The Byzantine Empire’s language dynamics reflect diverse social phenomena. Byzantium witnessed a diverse population, significant movements, and fluctuations in numbers. The absorption of foreign populations into the Empire, compared to its assimilation power, was notable.
In the early Byzantine era, Greek prevailed in the eastern part. From the 2nd century BC, Latin influences varied, dominating in military, legislative, and judiciary spheres. Justinian’s codex and Maurice’s “Strategikon” attest to Latin’s enduring presence.
The linguistic border between Greek and Latin stretched along Africa’s western border of Cyrenaica and in the Balkans in Europe. The Black Sea coasts favored Greek, while Dalmatia developed a “Dalmatian” dialect with Latin dominance in the 7th century.
Asia Minor, Roman Mesopotamia, Syria, Arabia, Palestine, and Egypt used Greek as the written and official language. In the Middle East, Greek spread to varying degrees, with Latin present in Beirut due to its famous law school.
Since the 1st century AD, spoken Greek predominated in parts of Asia Minor. By the 4th century, remnants of pre-Greek dialects persisted only where populations still used them.
In the early Byzantine era, Greek became the official language even in areas with settled populations retaining their mother tongue. Slavic linguistic assimilation succeeded mainly south of the Egnatius road, laying foundations for Slavic language development.
In the Asian Byzantine Empire, Arab conquests established a linguistic boundary along the Euphrates-Taurus line. It divided areas with a Greek element from those dominated by Syriac or Arabic.
Despite this, the Levant’s shores long remained associated with Greek language and culture. The influence of Italian grew in linguistic domains, especially in trade, from the late 11th century. The spread of Italian led to a new dialect with a clear primacy of Italian.
Even the Turks adopted this specific “common language” – lingua franca since the late 14th century. Crusader conquests and Latin rule strengthened Greek with French and Italian words, especially in areas under foreign rule.
The final Ottoman conquest of the Byzantine Empire didn’t change the linguistic map of the European parts. Greek and other Christian languages remained, with only slight influence from the Turkish language.