My Tribune language column this week:
On the translation of "The Passion" into Aramaic, Hebrew and Latin.
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Here's a graf that was cut from the column:

Fulco said the "The Passion" does not incorporate a Galilean accent, though Jesus actually spoke with one. In fact, one of the reasons Jesus' status as a religious teacher was unusual was his northern accent, which would have been received by the religious elite in Jerusalem with the kind of condescension that might meet an American Southerner in New York City.

Here's the London Guardian on some everyday Aramaic, though it doesn't acknowledge that modern Aramaic is different from the ancient Aramaic in the movie.

Up next: John McWhorter on "the degradation of language and why we should, like, care"

-My Tribune archive