I found an additional interest here in the reflection that Aleppo is on the linguistic frontier--extending from Alexandretta to Biredjik on the Euphrates--which separate the peoples of the flowery Arabic speech from those of the more laconic but no less vigorous Turkish. South of this line Turkish ceases to be heard except in the offices of the civil and military administrations of the Ottoman government. The Syrians, like the Arabs, are Semites, but of their ancient tongue, the Aramaic, little now remains except a sort of dialect which is now confined to only a few villages on the eastern declivities of the Anti-Libanus.[282] Syriac, it is true, is still the liturgical tongue of the Maronites and Jacobites as it was for centuries that of other oriental Christians of Semitic origin. But, if a small number of priests still understand Syriac, no one any longer speaks it. For Syrians as well as for Arabs the language of conversation has for a long time been the vulgar Arabic. The Christians, however, speak a less pure form than the Moslems, for the adherents of Mohammed, by their constant reading of the Koran, become familiar with the more literary forms of classical Arabic. During the Seleucid and Byzantine domination, the predominant language of educated people in Syria and Asia Minor was Greek. But in these, as well as in other regions formerly belonging to the Ottoman Empire, we now find the most extraordinary anomalies of linguistic distribution. Thus there are in Anatolia villages whose sole inhabitants are Greeks who belong to the Orthodox Church and where the Greek language is so little understood that the priests, in order to be understood by their people, are obliged to preach and read the services of the church in Turkish. In Cyprus, on the contrary, there are Turkish villages whose inhabitants speak only Greek. But this is no more singular than to find--a frequent occurrence--Turkish newspapers printed in Greek or Armenian characters. These literary curiosities are, however, eclipsed by a Jewish newspaper in Constantinople which is printed in Hebrew characters although the language is Spanish.[283]