| Truth Bearer |
09-07-2008 05:54 AM |
Ok lets see what we find here...
[B]Byzantine Greek language also known as Medieval Greek [/B]
Since as early as the Hellenistic era, Greek had been the lingua franca of the Eastern Mediterranean, spoken natively in the southern Balkans, the Greek islands, Asia Minor and the ancient and Hellenistic Greek colonies of Western Asia and Northern Africa. This continued after Roman expansion in the region. Latin was also introduced by Roman administration but nearly all significant literature was written in [B]Greek[/B]. After the reforms of Constantine the Great the ancient [B]Greek city of Byzantium [/B]became Constantinople and the [B]"Greek East"[/B] gradually evolved into a separate political and cultural entity, having [B]Greek as its main language[/B], while Latin was used as an official language of administration. However Latin had never been a spoken language in the East, and [B]it was gradually displaced by Greek in all sectors[/B]. The evolution from the Eastern Roman into the Byzantine Empire, properly speaking, starts with the reign of [B]Heraclius, when Greek replaced Latin completely in law and administration[/B]. At the same time the Empire lost most of its [B]non-Greek speaking territories [/B]in the near East and Africa, along with its second largest city, Alexandria.
The main vernacular language of the Eastern or Byzantine Empire had been Medieval Greek, spoken natively in Constantinople and the largest part of the empire. Spoken [B]Medieval Greek was an evolution of Koine Greek[/B], which was the popular language of the Hellenistic world, and an intermediary stage between ancient and Modern Greek. Written Greek varied considerably, embracing an archaising "high" style which imitated classical Attic, and a moderate "middle" style continuing the tradition of written Koine. Relatively few written specimens of the spoken or "low" variety of the vernacular language have been preserved. The resulting diglossia of the Greek-speaking world (which had already started in ancient Greece) [B]continued under Ottoman rule and persisted in the modern Greek state until 1976[/B] - although Atticist Greek remains the official language of the Greek Orthodox Church. As shown in the poems of Ptochoprodromos, an early stage of Modern Greek had already been shaped by the 12th century AD and possibly earlier. Vernacular Greek continued to be known as "Romaic" up until the 20th century.
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