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Phoenician was a language originally spoken in the coastal (Mediterranean) region then called "Canaan" in Phoenician, Arabic, Greek, and Aramaic, "Phoenicia" in Greek and Latin, and "''Pūt''" in Ancient Egyptian. Phoenician is a Semitic language of the Canaanite subgroup; its closest living relative is its sister language Hebrew, to which it is very similar. The area where Phoenician was spoken includes modern-day Lebanon, coastal Syria, coastal northern Israel, parts of Cyprus and, at least as a prestige language, some adjacent areas of Anatolia.〔Lipiński, Edward. 2004. Itineraria Phoenicia. P.139-141 inter alia〕 It was also spoken in the area of Phoenician colonization along the coasts of the Southwestern Mediterranean, including those of modern Tunisia, Morocco, Libya and Algeria, as well as Malta, the west of Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Balearic islands and southernmost Spain. Phoenician, together with Punic, is currently known only from approximately 10,000 inscriptions, as well as occasional glosses in books written in other languages, since the language was primarily written on papyrus and parchment rather than stone.〔Lipiński (1995), p.1321-1322, “The Phoenician alphabetic script was easy to write on papyrus or parchment sheets, and the use of these materials explains why virtually no Phoenician writings – no history, no trading records – have come down to us. In their cities by the sea, the air and soil were damp, and papyrus and leather moldered and rotted away. Thus disappeared the literature of the people who taught a large portion of the earth’s population to write. The only written documents of Phoenicians and Carthaginians are monumental inscriptions on stone, a few ephemeral letters or notes on pieces of broken pottery, and three fragmentary papyri. Thus, no Tyrian primary sources dating from Hiram I’s time are available”〕 Roman authors such as Sallust allude to some books written in 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, a bilingual inscription in Ancient Greek and Carthaginian discovered in Malta in 1694, was the key which allowed French scholar Abbé Barthelemy to decipher and reconstruct the alphabet in 1758, although as late as 1837 only 70 Phoenician inscriptions were known to scholars.〔These were complied in Wilhelm Gesenius's Scripturae linguaeque Phoeniciae monumenta, which comprised all that was known by scholars at that time. See : "Basically, its core consists of the comprehensive edition, or re-edition of 70 Phoenician and some more non-Phoenician inscriptions... However, just to note the advances made in the nineteenth century, it is noteworthy that Gesenius’ precursor Hamaker, in his Miscellanea Phoenicia of 1828, had only 13 inscriptions at his disposal. On the other hand only 30 years later the amount of Phoenician inscribed monuments had grown so enormously that Schröder in his compendium Die phönizische Sprache. Entwurf einer Grammatik nebst Sprach- und Schriftproben of 1869 could state that Gesenius knew only a quarter of the material Schröder had at hand himself. Nonetheless, Gesenius’ Scripturæ linguæque phoeniciæ monumenta became a compendium of everything that could be said about Phoenician language and Phoenician inscriptions known up to that time, i.e. 1837."〕 Further, since a trade agreement made between Etruscans and a group of Phoenicians around 500 BC was found in 1964, more Etruscan has been deciphered.〔(The Maltese Language )〕 ==History== The Phoenicians were the first state-level society to make extensive use of the alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet is the oldest verified consonantal alphabet, or ''abjad.'' It has become conventional to refer to the script as "Proto-Canaanite" until the mid-11th century, when it is first attested on inscribed bronze arrowheads, and as "Phoenician" only after 1050 BC.〔Markoe, Glenn E., ''Phoenicians''. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-22613-5 (2000) (hardback) p. 111.〕 The Phoenician phonetic alphabet is generally believed to be the ancestor of almost all modern alphabets. From a traditional linguistic perspective, Phoenician was a Canaanite lect.〔Glenn Markoe.''Phoenicians''. p108. University of California Press 2000〕〔Zellig Sabbettai Harris. ''A grammar of the Phoenician language''. p6. 1990〕 However, due to the very slight differences in language, and the insufficient records of the time, whether Phoenician formed a separate and united dialect, or was merely a superficially defined part of a broader language continuum, is unclear. Through their maritime trade, the Phoenicians spread the use of the alphabet to North Africa and Europe, where it was adopted by the Greeks, who later passed it on to the Etruscans, who in turn transmitted it to the Romans.〔Edward Clodd, ''Story of the Alphabet'' (Kessinger) 2003:192ff〕 In addition to their many inscriptions, the Phoenicians are believed to have left numerous other types of written sources, but most have not survived. The Phoenician and Carthaginian expansion spread the Phoenician language and its Punic dialect to the Western Mediterranean for a time, but there too it died out, although it seems to have survived slightly longer than in Phoenicia itself, perhaps as late as the 5th century AD. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Phoenician language」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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