Phoenician

Phoenician was the language of Byblos, Tyre, Sidon, and other cities along the Phoenician coast (for this section, see Segert, “Phoenician and the Eastern Canaanite Languages”; Hackett, “Phoenician and Punic”). The other Canaanite languages were commonly written in the Phoenician script. The script was strictly consonantal, and Phoenician texts rarely made use of matres lectionis, or consonants which functioned as vowels. Dialectical differences are detectable at a very early stage in the language’s development. The Byblian dialect is considered the standard dialect, and it is attested from the 10th century bc to the first century ad. The dialect of the Tyrian colony at Carthage is known as Punic, and is attested beginning in the sixth century bc. After the fall of Carthage, it became known as Neo-Punic.

Many of the phonological and morphological phenomena characteristics of Phoenician are common to other Canaanite languages. For instance, the spirantization of consonants known from Biblical Hebrew is only known in Phoenician in the Punic dialect. Also common to Hebrew, the preconsonantal n could be assimilated to the following consonant, even between closely connected words. Case endings are preserved in personal names—in first person singular pronominal suffices—and in some Latin and Greek transliterations of Punic words. The verbal system is similar to Hebrew, although the internal passive is clear and the basic reflexive carries an infixed t. The Phoenician prepositions are common to the other Canaanite languages.