Although both regions would have spoken at least somewhat similar (though perhaps not very mutually intelligible) languages at the time of Carthage's founding in 814 BCE, the languages of these two groups diverged wildly in the time between then and the destruction of Carthage.

One important aspect of this was the gradual diminishment of Hebrew as an everyday language in the Levant. Following the fall of the United Kingdom of Israel and the rise of the neo-Assyrian Empire as the predominant power in the region, Aramaic, another northwestern Semitic language, become the Lingua Franca of much the Mesopotamia and the Levant and supplanted Hebrew.

Likewise, the Punic language spoken by the Carthaginians, though descended from the Phoenician language, changed to include many loanwords from the Berber languages spoken in the areas surrounding Carthage.

Mutual intelligibility between contemporaries at the moment of Carthage's founding could certainly have been possible at least to a small extent, but by the time of Jesus's birth, the average Carthaginian would have an impossible time speaking to the average Jew unless they both knew a common language.