt or Syria.
 
Interesting. I seem to remember that Gregory the Patrician was strongly encouraged in his rebellion by the local church, which was closer to Rome than Constantinople. So, assuming that the POD is Gregory beating off the Muslims, I gather the "Prestige language" would swing back to Latin?
 
Actually, a lot of inscriptions from around the 3rd century AD are in Latin, Greek and Punic.

By that period, vernacular Punic had become Neo-Punic, which was basically Punic with some aspects of Berber. But it seems that what language was dominant depended on the particular context within pre-Islamic North Africa (etc. countryside, city, etc).

The fact that Arabic became dominant so quickly in North Africa implies that there were a lot of Neo-Punic speakers, since languages in the same language group tend to "crowd out" others quicker, so people whose parents and grandparents spoke Neo-Punic would use Arabic instead, which is relatively similar.
 
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