What exactly is represented by court language?

[Perkunvilkis]

Is it the language used for administration to write stuff down? Is it what the people in the court actually spoke?

In the most recent feedback thread for the steeps you can see that Lithuania had its court language changed to ruthenian. Now lithuanian language at the time was not yet a written language and its true the government used ruthenian as well as latin for administration to write stuff down. However, if this is the definition then most of europe would have latin as its court language.
If it is what the court actually spoke then it should not really be ruthenian in this case especially when it was still pagan. Its unlikely that Gediminas even spoke it. Though some of his sons and grandsons certainly did. It gained a lot of influence as a language later when a lot of the nobility that ruled over former rus lands became ortodox and slowly adopted the language as it was seen as more prestigious. Gedimimas actual court had benedict and francien monks who would tranlate stuff to latin and german when he communicated with the west.
Lithuanian definitely was still the main language of the nobility that came from lithuania proper and the actual court at the time of the start date. Of course much later both lithuanian and ruthenian became dominated by polish after the commonwealth.

 

[GeneralNoob]

Is it the language used for administration to write stuff down? Is it what the people in the court actually spoke?

Both. However it doesnt translate to being the exclusive language stuff was written or spoken in. The Seljuks had turkish as court language, but the administration worked in persian. They were also intermarried to the abbazids and most likely also spoke arabic.

That being said: It is an abstraction. This shouldnt be taken as a historic statment. The game is not representing the usage of multiple languages within the state.

 

[Dan29067]

 

[Sizvahstar]

It's well documented how courts, the rulers and their nobility, had a court language - often a lingua franca; the most prestigious language in, say, Europe. It allowed for ease of communications, and happier marriages (I presume) between nobility of different nations. Which one is the court language depends on which nation dominates at the time, so it's all historically correct or close enough.
That's the short of it.

 

[Sizvahstar]

I guess the question by the OP is: But which one does court language represent, the written or spoken?
I think PDX boils them down to the same for simplicity, but if I had to pick I'd go with spoken.

 

[Froonk]

I am curious what exactly is conditions for when to change court language and for what reason. For example Ottoman Turkish gained prestige in 15th and especially 16th centuries after conquest of Constantinople and Middle-east and large body of text started being produced in Turkish, as well as translations of previous Arabic texts to Turkish. Persian remained a language of the erudite for literature and diplomacy purposes but it ceased to be an administrative language. This happened naturally as Ottoman Turkish became more prestigious over time, while as late as middle of 15th century Ottomans were occasionally writing edicts in Persian or even Chagatai occasionally.