Irish Yankee

I know that Greek was the common language spoken in the Eastern Roman Empire and later the Byzantine Empire, but was Latin still spoken by a portion of the population? I would imagine that the nobility would speak Latin just as the nobility of the other European kingdoms of the time did, how about the general population though?

Bart Dale

What is now Rumania still spoke a form of Latin, but was part of the Byzantine empire. The language of Rumania is still derived from Latin, much Italian and French are.

Ficino

What is now Romania was not part of the Byzantine empire, excepting Dobrogea, but Vlach ( ) population in the Byzantine empire did exist.

Ayazid

Latin lost its status to Greek in the 7th century (during the rule of the emperor Heraclius if I am not mistaken), but I guess that a tiny elite of intellectuals still retained some knowledge of that language, since some important works such as Justinian's Code were written in it and it was still the dominant language of Western Europe.

As for the general population, there were some romance speakers living under Byzantine rule in southern Italy and Balkans, but the vast majority of the population spoke Greek, Armenian, Slavic and other languages.

Kirialax

Greek was essentially the de-facto language of just about everything from the fifth century, but it's only in the 530s do we see the government start to give up with communicating in Latin. With the loss of the Balkans there were very few Latin speakers in the Empire, and Greek was the primary language, with Armenian a close second. Latin occasionally still appears on coins and seals, but it's not always good Latin.

The Black Knight

Vast areas of the balkans north of southern Macedonia and Dyrrhachium, and even into northern greece, were Latinized to some extent mkre than hellenized. justinian was from Painonia(?Maybe further west?) and who's family was Latin-speaking to some extent. It is also obvious that, until the coming of the Avars and the Slavs, Moesia was a Latinized province. Lets not forget that, for 150 years, Constantinople held sway over North Africa, which was, west of Cyrenaica, Heavily Latinized.

Pacific_Victory

You'd think they would have gotten an official translation before minting...

throughthepastdarkly

Yes, you'd think people would be more careful about crafting phrases in their adopted language, however...

pnoozi

Here's my money. I'll take one, please.

pugsville

When did latin stop being he formal language of command? (commands for formation changes were in Latin for a while but that dont mean the soldiers spoke latin beyond understanding a few words of command.)