La tradizione armena medievale come testimone del francese del Levante: aspetti fonetici

The intense political and cultural relations between the Armenian Principality and, later, Kingdom of Cilicia (1198-1375) and the Crusader States produced a significant number of cultural innovations in the Cilician Armenian lay elites. Such innovations affected also the linguistic domain. During the kingdom of Hethum II (1289-1301), the royal chancellery of Sis begun to use French as official language beside Armenian and Latin. The prestige and circulation of Outremer French among the Armenian cultivated lay elites resulted in a remarkable number of French loanwords, attested in many Armenian documents and literary works written in the Kingdom of Cilicia. Thanks to the richness and clarity of the Armenian alphabet, the phonetic shape of the Outremer French loanwords is faithfully represented in Cilician Armenian texts. For this reason, the French loanwords in Cilician Armenian can offer valuable information about the phonetics of Outremer French, a variety of French otherwise scantly documented and destined to extinguish.