The Phoenician Inscription of Pyrgi; A token of Phoenician Etruscan friendship: Italy 500 BC.

[torenos]

as today Hebrew speaker I can read and understand ancient Phoenician and Hebrew. which are identical/sister Canaanite languages.

I fully understood the Hebrew subtitles you added to the video, but had problems to follow your reading. I think your pronounciaton of this ancient language is not accurate and heavily influenced by your Arabic , as the text doesn't use the written vowel system.

[Malkibaal]

@torenos thats good :) but it is not influenced by arabic, I can guarantee you that , it is a real semitic accent ok, when it would be arabic accent it the letter gimel (gamel in phoenician) would be pronounced like "dsh" (g in arabic). The semi vowel letters in phoenician were never used as vowel letters in phoenician texts expect for foreihgn names, only some amature punic speakers employed a weak system for vowels, waw=u, yod=i, alef=a, i, o,e,u,het=end/start vowel, he=end(start vowel).

[Malkibaal]

@torenos even the last punic inscriptions by native punic speakers were almost written just with consonants and semi-vowels. No usage of letters for vowels at all , only for foreighn names.

[TheAncientScribes]

I am not sure but I believe that little is known about the Etruscans which makes videos like this all the more valuable. Well done.

[Malkibaal]

I am really proud :) on this fact thank you Tony for these amazign and valuable informations , I just hope that the modern descendants of the phoenicians learn from their ancestors :)

[ahhc07]

@Malkibaal Thank you my friend for your valuable comments on the Phoenician language and how it changed over the centuries from ancient Canaanite to modern Punic. Though some words have even persisted through modern day Lebanese like the word "BDY" in this inscription!

[Malkibaal]

@ahhc07 there are quite many words in lebanese of phoenician origins like the "3am" used in sentences or the "bas" is originally from the phoenician word "apas"=only,maybe late punic & late phoenician as "pas",but when the arabs came the arabs adopted this word & wrote it as "bas",bcs of the lack of "p", phoenician & semitic words with P which were adopted into arabic had "b",in hebrew it also exists but meant "end",the original meaning also meant end,in uagritic we also have this word as "upas"

[torenos]

@Malkibaal

mo matter how you turn it :

now days Hebrew is more similar to ancient Phoenician than todays Lebanese Arabic.

[Malkibaal]

but the most phoenician words with "p" became "f",but there were a few remaining words with "P" which survived in lebanese and have "b",if these words would have shifted to "f" we would also see the modern lebanese vocubalary but there are some words who are with "b" and whihc were in ancient phoenician with "p" that is a big indication that there were still words with "P".They make up just less than 1% of the words with "p",the p >f-shift must have happend arround 800 bc & completed 400 bc.

[montezoma]

Unlike others, Phoenicians built there empire by trade, not by wars and destruction.

great video

[Malkibaal]

ha-bbeetika=of your house(genitiv),ha-yyolodyo=of his child, ha-bbeetaka=(to)your house(nominativ/accusative), ha-yyolodo,ha-yyaladahu(ancien­t byblian phoenician)=(to)his child,actually the accusative replaced the nominativ case. THis distinction went on till the years of extinction of the phoenician language,when a vowel was before the case marker the genitive automaticly was used (except for the non second person suffixes who show no case at all), ha-llibekom=your hearts,ha-llibeyo=his hearts

[Malkibaal]

So that an phoenician citizen livin in 100 ad could read & understand an text written 3200 years ago,phoenician language got simplified in very early times, some phoenician dialects had already just 22 two sounds in 1300 bc, unlike the ancient hebrew,but ancient phoenician had still the cases preserved, which were preserved in late phoenician and punic in the suffixes.

[Malkibaal]

great work and interesting , the way and the style the inscription is written is just like the way and the style many late punic inscriptions are written , it has not much differences in the grammar with late punic texts written 700 years later and also not much differences in the choice of vocabulary. The phoenician language got simpliefied very quickly on the one hand, but in the other hand it did not change at all after the first simplications.