Pirke Avot: The Sayings of the Jewish Fathers

The language of Abot is easy Mishnaic Hebrew, with portions of four verses (I, 13; II, 7; V, 25, and V, 26) in Aramaic, which is closely related to Hebrew. It is worthy of note that these Aramaic portions originated with the school of Hillel (12).

(12) On the language of the Mishnah, see Mielziner, Introduction to the Talmud, pp. 15-16, and Lauterbach in Jewish Encyclopedia, vol II, p. 614. On the use of Aramaic in the Mishnah, see Schurer, History, I, ii, p. 8 et seq., and Bacher, in Jewish Encyclopedia, art. Aramaic Language Among the Jews. Several centuries before the common era, Aramaic was the vernacular of the Jews. Hebrew, however, remained in use as the sacred language ([lashon ha-kodesh]), it being the language of the learned, and was employed for literary, liturgical, and legal purposes. This accounts for the Mishnah being written almost entirely in Hebrew, though Aramaic was spoken on the streets. It is related of Judah ha-Nasi that he disliked the Aramaic jargon to such an extent that he forbade its use in his home, where even the servants spoke Hebrew with elegance (Rosh ha-Shanah, 26b). When scholars used Aramaic in his presence, he chided them for not speaking in Hebrew or in Greek (Baba Kamma, 82b).