Ancient Hebrew writings the Tannaim (rabbis cited in the Mishnah), the spoken vernacular of Jews in Judaea was a late form of Hebrew known as Rabbinic or Mishnaic Hebrew, whereas during the period of the Amoraim (rabbis cited in the Gemara), which began around 200 CE, the spoken vernacular was Aramaic. Hebrew continued to be used for the writing of religious texts, poetry, and so forth. There are significant differences between the two Talmud compilations. The language of the Jerusalem Talmud is a Western Aramaic dialect, which differs from the form of Aramaic in the Babylonian Talmud. The Jerusalem Talmud is often fragmentary
Yemenite Hebrew well as the "ḥaṭaf sǝġūl", are all actually one and the same vowel (in the Babylonian tradition), and it is as though he had written two "shǝwa"s one after the other. Likewise, in the possessive case, “belonging to her companion” ⇒ שֶׁלַּחֲבִרְתָּהּ, the "lamed" in the preposition של is written with the vowel "pataḥ". The Leiden MS. of the Jerusalem Talmud is important in that it preserves some earlier variants to textual readings of that Talmud, such as in Tractate "Pesaḥim" 10:3 (70a), which brings down the old Palestinian-Hebrew word for "charoseth" (the sweet relish eaten at Passover), viz. "dūkeh"