Why people in Byzantine Empire did not speak Latin?
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 at
5:12 pm
Byzantine Empire was said to be the legacy of the Roman Empire but why the people did not continue to speak Latin but instead spoke Greek? Was it because they moved to the modern Turkey, which is near to Greece.
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Tagged with: byzantine empire • greece • legacy • roman empire • turkey
Filed under: Written and Spoken Latin
The Roman empire was from very early linguistically divided: the western half spoke latin, the eastern half spoke greek. greek was the lingua franca of that part of the world long before the Romans conquered it, and remained the common language after the fall of the western half of the empire.
Of course in the early days of the Eastern empire latin was spoken pretty widely, but after the fall of the Western empire, less and less.
In those days Turkey didn’t exist, it was known as Asia Minor. The common language (there were many local languages) was Greek.
Of course many did speak Latin, but yes, Greek was the language because Byzantium was essentially a Greek City State, part of the Greek sphere of influence.
Most of the inhabitants spoke Greek, so it made sense.
Greek was widely spoken by the educated elite in Rome as well as Latin. Greek and Latin were the only ‘non-barbarian’ languages (according to the Romans).
The primary language used in the eastern Roman provinces (i.e. the Eastern Roman Empire) even before the decline of the Western Empire had always been Greek.[128] Indeed early on in the life of the Roman Empire Greek had become the common language in the Christian Church, the language of scholarship and the arts, and, to a large degree, the lingua franca for trade between provinces and with other nations.[129] The language itself for a time gained a dual nature with the primary spoken language, Koine, existing alongside an older literary language with Koine eventually evolving into the standard dialect.[130]