Shop for Phoenician_alphabet at ml-shopping.com

 
Web www.ml-shopping.com

 
Web www.ml-shopping.com

Phoenician alphabet

edit
History of the Alphabet

Middle Bronze Age 19–15th c. BC
Meroitic 3rd c. BC
Complete genealogy

The Phoenician alphabet dates from around 1400 BC and may be related to the Proto-Canaanite alphabet. It was used by the Phoenicians to write Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language. Modern alphabets thought to have descended from the Phoenician include Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Latin (via the Old Italic alphabet), and Cyrillic (via the Greek alphabet). Like Proto-Canaanite, Arabic and Hebrew, Phoenician is a consonantal alphabet (an abjad), and contains no symbols for vowel sounds, which had to be deduced from context.

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.

Contents

The Alphabet

The original Proto-Sinatic alphabet was pictographic and derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs. It as in use from ca. 1500 BC in the Sinai and the Levant, probably by early West Semitic speakers. In Canaan it was succeeded by the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, designed for a Canaanite language (Northwest Semitic) and in use until the 11th century.

The Phoenicians, in an effort to communicate with their trading partners that encircled the Mediterranean Sea, developed their 22-letter alphabet about 1400 BC. Their alphabet based on sound was widely received, in view of the myriad of symbols in cuneiform and hieroglyphics prevalent at the time. The Phoenician alphabet is considered to be related to the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, with a change of some of the letter names (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 carved into stone, most are square and straight, like characters from the runic alphabet, 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).
  • 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
Hebrew Arabic Greek Latin Cyrillic
Aleph ʼāleph ox ʼ א ﺍ Αα Aa Аа
Beth bēth house b ב ﺏ Ββ Bb Бб, Вв
Gimel gīmel camel g ג ﺝ Γγ Cc, Gg Гг
Daleth dāleth door d ד ﺩ، ذ Δδ Dd Дд
He hē window h ה ﮬ Εε Ee Ее, Єє
Waw wāw hook w ו ﻭ (Ϝϝ), Υυ Ff, Uu, Vv, Ww, Yy Уу
Zayin zayin weapon z ז ﺯ Ζζ Zz Зз
Heth ḥēth fence ḥ ח ﺡ، خ Ηη Hh Ии, Йй
Teth ṭēth wheel ṭ ט ﻁ، ظ Θθ
Yodh yōdh arm y י ﻱ، ى Ιι Ii, Jj Іі, Її, Јј
Kaph kaph palm k כ ﻙ Κκ Kk Кк
Lamedh lāmedh goad l ל ﻝ Λλ Ll Лл
Mem mēm water m מ ﻡ Μμ Mm Мм
Nun nun fish n נ ﻥ Νν Nn Нн
Samekh sāmekh fish s ס Ξξ, Χχ Xx Хх
Ayin ʼayin eye ʼ ע ﻉ، غ Οο Oo Оо
Pe pē mouth p פ ﻑ Ππ Pp Пп
Sade ṣādē papyrus plant ṣ צ ﺹ، ض (Ϡϡ) Цц, Чч
Qoph qōph monkey q ק ﻕ (Ϙϙ) Qq
Res rēš head r ר ﺭ Ρρ Rr Рр
Sin šin tooth š ש س، ش Σ(ϲ)σς Ss Сс, Шш
Taw tāw mark t ת ﺕ، ث Ττ Tt Тт

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.

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.

References

  • Sanford Holst, Phoenicians: Lebanon's Epic Heritage, Cambridge and Boston Press, Los Angeles, 2005.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

External links