Phoenician/Canaanite

Origins

The Phoenician alphabet developed from the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, during the 15th century BC. Before then the Phoenicians wrote with a cuneiform script. The earliest known inscriptions in the Phoenician alphabet come from Byblos and date back to 1000 BC.

Notable features

The Phoenician alphabet consists of 22 letters, many of which have a number of different forms, and does not indicate vowel sounds
The names of the letter are the same as those used in Hebrew

Used to write

Phoenician, a 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 Ancient Egyptian, Canaan in Phoenician, Hebrew and Aramaic, and Phoenicia in Greek and Latin.

Phoenician spread around the Mediterranean, particularly to Tunisia, southern parts of the Iberian peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal), Malta, southern France and Sicily, and was spoken until the 1st century AD.

A variant of Phoenician, known as Punic, was spoken in Carthage, a Phoencian colony in what is now Tunisia, until the 6th century AD.

The native name for the language was (dabari-m) Pōnnīm/Kana'nīm, which means "Punic/Canaanite (speech)"

Phoenician alphabet

Phoenician Alphabet

Links

Details of the Phoenician alphabet (includes free Phoenician font)
http://phoenicia.org/alphabet.html

About Phoenica
http://phoenicia.org

ALPHABETUM is a Unicode font specifically designed for ancient languages that includes Phoenician, and many other ancient scripts
http://guindo.pntic.mec.es/~jmag0042/alphabet.html

Other consonant alphabets (abjads)

Ancient Berber, Arabic, Hebrew, Mandaic, Manichaean, Middle Persian, Nabataean, Parthian, Phoenician, Proto-Hebrew, Psalter, Punic, Sabaean, Samaritan, Sogdian, South Arabian, Syriac, Tifinagh, Ugaritic

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