Phoenician language

The Phoenician language was an ancient way of speaking that belonged to a group called the Canaanite languages, which are part of the bigger Semitic language family. It was first used in the areas around the cities of Tyre and Sidon. Because the Phoenicians were great traders, their language became very important for communication across the Mediterranean Sea during a time called the Iron Age.

The Phoenician alphabet was very special because it later traveled to Greece and became the basis for all the writing systems used in Europe today. This language was similar to Biblical Hebrew and could be understood by people who spoke those languages.

Phoenician was spoken in many places, including what we now call Lebanon, parts of Cyprus, Syria, and even in faraway colonies along the coasts of the Mediterranean, such as in Tunisia, Morocco, Libya, and Algeria. Over time, it changed into another language called Punic in North Africa. The Phoenician language was first understood by a scholar named Jean-Jacques Barthélemy in the year 1758.

History

The Phoenicians were the first people to widely use the Semitic alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet is one of the oldest known alphabets. It is thought to be a parent of almost all modern alphabets.

The Phoenicians had different dialects in their language. One dialect from Tyre and Sidon spread across the Mediterranean through trade. Another dialect from Byblos did not spread much. Through their trade, the Phoenicians shared their alphabet with the Maghreb and Europe. The Greeks adopted it, and later the Etruscans and Romans used changed versions of it. Phoenician was used until the 1st century BC, when it disappeared. The related Punic language lasted much longer, until around the sixth or even ninth century.

Writing system

Main article: Phoenician alphabet

The Phoenician language was written using the Phoenician script. This script was an early way of writing that focused only on consonants. It was the basis for the Greek alphabet and, later, the Latin alphabet that we use today. Over time, the Phoenician script changed, especially in a form called Punic. Around the time of a big war called the Second Punic War, a more cursive, or flowing, style of writing developed. This new style was called Neo-Punic.

In Phoenician writing, long vowels were usually not written down. But later, Punic writers started using certain letters to show vowels. For example, they used the letter 'ālep to show a final vowel. Even later, they used other letters like wāw for the sound [u] and yōd for the sound [i]. This helped make the writing clearer.

Phonology

Consonants

The following table shows the sounds of the Phoenician language as written in the Phoenician alphabet, along with their standard names and sounds:

The Phoenician sound system changed over time. Some sounds merged together, like certain hissing or buzzing sounds, making the language simpler.

Sibilants

There is some debate about the exact sounds of the hissing and buzzing letters in Phoenician. Some experts think they made sounds like "sh," "s," "z," and a special buzzing "s," while others think they made different sounds.

Postvelars

In later Phoenician, some soft sounds at the back of the mouth seem to have disappeared. These sounds could not be well written with the letters used by the Romans.

Lenition

It is unclear if Phoenician changed some hard consonant sounds to softer ones, as happened in other similar languages. One hard sound might have become a softer "f" sound later on.

Vowels

We don't know much about the vowel sounds in Phoenician because the writing system did not show vowels clearly. It is thought Phoenician had short sounds like "a," "i," and "u," and long sounds like "aa," "ee," "oo," "eh," and "oh."

Phoenician changed some vowel sounds in a special way. For example, a long "ah" sound became a long "oo" sound, different from how it changed in Hebrew.

Suprasegmentals

Changes in vowel sounds based on their position in a word suggest that stress, or emphasis, was usually on the last syllable of a word. Long vowel sounds probably only appeared in certain parts of words.

Phoenician consonants (Traditional School)
Type		Bilabial	Alveolar		Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Type		Bilabial	plain	emphatic	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Nasal		𐤌‎ m /m/	𐤍‎ n /n/
Stop / Affricate	voiceless	𐤐‎ p /p/	𐤕‎ t /t/	𐤈‎ ṭ /t^◌/		𐤊‎ k /k/	𐤒‎ q /q/		𐤀‎ ʾ /ʔ/
Stop / Affricate	voiced	𐤁‎ b /b/	𐤃‎ d /d/			𐤂‎ g /ɡ/
Fricative	voiceless		𐤎‎ s /s/	𐤑‎ ṣ /s^◌/	𐤔‎ š /ʃ/			𐤇‎ ḥ /ħ/	𐤄‎ h /h/
Fricative	voiced		𐤆‎ z /z/					𐤏‎ ʿ /ʕ/
Trill / Tap			𐤓‎ r /r/
Approximant			𐤋‎ l /l/		𐤉‎ j /j/	𐤅‎ w /w/

Possible vowel system in Phoenician
	Short		Long
	Front	Back	Front	Back
Close	/i/	/u/	/iː/	/uː/
Mid	/i/	/u/	/eː/	/oː/
Open	/a/		/aː/

Grammar

Phoenician words are usually built around consonantal roots, with vowel changes used to express different meanings. Unlike most Semitic languages, Phoenician kept many uniconsonantal and biconsonantal roots seen in older languages.

Nouns are marked for gender, number, and state. There is evidence for old grammatical cases. Personal pronouns and enclitic pronouns were used to show possession and direct objects. The verb inflects for person, number, gender, tense, and mood, with different verbal patterns expressing manner of action.

The Phoenician alphabet became the source of all modern European scripts.

		Singular	Dual	Plural
Masculine	Absolute	∅	𐤌‎ m /-ēm/	𐤌‎ m /-īm/
Masculine	Construct	∅	∅ /-ē/	∅ /-ē/
Feminine	Absolute	𐤕‎ t /-(a/i/o)t/	𐤕𐤌‎ tm /-tēm/	𐤕‎ t /-ūt/
Feminine	Construct	𐤕‎ t /-(a/i/o)t/	𐤕𐤍‎ tn /-tēn/	𐤕‎ t /-ūt/

Late Punic
1st century BC
Text	Greek transliteration	Reconstruction (by Igor Diakonov)		Inferred transcription
ΛΑΔΟΥΝ ΛΥΒΑΛ ΑΜΟΥΝ ΟΥ ΛΥΡΥΒΑΘΩΝ ΘΙΝΙΘ ΦΑΝΕ ΒΑΛ ΥΣ ΝΑΔΩΡ ΣΩΣΙΠΑΤΙΟΣ ΒΥΝ ΖΟΠΥΡΟΣ ΣΑΜΩ ΚΟΥΛΩ ΒΑΡΑΧΩ	Ladun liBal Amun u liribathōn Thīnīth phane Bal is nadōr Sōsīpatīos bin Zopuros samō kulō barakhō	𐤋𐤀𐤃𐤍 𐤋𐤁𐤏𐤋 𐤇𐤌𐤍 𐤅𐤋𐤓𐤁𐤕𐤍 𐤕𐤍𐤕 𐤐𐤍 𐤁𐤏𐤋 𐤀𐤔 𐤍𐤃𐤓 𐤎 𐤁𐤍 𐤆 𐤔𐤌𐤏 𐤒𐤋𐤀 𐤁𐤓𐤊𐤀‎	lʾdn lbʿl ḥmn wlrbtn tnt pn bʿl ʾš ndr S. bn Z. šmʾ qlʾ brkʾ	lāʾadūn līBaʿl Ḥamūn wūlīrībatōn(ū) Tīnīt pāne Baʿl ʾīš nadōr S(osipatius) bīn Z(opyrus) šamōʾ qūlōʾ barakōʾ
Translation
To the master Baal Hammon and to our mistress Tanit, the face of Baal, [that] which consecrated Sosipatius, son of Zopyrus. He heard his voice and blessed him.

Survival and influences of Punic

Main article: Punic language

Punic was a later form of the Phoenician language, spoken in the city of Carthage. It lasted longer than Phoenician and may have been used even during the time of Augustine of Hippo. Punic lived alongside the Berber languages in places like Tunisia.

Some modern Berber words might have come from Punic. For example, the word for "wall" in Berber, agadir, may come from a Punic word.

Punic also influenced place names. One theory says that the name Hispania (meaning the Iberian Peninsula, which includes Portugal and Spain) comes from a Punic phrase meaning "coast of hyraxes". This came from Phoenician explorers mistaking rabbits for hyraxes. Punic also affected the name for a tribe of people found near the Gulf of Guinea, which later became the name for the western gorilla.

Surviving examples

We know about the Phoenician language mostly from around 10,000 inscriptions carved on stone. They also likely wrote many books on papyrus or parchment, but these materials rotted away in the damp sea coast air, so almost none survive today. What we do have are important stone inscriptions and a few short notes on broken pottery pieces.

Important surviving Phoenician inscriptions include the Ahiram sarcophagus, Bodashtart inscriptions, Çineköy inscription, Cippi of Melqart, Mdina Steles, Sarcophagus of Eshmunazar II, Tabnit sarcophagus, Karatepe bilingual, Kilamuwa Stela, Nora Stone, Pyrgi Tablets, and the Temple of Eshmun. The Pyrgi Tablets, found in 1964, have writing in both Etruscan and Phoenician and helped scholars understand the Etruscan language better.