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Phoenician ( ) is an extinct Canaanite Semitic language originally spoken in the region surrounding the cities of Tyre and Sidon. Extensive Tyro-Sidonian trade and commercial dominance led to Phoenician becoming a lingua franca of the maritime Mediterranean during the Iron Age. The Phoenician alphabet spread to Greece during this period, where it became the source of all modern European scripts. The area in which Phoenician was spoken includes the northern Levant and, at least as a prestige language, Anatolia, specifically the areas now including Syria, Lebanon, parts of Cyprus and some adjacent areas of Turkey. It was also spoken in the area of
Phoenician colonization Colonies in antiquity were post-Iron Age city-states founded from a mother-city (its "metropolis"), not from a territory-at-large. Bonds between a colony and its metropolis remained often close, and took specific forms during the period of classic ...
along the coasts of the southwestern Mediterranean Sea, including those of modern Tunisia, Morocco, Libya and
Algeria ) , image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Algiers , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , relig ...
as well as
Malta Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies ...
, the west of Sicily, Sardinia,
Corsica Corsica ( , Upper , Southern ; it, Corsica; ; french: Corse ; lij, Còrsega; sc, Còssiga) is an island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 18 regions of France. It is the fourth-largest island in the Mediterranean and lies southeast o ...
, the
Balearic Islands The Balearic Islands ( es, Islas Baleares ; or ca, Illes Balears ) are an archipelago in the Balearic Sea, near the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula. The archipelago is an autonomous community and a province of Spain; its capital ...
and southernmost Spain. In modern times, the language was first decoded by
Jean-Jacques Barthélemy Jean-Jacques Barthélemy (20 January 1716 – 30 April 1795) was a French scholar who became the first person to decipher an extinct language. He deciphered the Palmyrene alphabet in 1754 and the Phoenician alphabet in 1758. Early years Barth� ...
in 1758, who noted that the name "Phoenician" was first given to the language by
Samuel Bochart Samuel Bochart (30 May 1599 – 16 May 1667) was a French Protestant biblical scholar, a student of Thomas Erpenius and the teacher of Pierre Daniel Huet. His two-volume '' Geographia Sacra seu Phaleg et Canaan'' (Caen 1646) exerted a profound in ...
in his '' Geographia Sacra seu Phaleg et Canaan''.


History

The Phoenicians were the first state-level society to make extensive use of the
Semitic alphabet The history of the alphabet goes back to the conwriting system used for Semitic languages in the Levant in the 2nd millennium BCE. Most or nearly all alphabetic scripts used throughout the world today ultimately go back to this Semitic proto-alpha ...
. The Phoenician alphabet is the oldest verified consonantal alphabet, or ''
abjad An abjad (, ar, أبجد; also abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with other alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels ...
.'' It has become conventional to refer to the script as "Proto-Canaanite" until the mid-11th century BC, when it is first attested on inscribed bronze arrowheads, and as "Phoenician" only after 1050 BC. The Phoenician phonetic alphabet is generally believed to be at least the partial ancestor of almost all modern alphabets. From a traditional linguistic perspective, Phoenician was composed of a variety of dialects.Glenn Markoe.''Phoenicians''. p. 108. University of California Press, 2000.Zellig Sabbettai Harris. ''A grammar of the Phoenician language''. p. 6. 1990. According to some sources, Phoenician developed into distinct Tyro-Sidonian and Byblian dialects. By this account, the Tyro-Sidonian dialect, from which the Punic language eventually emerged, spread across the Mediterranean through trade and colonization, whereas the ancient dialect of
Byblos Byblos ( ; gr, Βύβλος), also known as Jbeil or Jubayl ( ar, جُبَيْل, Jubayl, locally ; phn, 𐤂𐤁𐤋, , probably ), is a city in the Keserwan-Jbeil Governorate of Lebanon. It is believed to have been first occupied between 880 ...
, known from a corpus of only a few dozen extant inscriptions, played no expansionary role. However, the very slight differences in language and the insufficient records of the time make it unclear whether Phoenician formed a separate and united dialect or was merely a superficially defined part of a broader
language continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varie ...
. Through their maritime trade, the Phoenicians spread the use of the alphabet to Northwest Africa and Europe, where it was adopted by the Greeks. Later, the Etruscans adopted a modified version for their own use, which, in turn, was modified and adopted by the
Romans Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD * Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a let ...
and became the Latin alphabet. In the east of the Mediterranean region, the language was in use as late as the 1st century BC, when it seems to have gone extinct there. Punic colonisation spread Phoenician to the western Mediterranean, where the distinct Punic language developed. Punic also died out, but it seems to have survived far longer than Phoenician, until the 6th century, perhaps even into the 9th century AD.


Writing system

Phoenician was written with the Phoenician script, an
abjad An abjad (, ar, أبجد; also abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with other alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels ...
(consonantary) originating from the
Proto-Canaanite alphabet Proto-Canaanite is the name given to :(a) the Proto-Sinaitic script when found in Canaan, dating to about the 17th century BC and later. :(b) a hypothetical ancestor of the Phoenician script before some cut-off date, typically 1050 BCE, with an u ...
that also became the basis for the Greek alphabet and, via an Etruscan adaptation, the Latin alphabet. The Punic form of the script gradually developed somewhat different and more cursive letter shapes; in the 3rd century BC, it also began to exhibit a tendency to mark the presence of vowels, especially final vowels, with an
aleph Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician , Hebrew , Aramaic , Syriac , Arabic ʾ and North Arabian 𐪑. It also appears as South Arabian 𐩱 and Ge'ez . These lette ...
or sometimes an
ayin ''Ayin'' (also ''ayn'' or ''ain''; transliterated ) is the sixteenth letter of the Semitic scripts, including Phoenician , Hebrew , Aramaic , Syriac ܥ, and Arabic (where it is sixteenth in abjadi order only). The letter represents ...
. Furthermore, around the time of the Second Punic War, an even more cursive form began to develop, which gave rise to a variety referred to as Neo-Punic and existed alongside the more conservative form and became predominant some time after the destruction of Carthage (c. 149 BC).Benz, Franz L. 1982. Personal Names in the Phoenician and Punic Inscriptions. P.12-14 Neo-Punic, in turn, tended to designate vowels with matres lectionis ("consonantal letters") more frequently than the previous systems had and also began to systematically use different letters for different vowels, in the way explained in more detail below. Finally, a number of late inscriptions from what is now Constantine, Algeria dated to the first century BC make use of the Greek alphabet to write Punic, and many inscriptions from Tripolitania, in the third and fourth centuries AD use the Latin alphabet for that purpose. In Phoenician writing, unlike that of abjads such as those of Aramaic, Biblical Hebrew and Arabic, even long vowels remained generally unexpressed, regardless of their origin (even if they originated from diphthongs, as in bt 'house', for earlier ''*bayt-''; Hebrew spelling has byt). Eventually, Punic writers began to implement systems of marking of vowels by means of ''matres lectionis''. In the 3rd century BC appeared the practice of using final 'ālep to mark the presence of any final vowel and, occasionally, of yōd to mark a final long . Later, mostly after the destruction of Carthage in the so-called "Neo-Punic" inscriptions, that was supplemented by a system in which
wāw Waw/Vav ( "hook") is the sixth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ''wāw'' , Aramaic ''waw'' , Hebrew '' waw/vav'' , Syriac ''waw'' ܘ and Arabic '' wāw'' (sixth in abjadi order; 27th in modern Arabic order). It repres ...
denoted , yōd denoted , 'ālep denoted and , ʿayin denoted and and could also be used to signify . This latter system was used first with foreign words and was then extended to many native words as well. A third practice reported in the literature is the use of the consonantal letters for vowels in the same way as had occurred in the original adaptation of the Phoenician alphabet to Greek and Latin, which was apparently still transparent to Punic writers: hē for and 'ālep for . Later, Punic inscriptions began to be written in the Latin alphabet, which also indicated the vowels. Those later inscriptions, in addition with some inscriptions in Greek letters and transcriptions of Phoenician names into other languages, represent the main source of knowledge about Phoenician vowels.


Phonology


Consonants

The following table presents the consonant
phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
s of the Phoenician language as represented in the Phoenician alphabet, alongside their standard Semiticist transliteration and reconstructed phonetic values in the International Phonetic Alphabet.: The system reflected in the abjad above is the product of several mergers. From Proto-Northwest Semitic to Canaanite, and have merged into , and have merged into , and , and have merged into . Next, from Canaanite to Phoenician, the sibilants and were merged as , and were merged as , and * and * were merged as *. For the phonetic values of the sibilants, see below. These latter developments also occurred in Biblical Hebrew at one point or another, except that merged into there.


Sibilants

The original value of the
Proto-Semitic Proto-Semitic is the hypothetical reconstructed proto-language ancestral to the Semitic languages. There is no consensus regarding the location of the Proto-Semitic ''Urheimat''; scholars hypothesize that it may have originated in the Levant (m ...
sibilants, and accordingly of their Phoenician counterparts, is disputed. While the traditional sound values are for , for , for , and for , recent scholarship argues that was , was , was , and was , as transcribed in the consonant table above. Krahmalkov, too, suggests that Phoenician *z may have been zor even dbased on Latin transcriptions such as ''esde'' for the demonstrative ''z.'' On the other hand, it is debated whether šīn and sāmek , which are mostly well distinguished by the Phoenician orthography, also eventually merged at some point, either in Classical Phoenician or in Late Punic.


Postvelars

In later Punic, the laryngeals and pharyngeals seem to have been entirely lost. Neither these nor the emphatics could be adequately represented by the Latin alphabet, but there is also evidence to that effect from Punic script transcriptions.


Lenition

There is no consensus on whether Phoenician-Punic ever underwent the lenition of
stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lip ...
s that happened in most other Northwest Semitic languages such as Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic (cf. Hackett vs Segert and Lyavdansky). The consonant may have been ''generally'' transformed into in Punic and in late Phoenician, as it was in Proto-Arabic.Лявданский, А.К. 2009. Финикийский язык. Языки мира: семитские языки. Аккадский язык. Северозапазносемитские языки. ред. Белова, А.Г. и др. P.283 Certainly, Latin-script renditions of late Punic include many spirantized transcriptions with ''ph'', ''th'' and ''kh'' in various positions (although the interpretation of these spellings is not entirely clear) as well as the letter ''f'' for the original *p. However, in Neo-Punic, *b lenited to /v/ contiguous to a following consonant, as in the Latin transcription ''lifnim'' for *lbnm "for his son".


Vowels

Knowledge of the vowel system is very imperfect because of the characteristics of the writing system. During most of its existence, Phoenician writing showed no vowels at all, and even as vowel notation systems did eventually arise late in its history, they never came to be applied consistently to native vocabulary. It is thought that Phoenician had the short vowels , , and the long vowels , , , , . The Proto-Semitic diphthongs and are realized as and . That must have happened earlier than in Biblical Hebrew since the resultant long vowels are not marked with the semivowel letters (''bēt'' "house" was written bt, in contrast to Biblical Hebrew byt). The most conspicuous vocalic development in Phoenician is the so-called
Canaanite shift In historical linguistics, the Canaanite shift is a vowel shift/ sound change that took place in the Canaanite dialects, which belong to the Northwest Semitic branch of the Semitic languages family. This sound change caused Proto-NW-Semitic *ā ...
, shared by Biblical Hebrew, but going further in Phoenician. The Proto-Northwest Semitic and became not merely as in Tiberian Hebrew, but . Stressed Proto-Semitic became Tiberian Hebrew ( in other traditions), but Phoenician . The shift is proved by Latin and Greek transcriptions like ''rūs/ρους'' for "head, cape" 𐤓𐤀𐤔 /ruːʃ/ (Tiberian Hebrew ''rōš'' /roːʃ/, ); similarly notice stressed (corresponding to Tiberian Hebrew ) ''samō/σαμω'' for "he heard" 𐤔𐤌𐤏 /ʃaˈmoʕ/ (Tiberian Hebrew ''šāmaʻ'' /ʃɔːˈmaʕ/, ); similarly the word for "eternity" is known from Greek transcriptions to have been ''ūlōm/ουλομ'' 𐤏𐤋𐤌 /ʕuːˈloːm/, corresponding to Biblical Hebrew ''ʻōlām'' עולם /ʕoːlɔːm/ and Proto-Semitic ''ʻālam'' /ˈʕaːlam/ (in Arabic: ''ʻālam'' عالم /ˈʕaːlam/). The letter Y used for words such as 𐤀𐤔 /ʔəʃ/ ''ys/υς'' "which" and 𐤀𐤕 /ʔət/ ''yth/υθ'' (definite accusative marker) in Greek and Latin alphabet inscriptions can be interpreted as denoting a reduced schwa vowel that occurred in pre-stress syllables in verbs and two syllables before stress in nouns and adjectives, while other instances of Y as in ''chyl/χυλ'' and even ''chil/χιλ'' for 𐤊𐤋 /kull/ "all" in ''
Poenulus ''Poenulus'', also called ''The Little Carthaginian'' or ''The Little Punic Man'', is a Latin comedic play for the early Roman theatre by Titus Maccius Plautus, probably written between 195 and 189 BC. The play is noteworthy for containing text ...
'' can be interpreted as a further stage in the vowel shift resulting in fronting () and even subsequent delabialization of and . Short in originally-open syllables was lowered to and was also lengthened if it was accented.


Suprasegmentals

Stress-dependent vowel changes indicate that stress was probably mostly final, as in Biblical Hebrew. Long vowels probably occurred only in open syllables.


Grammar

As is typical for the Semitic languages, Phoenician words are usually built around consonantal roots and vowel changes are used extensively to express morphological distinctions. However, unlike most Semitic languages, Phoenician preserved (or, possibly, re-introduced) numerous uniconsonantal and biconsonantal roots seen in Proto-Afro-Asiatic: compare the verbs 𐤊𐤍 kn "to be" vs Arabic كون kwn, 𐤌𐤕 mt "to die" vs Hebrew and Arabic מות/موت mwt and 𐤎𐤓 sr "to remove" vs Hebrew סרר srr.


Nominal morphology

Nouns are marked for gender (masculine and feminine), number (singular, plural and vestiges of the dual) and state (absolute and construct, the latter being nouns that are followed by their possessors) and also have the category definiteness. There is some evidence for remains of the Proto-Semitic genitive grammatical case as well. While many of the endings coalesce in the standard orthography, inscriptions in the Latin and Greek alphabet permit the reconstruction of the noun endings, which are also the adjective endings, as follows: In late Punic, the final of the feminine was apparently dropped: "son of the queen" or "brother of the queen" rendered in Latin as HIMILCO. was also assimilated to following consonants: e.g. 𐤔𐤕 "year" for earlier 𐤔𐤍𐤕 . The case endings in general must have been lost between the 9th century BC and the 7th century BC: the personal name rendered in
Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to: * Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire * Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language * Akkadian literature, literature in this language * Akkadian cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic ...
as ma-ti-nu-ba-a-li "Gift of
Baal Baal (), or Baal,; phn, , baʿl; hbo, , baʿal, ). ( ''baʿal'') was a title and honorific meaning "owner", "lord" in the Northwest Semitic languages spoken in the Levant during antiquity. From its use among people, it came to be applied t ...
", with the case endings -u and -i, was written ma-ta-an-baa-al (likely Phoenician spelling *𐤌𐤕𐤍𐤁𐤏𐤋) two centuries later. However, evidence has been found for a retention of the genitive case in the form of the first-singular possessive suffix: 𐤀𐤁𐤉 /abiya/ "of my father" vs 𐤀𐤁 /abī/ "my father". If true, this may suggest that cases were still distinguished to some degree in other forms as well. The written forms and the reconstructed pronunciations of the personal pronouns are as follows: Singular:
1st: // 𐤀𐤍𐤊 (Punic sometimes 𐤀𐤍𐤊𐤉 ), also attested as //
2nd masc. // 𐤀𐤕
2nd fem. // 𐤀𐤕
3rd masc. // 𐤄𐤀 , also [] (?) 𐤄𐤉 and // 𐤄𐤀𐤕
3rd fem. // 𐤄𐤀 Plural:
1st: // 𐤀𐤍𐤇𐤍
2nd masc. // 𐤀𐤕𐤌
2nd fem. unattested, perhaps // 𐤀𐤕𐤍
3rd masc. and feminine // 𐤄𐤌𐤕
Enclitic personal pronouns were added to nouns (to encode possession) and to prepositions, as shown below for "Standard Phoenician" (the predominant dialect, as distinct from the Byblian and the late Punic varieties). They appear in a slightly different form depending on whether or not they follow plural-form masculine nouns (and so are added after a vowel). The former is given in brackets with the abbreviation a.V. Singular:
1st: // , also 𐤉 (a.V. // )
2nd masc. // 𐤊
2nd fem. // 𐤊
3rd masc. // , Punic 𐤀 , (a.V. // )
3rd fem. // , Punic 𐤀 (a.V. // ) Plural:
1st: // 𐤍
2nd masc. // 𐤊𐤌
2nd fem. unattested, perhaps // 𐤊𐤍
3rd masc. // 𐤌 (a.V. // 𐤍𐤌 )
3rd fem. // 𐤌 (a.V. // 𐤍𐤌 ) In addition, according to some research, the same written forms of the enclitics that are attested after vowels are also found after a singular noun in what must have been the genitive case (which ended in , whereas the plural version ended in ). Their pronunciation can then be reconstructed somewhat differently: first-person singular // 𐤉 , third-person singular masculine and feminine // 𐤉 and // 𐤉 . The third-person plural singular and feminine must have pronounced the same in both cases, i.e. // 𐤍𐤌 and // 𐤍𐤌 . These enclitic forms vary between the dialects. In the archaic Byblian dialect, the third person forms are 𐤄 h and 𐤅 w // for the masculine singular (a.V. 𐤅 w //), 𐤄 h // for the feminine singular and 𐤅𐤌 hm // for the masculine plural. In late Punic, the 3rd masculine singular is usually // 𐤌 . The same enclitic pronouns are also attached to verbs to denote direct objects. In that function, some of them have slightly divergent forms: first singular // 𐤍 and probably first plural //. The near demonstrative pronouns ("this") are written, in standard Phoenician, 𐤆 z afor the singular and 𐤀𐤋 �ilːafor the plural. Cypriot Phoenician displays 𐤀𐤆 �izːainstead of 𐤆 z a Byblian still distinguishes, in the singular, a masculine an/ afrom a feminine 𐤆𐤕 uːt/ 𐤆𐤀 There are also many variations in Punic, including 𐤎𐤕 st uːtand 𐤆𐤕 zt uːtfor both genders in the singular. The far demonstrative pronouns ("that") are identical to the independent third-person pronouns. The interrogative pronouns are or perhaps 𐤌𐤉 "who" and 𐤌 "what". Indefinite pronouns are "anything" is written 𐤌𐤍𐤌 mnm (possibly pronounced iːnumːa similar to
Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to: * Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire * Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language * Akkadian literature, literature in this language * Akkadian cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic ...
iːnumːeː and 𐤌𐤍𐤊 mnk (possibly pronounced iːnukːa. The relative pronoun is a 𐤔 �i either followed or preceded by a vowel. The definite article was , and the first consonant of the following word was doubled. It was written 𐤄 h but in late Punic also 𐤀 and 𐤏 because of the weakening and coalescence of the gutturals. Much as in Biblical Hebrew, the initial consonant of the article is dropped after the prepositions 𐤁 b-, 𐤋 l- and 𐤊 k-; it could also be lost after various other particles and function words, such the direct object marker 𐤀𐤉𐤕 and the conjunction 𐤅 w- "and". Of the cardinal numerals from 1 to 10, 1 is an adjective, 2 is formally a noun in the dual and the rest are nouns in the singular. They all distinguish gender: 𐤀𐤇𐤃, 𐤀𐤔𐤍𐤌/𐤔𐤍𐤌 (construct state 𐤀𐤔𐤍/𐤔𐤍 ), 𐤔𐤋𐤔 , 𐤀𐤓𐤁𐤏, 𐤇𐤌𐤔 , 𐤔𐤔 , 𐤔𐤁𐤏 , 𐤔𐤌𐤍/𐤔𐤌𐤍𐤄 , 𐤕𐤔𐤏 , 𐤏𐤔𐤓/𐤏𐤎𐤓Die Keilalphabete: die phönizisch-kanaanäischen und altarabischen Alphabete in Ugarit P.162, vs 𐤀𐤇𐤕, unattested, 𐤔𐤋𐤔𐤕 , 𐤀𐤓𐤁𐤏𐤕 , 𐤇𐤌𐤔𐤕 , 𐤔𐤔𐤕 , 𐤔𐤁𐤏𐤕 , 𐤔𐤌𐤍𐤕 , unattested, 𐤏𐤔𐤓𐤕 . The tens are morphologically masculine plurals of the ones: 𐤏𐤔𐤓𐤌/𐤏𐤎𐤓𐤌 , 𐤔𐤋𐤔𐤌 , 𐤀𐤓𐤁𐤏𐤌 , 𐤇𐤌𐤔𐤌 , 𐤔𐤔𐤌 , 𐤔𐤁𐤏𐤌, 𐤔𐤌𐤍𐤌 , 𐤕𐤔𐤏𐤌 . "One hundred" is 𐤌𐤀𐤕 , two hundred is its dual form , whereas the rest are formed as in 𐤌𐤀𐤕𐤌 (three hundred). One thousand is 𐤀𐤋𐤐. Ordinal numerals are formed by the addition of *iy 𐤉 . Composite numerals are formed with w- 𐤅 "and", e.g. 𐤏𐤔𐤓 𐤅𐤔𐤍𐤌 for "twelve".


Verbal morphology

The verb inflects for person, number, gender, tense and mood. Like for other Semitic languages, Phoenician verbs have different "verbal patterns" or "stems", expressing manner of action, level of transitivity and voice. The perfect or suffix-conjugation, which expresses the past tense, is exemplified below with the root 𐤐𐤏𐤋 p-ʻ-l "to do" (a "neutral", G-stem). Singular: *1st: // 𐤐𐤏𐤋𐤕𐤉 *2nd masc. // 𐤐𐤏𐤋𐤕 *2nd fem. // 𐤐𐤏𐤋𐤕 *3rd masc. // 𐤐𐤏𐤋 *3rd fem. // 𐤐𐤏𐤋𐤕 ,Segert, Stanislav. 2007. Phoenician and Punic Morphology. In Morphologies of Asia and Africa. Morphologies of Asia and Africa. ed. by Alan S. Kaye. P.82 also 𐤐𐤏𐤋 , Punic 𐤐𐤏𐤋𐤀 Plural: *1st: // 𐤐𐤏𐤋𐤍 *2nd masc. // 𐤐𐤏𐤋𐤕𐤌 *2nd fem. unattested, perhaps // 𐤐𐤏𐤋𐤕𐤍 *3rd masc. // 𐤐𐤏𐤋 , Punic 𐤐𐤏𐤋𐤀 *3rd fem. // 𐤐𐤏𐤋 , Punic 𐤐𐤏𐤋𐤀 The imperfect or prefix-conjugation, which expresses the present and future tense (and which is not distinguishable from the descendant of the Proto-Semitic
jussive The jussive (abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood of verbs for issuing orders, commanding, or exhorting (within a subjunctive framework). English verbs are not marked for this mood. The mood is similar to the ''cohortative'' mood, which typically a ...
expressing wishes), is exemplified below, again with the root p-ʻ-l. *1st: // 𐤀𐤐𐤏𐤋 *2nd masc. // 𐤕𐤐𐤏𐤋 *2nd fem. // 𐤕𐤐𐤏𐤋𐤉 *3rd masc. // 𐤉𐤐𐤏𐤋 *3rd fem. // 𐤕𐤐𐤏𐤋 Plural: *1st: // 𐤍𐤐𐤏𐤋 *2nd masc. // 𐤕𐤐𐤏𐤋 , Punic 𐤕𐤐𐤏𐤋𐤀 *2nd fem. // 𐤕𐤐𐤏𐤋𐤍 *3rd masc. // 𐤉𐤐𐤏𐤋 *3rd fem. *// 𐤉𐤐𐤏𐤋𐤍 The imperative endings were presumably , and for the second-person singular masculine, second-person singular feminine and second-person plural masculine respectively, but all three forms surface in the orthography as // 𐤐𐤏𐤋 : . The old Semitic jussive, which originally differed slightly from the prefix conjugation, is no longer possible to separate from it in Phoenician with the present data. The non-finite forms are the infinitive construct, the infinitive absolute and the active and passive participles. In the G-stem, the infinitive construct is usually combined with the preposition 𐤋 l- "to", as in 𐤋𐤐𐤏𐤋 "to do"; in contrast, the infinitive absolute 𐤐𐤏𐤋 (paʻōl) is mostly used to strengthen the meaning of a subsequent finite verb with the same root: 𐤐𐤕𐤇 𐤕𐤐𐤕𐤇 "you will indeed open!", accordingly /𐤐𐤏𐤋 𐤕𐤐𐤏𐤋 / "you will indeed do!". The participles had, in the G-stem, the following forms: *Active: *Masculine singular ''//'' later ''//'' 𐤐𐤏𐤋 , plural ''//'' or ''//'' 𐤐𐤏𐤋𐤌 *Feminine singular 𐤐𐤏𐤋𐤕 , plural 𐤐𐤏𐤋𐤕 *Passive: *Masculine singular // or // 𐤐𐤏𐤋 , plural // 𐤐𐤏𐤋𐤌 *Feminine singular // 𐤐𐤏𐤋𐤕 , plural // 𐤐𐤏𐤋𐤕 The missing forms above can be inferred from the correspondences between the Proto-Northwest Semitic ancestral forms and the attested Phoenician counterparts: the PNWS participle forms are *. The derived stems are: * the N-stem (functioning as a passive), e.g. // 𐤍𐤐𐤏𐤋 npʻl, the N-formant being lost in the prefix conjugation while assimilating and doubling the first root consonant 𐤉𐤐𐤏𐤋 (ypʻl). * the D-stem (functioning as a factitive): the forms must have been 𐤐𐤏𐤋 /piʻʻil/ in the suffix conjugation, 𐤉𐤐𐤏𐤋 /yapaʻʻil/ in the prefix conjugation, 𐤐𐤏𐤋 /paʻʻil/ in the imperative and the infinitive construct, 𐤐𐤏𐤋 /paʻʻōl/ in the infinitive absolute and 𐤌𐤐𐤏𐤋 /mapaʻʻil/ in the participle. The characteristic doubling of the middle consonant is only identifiable in foreign alphabet transcriptions. * the C-stem (functioning as a causative): the original 𐤄 *ha- prefix has produced 𐤉 *yi- rather than the Hebrew ה *hi-. The forms were apparently 𐤉𐤐𐤏𐤋 /yipʻil/ in the suffix conjugation 𐤀𐤐𐤏𐤋(/ in late Punic), 𐤉𐤐𐤏𐤋 /yapʻil/ in the prefix conjugation, and the infinitive is also 𐤉𐤐𐤏𐤋 /yapʻil/, while the participle was probably 𐤌𐤐𐤏𐤋 /mapʻil/ or, in late Punic at least, 𐤌𐤐𐤏𐤋 /mipʻil/. Most of the stems apparently also had passive and reflexive counterparts, the former differing through vowels, the latter also through the infix 𐤕 -t-. The G stem passive is attested as 𐤐𐤉𐤏𐤋 pyʻl, < *; t-stems can be reconstructed as 𐤉𐤕𐤐𐤏𐤋 ytpʻl /yitpaʻil/ (tG) and 𐤉𐤕𐤐𐤏𐤋 yptʻʻl /yiptaʻʻil/ (Dt).


Prepositions and particles

Some prepositions are always prefixed to nouns, deleting, if present, the initial of the definite article: such are 𐤁 b- "in", 𐤋 l- "to, for", 𐤊 k- "as" and 𐤌 m- // "from". They are sometimes found in forms extended through the addition of 𐤍 -n or 𐤕 -t. Other prepositions are not like that: 𐤀𐤋 "upon", .𐤏𐤃 "until", 𐤀𐤇𐤓 "after", 𐤕𐤇𐤕 "under", 𐤁𐤉𐤍, 𐤁𐤍 "between". New prepositions are formed with nouns: 𐤋𐤐𐤍 lpn "in front of", from 𐤋 l- "to" and 𐤐𐤍 pn "face". There is a special preposited marker of a definite object 𐤀𐤉𐤕 (//?), which, unlike Hebrew, is clearly distinct from the preposition את (//). The most common negative marker is 𐤁𐤋 (//), negating verbs but sometimes also nouns; another one is 𐤀𐤉 (//), expressing both nonexistence and the negation of verbs. Negative commands or prohibitions are expressed with 𐤀𐤋 (//). "Lest" is 𐤋𐤌 . Some common conjunctions are 𐤅 (originally perhaps //, but certainly // in Late Punic), "and" 𐤀𐤌 (), "when", and 𐤊 (), "that; because; when". There was also a conjunction 𐤀𐤐/𐤐 ("also". 𐤋 (//) could (rarely) be used to introduce desiderative constructions ("may he do X!"). 𐤋 could also introduce vocatives. Both prepositions and conjunctions could form compounds.


Syntax

The basic word order is verb-subject-object. There is no verb "to be" in the present tense; in clauses that would have used a copula, the subject may come before the predicate. Nouns precede their modifiers, such as adjectives and possessors.


Vocabulary and word formation

Most nouns are formed by a combination of consonantal roots and vocalic patterns, but they can be formed also with prefixes (𐤌 , expressing actions or their results, and rarely 𐤕 ) and suffixes . Abstracts can be formed with the suffix 𐤕 -t (probably , ).Лявданский, А.К. 2009. Финикийский язык. Языки мира: семитские языки. Аккадский язык. Северозапазносемитские языки. ред. Белова, А.Г. и др. P.293 Adjectives can be formed following the familiar Semitic
nisba The Arabic word nisba (; also transcribed as ''nisbah'' or ''nisbat'') may refer to: * Nisba, a suffix used to form adjectives in Arabic grammar, or the adjective resulting from this formation **comparatively, in Afro-Asiatic: see Afroasiatic_lan ...
suffix 𐤉 y 𐤑𐤃𐤍𐤉 (e.g. ṣdny "Sidonian"). Like the grammar, the vocabulary is very close to Biblical Hebrew, but some peculiarities attract attention. For example, the copula verb "to be" is 𐤊𐤍 kn (as in Arabic, as opposed to Hebrew and Aramaic היה hyh) and the verb "to do" is 𐤐𐤏𐤋 pʿl (as in Aramaic פעל pʿl and Arabic فعل fʿl, as opposed to Hebrew עשה ʿśh, though in Hebrew פעל pʿl has the similar meaning "to act").


Survival and influences of Punic

The significantly divergent later form of the language that was spoken in the Tyrian Phoenician colony of
Carthage Carthage was the capital city of Ancient Carthage, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now Tunisia. Carthage was one of the most important trading hubs of the Ancient Mediterranean and one of the most affluent cities of the classi ...
is known as Punic and remained in use there for considerably longer than Phoenician did in Phoenicia itself by arguably surviving into
Augustine of Hippo Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Afr ...
's time. Throughout its existence, Punic co-existed with the Berber languages, which were then native to Tunisia (including Carthage) and North Africa. Punic disappeared some time after the destruction of Carthage by the Romans and the Berbers. It is possible that Punic may have survived the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb in some small isolated area: the geographer
al-Bakri Abū ʿUbayd ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Muḥammad ibn Ayyūb ibn ʿAmr al-Bakrī ( ar, أبو عبيد عبد الله بن عبد العزيز بن محمد بن أيوب بن عمرو البكري), or simply al-Bakrī (c. 1040–1 ...
describes a people speaking a language that was not Berber, Latin or
Coptic Coptic may refer to: Afro-Asia * Copts, an ethnoreligious group mainly in the area of modern Egypt but also in Sudan and Libya * Coptic language, a Northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century * Coptic alphabet, t ...
in the city of Sirte in rural Ifriqiya, a region in which spoken Punic survived well past its written use. However, it is likely that arabization of the Punics was facilitated by their language belonging to the same group (both being Semitic languages) as that of the conquerors and thus having many grammatical and lexical similarities. Most Punic speakers may have been linguistically Berberized and/or Latinized after the fall of Carthage. The ancient Libyco-Berber alphabet that is still in irregular use by modern Berber groups such as the
Tuareg The Tuareg people (; also spelled Twareg or Touareg; endonym: ''Imuhaɣ/Imušaɣ/Imašeɣăn/Imajeɣăn'') are a large Berber ethnic group that principally inhabit the Sahara in a vast area stretching from far southwestern Libya to southern Al ...
is known by the native name
Tifinagh Tifinagh ( Tuareg Berber language: or , ) is a script used to write the Berber languages. Tifinagh is descended from the ancient Libyco-Berber alphabet. The traditional Tifinagh, sometimes called Tuareg Tifinagh, is still favored by the Tuare ...
, possibly a derived form of a cognate of the name "Punic". Still, a direct derivation from the Phoenician-Punic script is debated and far from established since the two writing systems are very different. As far as language (not the script) is concerned, some borrowings from Punic appear in modern Berber dialects: one interesting example is ''agadir'' "wall" from Punic ''gader''. Perhaps the most interesting case of Punic influence is that of the name of Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula, comprising Portugal and Spain), which, according to one of the theories, is derived from the Punic ''I-Shaphan'' meaning "coast of
hyrax Hyraxes (), also called dassies, are small, thickset, herbivorous mammals in the order Hyracoidea. Hyraxes are well-furred, rotund animals with short tails. Typically, they measure between long and weigh between . They are superficially simil ...
es", in turn a misidentification on the part of Phoenician explorers of its numerous rabbits as hyraxes.Living floors: The animal world in the mosaics of Israel and its surroundings / Ami Tamir,(Tel-Aviv, 2019),131;רצפות חיות: עולם החי בפסיפסי ארץ ישראל וסביבתה Another case is the name of a tribe of hostile "hairy people" that Hanno the Navigator found in the Gulf of Guinea. The name given to those people by Hanno the Navigator's interpreters was transmitted from Punic into Greek as ''gorillai'' and was applied in 1847 by Thomas S. Savage to the western gorilla.


Surviving examples

Phoenician, together with Punic, is primarily known from approximately 10,000 surviving inscriptions, supplemented by occasional glosses in books written in other languages. In addition to their many inscriptions, the Phoenicians are believed to have left numerous other types of written sources, but most have not survived. Roman authors, such as Sallust, allude to some books written in the Punic language, but none have survived except occasionally in translation (e.g., Mago's treatise) or in snippets (e.g., in Plautus' plays). The
Cippi of Melqart The Cippi of Melqart are a pair of Phoenician marble cippi that were unearthed in Malta under undocumented circumstances and dated to the 2nd century BC. These are votive offerings to the god Melqart, and are inscribed in two languages, Anci ...
, a
bilingual inscription In epigraphy, a multilingual inscription is an inscription that includes the same text in two or more languages. A bilingual is an inscription that includes the same text in two languages (or trilingual in the case of three languages, etc.). Mul ...
in Ancient Greek and Carthaginian discovered in
Malta Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies ...
in 1694, was the key which allowed French scholar
Jean-Jacques Barthélemy Jean-Jacques Barthélemy (20 January 1716 – 30 April 1795) was a French scholar who became the first person to decipher an extinct language. He deciphered the Palmyrene alphabet in 1754 and the Phoenician alphabet in 1758. Early years Barth� ...
to decipher and reconstruct the alphabet in 1758. Even as late as 1837 only 70 Phoenician inscriptions were known to scholars. These were compiled in
Wilhelm Gesenius Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Gesenius (3 February 178623 October 1842) was a German orientalist, lexicographer, Christian Hebraist, Lutheran theologian, Biblical scholar and critic. Biography Gesenius was born at Nordhausen. In 1803 he became ...
's ''Scripturae linguaeque Phoeniciae monumenta'', which comprised all that was known of Phoenician by scholars at that time. Some key surviving inscriptions of Phoenician are: *
Ahiram sarcophagus The Ahiram sarcophagus (also spelled Ahirom, in Phoenician) was the sarcophagus of a Phoenician King of Byblos (c. 850 BC), discovered in 1923 by the French excavator Pierre Montet in tomb V of the royal necropolis of Byblos. The sarcophagus ...
* Bodashtart inscriptions *
Çineköy inscription The Çineköy inscription is an ancient bilingual inscription, written in Hieroglyphic Luwian and Phoenician languages. The inscription is dated to the second half of the 8th century BC. It was uncovered in 1997 near the village of Çine, that ...
*
Cippi of Melqart The Cippi of Melqart are a pair of Phoenician marble cippi that were unearthed in Malta under undocumented circumstances and dated to the 2nd century BC. These are votive offerings to the god Melqart, and are inscribed in two languages, Anci ...
* Mdina Steles * Eshmunazar II sarcophagus *
Karatepe Karatepe ( Turkish, 'Black Hill'; Hittite: ''Azatiwataya'') is a late Hittite fortress and open-air museum in Osmaniye Province in southern Turkey lying at a distance of about 23 km from the district center of Kadirli. It is sited in the ...
*
Kilamuwa Stela The Kilamuwa Stele is a 9th-century BC stele of King Kilamuwa, from the Kingdom of Bit-Gabbari. He claims to have succeeded where his ancestors had failed, in providing for his kingdom. The inscription is known as KAI 24. The Kilamuwa Stele ...
* Nora Stone *
Pyrgi Tablets The Pyrgi Tablets (dated ) are three golden plates inscribed with a bilingual Phoenician– Etruscan dedicatory text. They are the oldest historical source documents from pre-Roman Italy and are rare examples of texts in these languages. They w ...
*
Temple of Eshmun The Temple of Eshmun ( ar, معبد أشمون) is an ancient place of worship dedicated to Eshmun, the Phoenician god of healing. It is located near the Awali river, northeast of Sidon in southwestern Lebanon. The site was occupied from the ...
Since bilingual tablets with inscriptions in both Etruscan and Phoenician dating from around 500 BC were found in 1964, more Etruscan has been deciphered through comparison to the more fully understood Phoenician.


See also

* Punic language * Phoenician alphabet * Extinct language *
List of extinct languages of Asia {{Language Endangerment status This is a list of extinct languages of Asia, languages which have undergone language death, have no native speakers, and no spoken descendant. There are 114 languages listed. 8 from Central Asia, 21 from East As ...
* Phoenician-Punic literature


References

;Sources * * *


Further reading

*Fox, Joshua. "A Sequence of Vowel Shifts in Phoenician and Other Languages." ''Journal of Near Eastern Studies'' 55, no. 1 (1996): 37-47. https://www.jstor.org/stable/545378. *Holmstedt, Robert D., and Aaron Schade. ''Linguistic Studies In Phoenician: In Memory of J. Brian Peckham''. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013. *Krahmalkov, Charles R. ''A Phoenician-Punic Grammar''. Leiden: Brill, 2001. *Schmitz, Philip C. "Phoenician-Punic Grammar and Lexicography in the New Millennium." ''Journal of the American Oriental Society'' 124, no. 3 (2004): 533-47. *Segert, S. ''A Grammar of Phoenician and Punic''. München: C.H. Beck, 1976. * *Tomback, Richard S. ''A Comparative Semitic Lexicon of the Phoenician and Punic Languages''. Missoula, MT: Scholars Press for the Society of Biblical Literature, 1978. *Tribulato, Olga. ''Language and Linguistic Contact In Ancient Sicily''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. *Woodard, Roger D. ''The Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. {{DEFAULTSORT:Phoenician Language Phoenician inscriptions Canaanite languages Extinct languages of Asia Languages attested from the 11th century BC Languages extinct in the 5th century BC Languages with own distinct writing systems Languages of Sicily