It just dawned on me that they probably weren't speaking Arabic before 700/800 CE. What were they speaking before that? Latin? If Latin, did they start speaking that during Augustus? Before Latin I assume they were speaking Greek, is that correct? What was before that (Alexander's around 350 BCE?)?
And secondarily, I assume Alexander didn't show up and everyone started speaking Greek. What were the class/rural/urban kind of divisions we should be thinking about when saying X was the language at time Y?
Lastly, are there still any pockets of any of the pre-greek languages? Would it be correct to think of those languages as indigenous?
Thanks if you can help.
In general, Indigenous Egyptians were still speaking Coptic at the time of the Arab conquests, which developed from Ancient Egyptian, while the elites would have spoken Greek, especially Byzantine officials. At that point, the country had been ruled by Greek speaking elites for about 1,000 years since the conquests of Alexander. While Coptic is generally not spoken as an everyday language by Egyptians anymore(there may be one or two villages of Coptic Christians who use it everyday, but I'm not entirely sure) it continues to survive as the liturgical language of the Coptic Church.
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