Medieval Greek

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Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek^[1] is a cover term for all forms of the Greek language that were spoken and written during the time of the Byzantine Empire. It is conventionally dated as beginning some time between the fourth and sixth centuries and lasting until the mid-fifteenth 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.^[2] The spoken vernacular language developed on the basis of earlier spoken Koine Greek, and reached a stage that in many ways resembles present-day Modern Greek 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 of the Bible 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, in continuation of the movement of Atticism in late antiquity.

See also

• Byzantine literature
• Timarion
• Acritic songs
• The Dead Brother's Song
• Omurtag's Tarnovo Inscription
• Chatalar Inscription
• Ptochoprodromus
• The song of the Bridge of Arta

Notes

Further reading

• Andriotis, N. History of the Greek language.
• Tonnet, Henri. Histoire du grec moderne.
• Horrocks, G. Greek: A history of the language and its speakers.

External links

• Use of Greek in the Byzantine Empire
• Grammar of Medieval Greek Project (1100-1700), University of Cambridge
• Early Modern Greek blog (mainly in Greek)