Hello,
I am trying to understand how the crusaders, who came from Lotharingia, North of France, South of France and Italy, managed to communicate among them and with the Byzantine Emperor.
Were the vernacular languages close enough? Did some of them speak latin or greek?
Additionally, what languages were spoken in Epirus/Macedonia and Syria/Judea?
Thanks!
hi! not discouraging anyone from providing more info, but you may find something of interest in these previous related threads to get you started:
I'm not a real historian, but from what I've read on the subject, I believe that French ("Frankish") would have been the..well...lingua franca among the Crusaders--though German and Italian would not have been uncommon.
The majority of the earliest crusaders came from modern France, and "Frank" became a generic catch-all term for the Europeans in the Middle East (much as "Saracen" became a catch-all term for a variety of Arab, Turkish, Egyptian, and Persian groups."). In fact, there's some evidence that the word "Frank," was communicated through the Middle East to Thailand--to this day, white people in Thailand are called "farang."
When communicating with Greeks or Arabs, I suppose it's possible that Latin was used, though I suspect they simply used intermediaries to translate for them.
Again, though, I'm not a real historian. I've only done some reading on the subject of the crusades, and proper medievalist can (and hopefull will!) correct any errors I've made.