Phoenician alphabet

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Template:Alphabet The Phoenician alphabet is a continuation of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention taken to begin with a cut-off date of 1050 BC. It was used by the Phoenicians to write Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language. Modern alphabets thought to have descended from Phoenician via Hebrew include Arabic, Greek, Latin (via the Old Italic alphabet), and Cyrillic (via the Greek alphabet). Like Proto-Canaanite, Arabic and Proto-Hebrew, Phoenician is a consonantal alphabet (an abjad), and contains no symbols for vowel sounds, which had to be deduced from context. (Greek was the first alphabet to include vowels.)

Phoenician inscriptions have been found in archaeological sites at a number of former Phoenician cities and colonies around the Mediterranean, such as Byblos (in present-day Lebanon) and Carthage in North Africa.

1 History
2 The Alphabet
- 2.1 Encoding
3 Derived alphabets
4 References
5 External links

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History

The original Proto-Sinatic alphabet was derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs, in use from ca. 1500 BC in the Sinai and the Levant, probably by early West Semitic speakers. In Canaan it evolved into the Proto-Canaanite alphabet from ca. 1400 BC, adapted to writing a Canaanite (Northwest Semitic) language.

The Phoenician alphabet seamlessly continues the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention called Phoenician from the mid 11th century.

Some of the letter names were changed in Phoenician (possibly, gaml "throwing stick" to gimel "camel", digg "fish" to dalet "door", hll "jubilation" to he "window", ziqq "manacle" to zayin "weapon", naḥš "snake" to nun "fish", piʾt "corner" to pe "mouth", šimš "sun" to šin "tooth"). The meanings given are of the letter names in Phoenician. The Phoenician letter names are not directly attested and were reconstructed by Theodor Nöldeke in 1904.

As the letters were originally incised with a stylus, most shapes are angular and straight, although more cursive versions are increasingly attested in later times, culminating in the Neo-Punic alphabet of Roman-era North Africa. Phoenician was usually written from right to left, although there are some texts written in boustrophedon (consecutive lines in alternate directions).

The Phoenician adaptation of the alphabet was extremely successful, and variants were adapted around the Mediterranean from ca. the 9th century, notably giving rise to the Greek, Old Italic, Anatolian and Iberian scripts.

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The Alphabet

Various letters have alternative representations: e.g. the taw can be written more like a '+' than like a 'x', the heth can have two cross bars.

The Latin letter X derives from a western Greek pronunciation of chi, and not directly from the samekh-inspired letter xi. However chi itself is probably a secondary derivation of Phoenician samekh.

Letter	Name	Meaning	Transliteration	Corresponding letter in
Letter	Name	Meaning	Transliteration	Hebrew	Arabic	Greek	Latin	Cyrillic
Image:Phoenician aleph.png	ʼāleph	ox	ʼ	א	ﺍ	Αα	Aa	Аа
Image:Phoenician beth.png	bēth	house	b	ב	ﺏ	Ββ	Bb	Бб, Вв
Image:Phoenician gimel.png	gīmel	camel	g	ג	ﺝ	Γγ	Cc, Gg	Гг
Image:Phoenician daleth.png	dāleth	door	d	ד	ﺩ، ذ	Δδ	Dd	Дд
Image:Phoenician he.png	hē	window	h	ה	ﮬ	Εε	Ee	Ее, Єє
Image:Phoenician waw.png	wāw	hook	w	ו	ﻭ	(Template:Polytonic), Υυ	Ff, Uu, Vv, Ww, Yy	Уу
Image:Phoenician zayin.png	zayin	weapon	z	ז	ﺯ	Ζζ	Zz	Зз
Image:Phoenician heth.png	ḥēth	fence	ḥ	ח	ﺡ، خ	Ηη	Hh	Ии, Йй
Image:Phoenician teth.png	ṭēth	wheel	ṭ	ט	ﻁ، ظ	Θθ
Image:Phoenician yodh.png	yōdh	arm	y	י	ﻱ، ى	Ιι	Ii, Jj	Іі, Її, Јј
Image:Phoenician kaph.png	kaph	palm	k	כ	ﻙ	Κκ	Kk	Кк
Image:Phoenician lamedh.png	lāmedh	goad	l	ל	ﻝ	Λλ	Ll	Лл
Image:Phoenician mem.png	mēm	water	m	מ	ﻡ	Μμ	Mm	Мм
Image:Phoenician nun.png	nun	fish	n	נ	ﻥ	Νν	Nn	Нн
Image:Phoenician samekh.png	sāmekh	fish	s	ס		Ξξ, Χχ	Xx	Хх
Image:Phoenician ayin.png	ʼayin	eye	ʼ	ע	ﻉ، غ	Οο	Oo	Оо
Image:Phoenician pe.png	pē	mouth	p	פ	ﻑ	Ππ	Pp	Пп
Image:Phoenician sade.png	ṣādē	papyrus plant	ṣ	צ	ﺹ، ض	(Template:Polytonic)		Цц, Чч
Image:Phoenician qof.png	qōph	monkey	q	ק	ﻕ	(Template:Polytonic)	Qq
Image:Phoenician res.png	rēš	head	r	ר	ﺭ	Ρρ	Rr	Рр
Image:Phoenician sin.png	šin	tooth	š	ש	س، ش	Σ(Template:Polytonic)σς	Ss	Сс, Шш
Image:Phoenician taw.png	tāw	mark	t	ת	ﺕ، ث	Ττ	Tt	Тт

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Encoding

The Phoenician script has been accepted for encoding in Unicode 5.0 in the range U+10900 to U+1091F. An alternative proposal to handle it as a font variation of Hebrew was turned down. (See PDF summary.) The letters will be encoded U+10900 𐤀 aleph through to U+10916 𐤖 taw, U+10917 𐤗, U+10918 𐤘, U+10919 𐤙 and U+1091A 𐤚 will encode the numerals 1, 10, 20 and 100 respectively and U+1091F 𐤟 the word separator.

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Derived alphabets

The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, used to write early Hebrew, is nearly identical to the Phoenician one. The Samaritan alphabet, used by the Samaritans, is a version of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet.

The Aramaic alphabet, used to write Aramaic, is another descendant. Aramaic being the lingua franca of the Middle East, it was widely adopted. It later split off into a number of related alphabets, including the modern Hebrew alphabet, the Syriac alphabet, and the Nabatean alphabet, a highly cursive form that was the origin of the Arabic alphabet.

The Greek alphabet developed from the Phoenician alphabet. The Greeks kept most of the sounds of the symbols, but used some letters which represented sounds that did not exist in Greek to represent vowels. This was particularly important as Greek, an Indo-European language, is much less consonant-dominated than most Semitic languages.

The Latin and the Cyrillic alphabets are derived from the Greek alphabet. Some Cyrillic letters are based on Glagolitic forms, which were influenced by the Hebrew alphabet. Also, the old runes were likely derived from an early form of the Latin alphabet.

Many historians believe that the Brahmi script and the subsequent Indic alphabets are derived from this script as well, which would make it the ancestor of almost all major writing systems in use today, possibly including even Hangul, which is possibly derived from Phagspa, itself a derivative of a Brahmi script; leaving only the Chinese script and its derivatives as having an independent origin.

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References

Sanford Holst, Phoenicians: Lebanon's Epic Heritage, Cambridge and Boston Press, Los Angeles, 2005.
Hoffman, Joel. 2004. In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language, NYU Press. Chapter 3. Role of Phoenician in the development of the alphabet.

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