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The Phoenician alphabet is a consonantal alphabet (or abjad) used across the Mediterranean civilization of Phoenicia for most of the 1st millennium BCE. It was one of the first alphabets, and attested in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean region.
Table of the Phoenician Alphabet. Names of Characters, Phonetics, Derivatives and Modern Equivalents. Note: The claim that the names of Phoenician characters have easy to understand meanings in modern Hebrew only is unfounded.
Phoenician alphabet, writing system that developed out of the North Semitic alphabet and was spread over the Mediterranean area by Phoenician traders. It is the probable ancestor of the Greek alphabet and, hence, of all Western alphabets.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Egyptian & Cuneiform Influence
- Similarities to Hebrew
- Evolution
Our knowledge of the Phoenician language is based on the few extant written texts in Phoenician. Before circa 1000 BCE Phoenician was written using cuneiform symbols that were common across Mesopotamia. The first signs of the Phoenician alphabet found at Byblos are clearly derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics, and not from cuneiform. The 22 Phoenici...
By 1000 BCE the Phoenician and Hebrew languages had become distinct from Aramaic, which was spoken in Canaan. To give a few examples, the "ha-" prefix is used in both Phoenician and Hebrew to indicate a determinate noun, while in Aramaic the "-a" suffix is used. The pronoun for the first person is "ānōkī" while in Aramaic it is "anā" (as it is in m...
The Phoenician writing system is, by virtue of being an alphabet, simple and easy to learn, and also very adaptable to other languages, quite unlike cuneiform or hieroglyphics. In the 9th century BCE the Aramaeans had adopted the Phoenician alphabet, added symbols for the initial "aleph" and for long vowels. This Aramaic alphabet eventually turned ...
- Thamis
Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language which originated in about the 11th century BC in what is now Lebannon, Syria and Israel, an area then known as Pūt in Phoenician and Ancient Egyptian, Canaan in Biblical Hebrew, Old Arabic and Aramaic, and Φοινίκη (Phoiníkē) / Phoenicia in Greek and Latin.
Analytical developmental table of Phoenician Alphabet, Names of Letters, Phonetics, Derivatives and Modern Equivalents -- Phoenician to Greek to Etruscan to Roman. Evolution of Picture Writing to Alphabet Writing
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The following table presents the consonant phonemes of the Phoenician language as represented in the Phoenician alphabet, alongside their standard Semiticist transliteration and reconstructed phonetic values in the International Phonetic Alphabet.:
