I’m reading a not-so-great Helen MacInnes novel called The Hidden Target, in which the heroine is on a tour of Asia and mentions that communicating will not be a difficulty because her traveling companions speak many languages, including one compadre who speaks “Syrian.”
I was under the impression that 95%+ of Syrians spoke Arabic.
I didn’t know there was a language called “Syrian” at all. I’ve heard of something called “Syriac,” but I thought that was a dead language since the Arabs arrived.
So is it I or Helen MacInnes that is ignorant of what language the Syrians speak?