Reconstructed Aramaic

Cary Darling writes about the reconstruction of Aramaic in today's _Star
Telegram_ http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/entertainment/8035921.htm :

    ``Leave it to pop culture -- and Mel Gibson -- to revive a couple of
dead languages... Gibson's controversial film The Passion of the Christ,
opening today, utilizes two tongues from way back in the day: Latin and
Aramaic…. the Aramaic spoken today, called the Eastern group of dialects, is
different from the Aramaic spoken by Jesus Christ, dubbed the Western group,
a branch that is considered extinct. That made it difficult for [the Rev.
William] Fulco to translate the Passion script, as no one really knows how
Jesus spoke. "We don't know much about ancient Aramaic," says Fulco, who
stitched together a language from a variety of sources, including the Old
Testament of Daniel, fourth-century Syriac and Hebrew. "Almost every town
had a different dialect. I created a possible reconstruction and had to
coach all the actors." ''

Now that would be a challenging and fascinating conlanging exercise!

Best regards,

Jeffrey