What language is Demotic?

--simone--

"Demotic is a diachronically late variety of Late Egyptian and shares much with the later Coptic language. In the earlier phases of Demotic, such as those texts written in the Early Demotic script, it probably represented the spoken idiom of the time. But, as it was increasingly used for only literary and religious purposes, the written language diverged more and more from the spoken form, giving Late Demotic texts an artificial character, similar to the use of classical Middle Egyptian during the Ptolemaic Period." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demotic_(Egyptian) Mar 17 08, 6:47 PM

bloomsby

The word is commonly used of the Greek vernacular. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demotic_Greek Mar 17 08, 8:01 PM

queproblema

Well, someone should mention that Demotic was the key to Champollion's translation of the Rosetta Stone. It bridged the classical Greek and Egyptian hieroglyphs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demotic_%28Egyptian%29 "By convention, the word "Demotic" is capitalized in order to distinguish it from demotic Greek." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demotic_%28Egyptian%29 The word "demotic" itself is a direct Greek cognate of the Latin "vulgaris," meaning "of the people." (As in democracy, for example.) http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/demotic http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/vulgar Mar 17 08, 8:41 PM