Medieval Greek

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Medieval Greek

Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek (ISO639-3: gkm), is a cover term for all forms of the Greek language

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
that were spoken and written during the time of the Byzantine Empire

Byzantine Empire

Byzantine Empire and Eastern Roman Empire are conventional names used to describe the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered on its capital of Constantinople....
. It is conventionally dated as beginning some time between the 4th and 6th centuries and lasting until the mid-15th century.

"Medieval Greek" refers not to a linguistically homogeneous form of Greek, but a whole spectrum of divergent varieties within the developing system of Greek diglossia

Diglossia

In linguistics, diglossia is a situation where a given language community uses not just one dialect, but two: the first being the community's present day vernacular and the second being either an ancestral version of the same vernacular from centuries earlier or a distinct yet closely related present day dialect ....
.

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Encyclopedia

Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek (ISO639-3: gkm), is a cover term for all forms of the Greek language

Greek language

Byzantine Empire

Diglossia

Koine Greek

Koine Greek is the popular form of Greek which emerged in post-Classical antiquity . Other names are Alexandrian, Hellenistic, Common, or New Testament Greek....
, and reached a stage that in many ways resembles present-day Modern Greek

Modern Greek

Modern Greek refers the varieties of Greek spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic modern features of the language had been present centuries earli...
in terms of grammar and phonology by the turn of the first millennium AD. Written literature reflecting this demotic Greek begins to appear around 1100. Side by side with the spoken vernacular, most written Greek maintained consciously archaic forms. These forms can be further subdivided into different stylistic registers. They ranged from a moderately archaic style employed for most every-day writing and based mostly on the written Koine

Koine Greek

Koine Greek is the popular form of Greek which emerged in post-Classical antiquity . Other names are Alexandrian, Hellenistic, Common, or New Testament Greek....
of the Bible

Bible

The Bible is the central religious text of Judaism and Christianity. The exact Books of the Bible is dependent on the religious traditions of specific denominations....
and early Christian literature, to a highly artificial learned style, employed by authors with higher literary ambitions and closely imitating the model of classical Attic

Attic Greek

Attic Greek is the prestige dialect of Ancient Greek that was spoken in Attica, which includes Athens. Of the ancient dialects, it is the most similar to later Greek, and is the standard form of the language studied in courses of "Ancient Greek"....
, in continuation of the movement of Atticism

Atticism

Atticism in Greece) was a rhetoric movement that began in the first quarter of the first century BC; it may also refer to the wordings and phrasings typical of this movement, in contrast with spoken Ancient Greek language, which continued to evolve in directions guided by the common usages of Hellenistic Greece Greek....
in late antiquity.

Medieval Greek

Further reading

External links