Koine

Quick meaning: Koine is a noun meaning A lingua franca.

Meaning

A lingua franca.

More Meanings

1. A linguistic variety that has developed in supraregional contact between speakers of various interrelated dialects, typically in such a way that features shared by several dialects prevail and those of limited distribution are avoided.

Example Sentences

If a dominant language was spoken in the area of such trade routes, then this dominant language became the ‘interlanguage’, as it is called. Such an interlanguage, or koiné, is a simplified dialect with which speakers of two or more quite different dialects communicate with one another.

Darī (q.v.) is a term long recommended by Afghan authorities to designate Afghan Persian in contrast to Iranian Persian; a written language common to all educated Afghanis, Darī must not be confused with Kābolī, the dialect of Kabul and surrounding areas that is more or less understood by eighty percent of the non-Persian speaking population and is fast becoming the nation’s koine.

Now, another term for that product is koine, which, however, I have regularly […] employed in reference to the infrastructure (procedural, juridical, formal, cultural) that enables and informs composition of a lingua franca. […] In linguistic scholarship koine mostly (!) refers to a standard language expanded by input from several dialectal sources with concomitant levelling of morphological and syntactic differences and adoption of a general and possibly restricted lexicon.

Word Forms

• koines
• koinai

Synonyms for koine

Depending on context, synonyms include interlanguage.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include greek.

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