Page created in collaboration with Michel Launey & Alain Kihm, 2009.
 

A koine language is the “inner-dialectal” variation of a language. A language with numerous dialectal variations sometimes develops a common form through consensus, a form understandable by all speakers of the different dialects. The term koine comes from the first example known in History: Greek koïnè (“common language”), which in late ancient Greece enabled the various Greek political entities to maintain commercial and diplomatic relations despite all their different dialects. Greek koine was spoken all over the Mediterranean Basin, and may very well be the very origin of Modern Greek. Even when a koine language is an artificial construction – which was probably not the case of Greek koine – some parents might still hand it down to their children because of its social resonance, instead of handing down their own dialectal variation.

There are many contemporary examples of koine languages: Modern Standard Arabic, for example, as opposed to Arabic dialects, or Batua (”Unified Basque“), the official language of the Basque region in France.

 
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