The Obituary
Phoenician was the Canaanite language of the maritime cities of the Levant, such as Tyre and Sidon, whose merchants spread their consonantal alphabet across the Mediterranean, seeding nearly every later alphabet. Carried west by colonists, it developed into Punic, the language of Carthage. After Rome destroyed Carthage in 146 BCE, Latin and Greek pressed in, yet Punic clung on in rural North Africa for centuries; Augustine attests it around 400 CE. It finally faded by roughly the 6th century, displaced by Latin and Berber.
Worth remembering
- The Phoenician alphabet is the direct ancestor of Greek, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, and most modern alphabets.
- Augustine of Hippo, writing around 400 CE, noted Punic was still spoken by country folk in North Africa.
Sources
- Phoenician was a Canaanite language whose Carthaginian form, Punic, survived until around the 6th century CE. Wikipedia
- The Phoenician alphabet is the ancestor of the Greek, Latin, and many later alphabets. Encyclopaedia Britannica
A graveyard tradition: leave a stone to show you came, and remembered.