Dialects
Several languages were used simultaneously by the people of Africa; the northern part seems at first to have been a Latin-speaking country. Indeed, previous to, and during the 1st centuries of, our era we find there a flourishing Latin literature, many schools, and famous rhetoricians. However, Greek was currently spoken at Carthage in the 2nd century; some of Tertullian's treatises were written also in Greek. The steady advance of Roman civilization caused the neglect and abandonment of that tongue. At the beginning of the 3rd century an African, chosen at random, would have expressed himself more easily in Greek than in Latin; two hundred years later, St. Augustine and the poet Dracontius had at best but a slight knowledge of Greek. As to local dialects, we know little. No work of Christian literature written in Punic has come down to us, though there can be no doubt that the clergy and faithful used a language much spoken in Carthage and in the coast towns of the Proconsular Province. The lower and middle classes spoke Punic, and the Circumcellions were to be among the last of its defenders. The Christian writers almost wholly ignore the native Libyan, or Berber, dialect. St. Augustine, indeed, tells us that this writing was only in use among the nomad tribes.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company.
Read more about this topic: Early African Church