Talk:Phoenician alphabet

Phoenician script
Change title to Phoenician script it isnt an alphabet AleksiB 1945 (talk) 10:29, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
 * In Unicode, chapter 10.3 describes its background. It uses explicitly "Phoenician alphabet"; though we must note in Unicode for the script (named "Phoenician" throughout like in character names, so non-decisive there), this covers multiple scripts (alphabetic and non-alphabetic). More Unicode background, especially in preparations for Unicode encoding, in Phoenician (Unicode block). -DePiep (talk) 09:03, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
 * ok but again Phoenician isnt an alphabet even in the page it specifies as an abjad, in all other cases of abjads "script" is used like in Syriac_script and Arabic script AleksiB 1945 (talk) 13:08, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
 * ...and the Chinese writing system isn't an alphabet, either; even though many people colloquially refer to the Chinese alphabet, meaning the thing Chinese speakers use to write their language. If the article were titled Phoenician abjad, most casual Wikipedia users, not knowing the technical word abjad, would assume the site did not have an article about the Phoenican writing system.
 * Nuttyskin (talk) 18:24, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 13 August 2022

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: not moved. Consensus the current name is the WP:COMMONNAME (closed by non-admin page mover) Vpab15 (talk) 09:39, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

Phoenician alphabet → Phoenician script – It is an abjad not an alphabet. AleksiB 1945 (talk) 08:38, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Related guideline: WP:NC(WS) Naming conventions (writing systems) -DePiep (talk) 07:01, 14 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Support, per nom. -DePiep (talk) 18:56, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Also, per WP:NC(WS): not a specific (local, single, ..) 'alphabet', so use generic "script". So far I've seen no arguments to reject the Guideline, nor a proposal to change the guideline (covering multiple articles re this question). DePiep (talk) 07:05, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose, Arabic alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, Aramaic alphabet, Nabataean alphabet, etc. Abjads are consonantal alphabets. See also the discussion about this very decision that happened last month which was defeated. Zhomron (talk) 20:28, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
 * IMO, the discussion, though relevant background, did not conclude in a "defeat". DePiep (talk) 06:54, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
 * STRONGLY OPPOSE --"Abjad" in this meaning is a neologism which didn't exist until the 1990s. For centuries before that, and still often after that, people spoke of a "consonantal alphabet" if any greater precision was needed.  If the titles of the "Arabic alphabet" and "Hebrew alphabet" articles don't change, then the title of this article should not change.  There's some discussion of this issue at Talk:Arabic alphabet, where a move for that article was basically rejected (though not a formal proposal with template). AnonMoos (talk) 21:55, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment. User:AnonMoos, please note that this is not a proposed move to Phoenician abjad. Georgia guy (talk) 00:47, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Georgia_guy -- I'm fully aware of that. However, the unconstructive "Abjad" stuff is the motivation for the proposed move... AnonMoos (talk) 07:49, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Comments I notice:
 * please do no capitalise words this way.
 * Parallel Move proposals are opened:, , , ... [list complete?]
 * In other articles a similar move has been reverted per WP:BRD, e.g. Ugaritic_alphabet &rarr; Ugaritic_script, reverted &larr;.
 * We could consider resatart into a single, multi-page move proposal WP:RMPM.
 * -DePiep (talk) 06:51, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Strong oppose. It is commonly known as the Phoenician alphabet.  Would prefer to see all these proposed moves in one place.  Walrasiad (talk) 13:44, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
 *  Strong oppose the term is the most commonly used in the past and current literature, and as pointed out by AnonMoos, ‘Abjad’ is a neologism, (and a detail). Its applicability, and whatever added value it may bring to can be expounded in a section in the article. el.ziade (talkallam) 18:35, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Strong support. The script is not an alphabet, and even says so in the opening to the article. Keeping the page title as "Phoenician alphabet" would be an unnecessary contradiction. "Phoenician alphabet" should redirect to the page, but that should not be its title. Ygdflgdflop (talk) 00:24, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
 * The article says that it's "an alphabet (more specifically, an abjad)". How is that saying that it's not an alphabet??  It's been known as a "consonantal alphabet" for centuries.  Saying that it's suddenly somehow not an alphabet because some dude invented a neologism in the 1990s is a poor procedure. AnonMoos (talk) 03:26, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Table of letters has "squares"
Well, my question here is not really related to the substance of the article, but... The table of letters shows me "squares" for hieroglyphs, "text", parthian and first-brahmi columns. My setup is pretty how it would be for a PC of a random regular person, so I would assume there are many people who would see those "squares", and this is not what is intended. So, what can I do to see the table correctly? Should there be a small note near the table about measures for correct viewing? 45.94.118.118 (talk) 08:44, 11 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Ooops, my bad, the article already has a notice about proper rendering support needed! 45.94.118.118 (talk) 12:36, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Chinese
Has anyone tried to compare with Chinese characters? 176.52.102.173 (talk) 15:25, 23 December 2022 (UTC)


 * Why? The Phoenician alphabet probably arose too late to have any influence on the origins of Chinese writing, and the principles of the Chinese and Phoenician writing systems are completely different. AnonMoos (talk) 23:38, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Theodor Nodelke's statement about changes in meaning of the letters
Saying that what he wrote about the changes is "dubious" is just pure nonsense. I think he knew a lot more about these languages than the jerk who said his ideas are dubious. Jim in Mission, KS 2602:304:CDB7:31A0:B032:FD82:B676:3BB4 (talk) 22:05, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

the pronunciation of "W" is not correct
the character W in Phoenician is written in Wikipedia to be pronounced as S (in English) or as šīn. To the least of my opinion (and I speak Old Hebrew, very similar to Phoenician origin) - the pronunciation is "Sh" (like Shin, the Hebrew character). The character itself is said to sound like Shen, which is in Hebrew is a tooth, and obviously pronounced as Shen and not Sen or what have you. This is to the least of my opinion, but I am pretty positive about it MarkBlonski (talk) 07:41, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

missing character in the Cyrillic alphabet (in Table there)
also, in the table of the alphabets- in Cyrillic there is a missing character for the character Ts, it should have the Cyrillic Ч (in Hebrew צ) MarkBlonski (talk) 08:35, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Origin: Minaeans
The last paragraph of section "Origins" claims:

The German philologist Max Müller (1823–1900) believed that the Phoenician alphabet was derived from the Ancient South Arabian script during the 9th-century BC rule of the Minaeans over parts of the Eastern Mediterranean.

There are a number of problems with this edit.

1) there never was a Minaean rule over parts of the Eastern Mediterranean, the kingdom of Ma'in was in todays Yemen experienced the hight of its power centuries later and never expanded significantly to the north.

2) The source is a non-scientific paper that was first published in the magazin "Dahesh Voice" and does not cite its sources properly.

The whole passage in said paper goes like this:

''Some experts believe that the Phoenician script was derived from Arabic Musnad. German historian, Max Muller (1823-1900) thought it was adapted from Musnad during the 9th century B.C. when the Minaean Kingdom of Yemen controlled areas of the Eastern Mediterranean shores. Syrian scholar of the 19 th century, Shakīb ´Arsalān shares this view.18''

The citation: ''18. Mādūn, Muḥammad `Alī. Khatt al-Jazm ibn al-Khatt al-Musnad. 1989. Dar Ṭlās lil-Dirāsāt wa al-Terjamah wa al-Nashr. Damascus. First Edition.''

So the only source of the claim is a paper from 1989 in Arabic; I was not able to find a single trace of it.

3) Max Müller was one of Englands leading experts on Sanskrit in the late 19th century. He was born in todays Germany, but moved to England at the age of 29 to spend the rest of his life there. I could not find a work concerning the Phoenicians, but in his 1882 lecture "India, What can it teach us" he mentiones the phoenician alphabet in this way:

Every one who writes a letter owes his alphabet to the Romans and Greeks; the Greeks owed their alphabet to the Phoenicians, and the Phoenicians learned it in Egypt.

To me this does not sound as if he believed that the Phoenicians inherited their script from southern Arabia.

4) The edit was made by an IP whose edit list show in total 14 (fourteen) edits; there are no signs of expertise or training in the field.

To sum up: the source is bad, the claim is of minor importance and most probably wrong and the editor most probably had no clue of what he was talking about. Therefore I will delete the edit. greetings, Uwaga budowa (talk) 13:22, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Paleo Hebrew
Is not an entirely different system: it’s Phoenician system renamed to Paleo Hebrew following the founding of Israel in 1948. If it is going to be listed as a child system of Phoenician, there needs to be a real discussion on here about what makes it its own distinct system, like the other child systems. Otherwise it’s the same exact system just with a different name. And that is political and not factually based argument. Israeli revisionism is changing the name and contributions of ancient Phoenician culture and language. Use of the term "Paleo-Hebrew alphabet" is due to a 1954 suggestion by Solomon Birnbaum, who argued that "[to apply the term Phoenician [from Northern Canaan, today's Lebanon] to the script of the Hebrews [from Southern Canaan, today's Israel-Palestine] is hardly suitable". Lebanesebebe123 (talk) 02:14, 8 February 2024 (UTC)