Phoenician signs seen from the Phoenicians’ perspective

3 Phoenician signs seen from the Phoenicians’ perspective

If asked about the nature of their Phoenician signs, a Phoenician would probably explain in non-technical terms that a Phoenician sign had several “sounds”. To illustrate his point, he might read out all the possible “sounds” of a certain sign, say, <_n>. These “sounds” would be transcribed today as /na/, /ni/, /nu/, /na:/, /ni:/, /nu:/, /ne:/, and /no:/. Of these eight “sounds”, three are short and five are long.[1] To write any of these eight “sounds”, he would use the same sign <_n>. When reading the sign <_n> used in actual writing, he would know which of the eight “sounds” it stood for.

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