Search

Abstract Greek documents of various kinds from Egypt are an invaluable source for the study of sociolinguistic variation by status, age, gender, context, domain, and register, in a multilingual society, over the course of more than a millennium (4th c. BCE-8th c. CE). In particular, archives of documents collected in Antiquity enable us to examine the language of individuals or communities with supporting information about their social context and, sometimes, their level of education. The key tas…

Abstract Although we only have access to the ancient Greek of those who could use it in writing, non-literary, colloquial, popular, commercial, and private texts ‒ as well as testimonia, lexical works, and some literature (dialogue, mime, comedy, and tragedy) ‒ provide some evidence for Greek as a spoken language in its various varieties in comparison with their written counterparts. 1. Introduction Individuals use language differently in writing and in speech. Since the activity of writing is a slower process of communication, it affords greater opportu…