Talk:Proto-Canaanite alphabet

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need to make clear that decipherment is in progress, see

One of these links is broken, and the other connects to some juvenile diatribe. Perhaps https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane/2005-February/017858.html will work?

hm, I assure you these links were working when I posted them. It appears that message numbers are constantly reassigned, on that server? dab (ᛏ) 11:57, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Image sources:

dab (ᛏ) 09:42, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure it the Wadi el-Hol alphabet should be on a different article than the Proto-Sinaitic one: PS was so far the hypothetical direct ancestor of Phoenician/Arabic, with names reconstructed for these. The Wadi el-Hol one may predate that hypothetical alphabet, with other names, reconstructed from the hieroglyphs it is based on. dab (ᛏ) 09:48, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

1 three problems
2 Relation to Phonecian
3 images
4 Proto-Caananite
5 Image:Proto-Canaanite_alphabet_reconstructed_23_glyphs.png
6 Other article (perhaps merge?)
7 The Penis

[edit] three problems

I have three problems with this article:

Why are etymologies given for the letters of the alphabet, with the claim that the names are translations from the Egyptian? This is speculation, with little supporting evidence. If it were true, you'd think the proto-Sinaitic script wouldn't been decyphered by now! Not to say it isn't true, but if convincing evidence has been found in the last couple years, it would be nice to see it here.

It is also doubtful that the Northern Semitic alphabetic order is original. The Southern Semitic order may be just as old. Ugaritic had both orders, and both Southern Semitic and Egyptian both started with H. (It's not known if Egyptian had a fixed alphabetic order, but dictionaries started with H for ibis, the totemic animal of Thoth, god of writing.)

The Ugaritic abjad is not derived from Cuneiform with a proto-Sinaitic "influence", any more than Hangul is derived from Chinese with a Phagspa influence. The medium of stylus on clay forced similarities of form, and there was almost certainly a stylistic influence (just as in the case of the influence of Chinese on Hangul, both written with brush on paper), but the shapes of the Semitic abjad is clearly visible in the arrangement of the Ugaritic wedges. That is, Ugaritic is simply the Semitic abjad written on clay.

—kwami 07:28, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

all points granted. This is hacked together from online sources, it would be great if you could add more details and references. dab (ᛏ) 08:00, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps I will - but I don't have my sources with me right now, and wouldn't want to try this from memory! kwami

note, there are images of the individual glyphs on commons already, c.f. de:Protosemitisches Alphabet. dab (ᛏ) 06:43, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Proto-Canaanite and Proto-Sinaitic are two different things (a reconstruction on the one hand, and an undeciphered script on the other). I created a Middle Bronze Age alphabets article for Proto-Sinaitic/Wadi el-Hol, and removed them from this article. --kwami 12:04, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Relation to Phonecian

I thought the relation to the Phonecian alphabet was uncertain.Cameron Nedland 02:37, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] images

new imges are now availble at commons.

[edit] Proto-Caananite

yad is properly hand, not arm kaf is properly palm of hand (or sole of foot, not relevant in this case) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Evan Siegel (talk • contribs) 17:38, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Proto-Canaanite_alphabet_reconstructed_23_glyphs.png

I have some problems with that image: First, there is evidence for early Semitic alphabets with 22 (Phoenician), 27 (Ugaritic before addition of extras), 29 (South Arabian), and 30 (Ugaritic) letters, but there's no evidence for any early Semitic alphabet with 23 letters (as far as I'm aware). Second, the font used in that image seems to be associated with a group which makes broad sweeping claims (unsupported by any scholarly consensus) about a so-called "Proto-Semitic Alphabet" (a complete misnomer, by the way). It's also a highly speculative and hypothetical reconstruction of the shapes and values of the letters, since it seems to be based on Proto-Sinaitic, but actually little of proto-Sinaitic is securely understood beyond לבעלת ... -- AnonMoos (talk) 14:14, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I use CBMIBM alias. Wikinger is abandoned. I edited article to approve traditional 22 letter alphabet. CBMIBM (talk) 11:46, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I incorporated the table from Commons. Please edit/revert if it needs correction. — kwami (talk) 19:33, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

By the way, Wikinger, I didn't request that the image be deleted, and assuming that you made the image directly from a font, I don't see how it can really be a copyright violation -- since shapes of characters in a font intended to be read as text (as opposed to purely decorative or ornamental "dingbats") cannot generally be copyrighted under U.S. law. AnonMoos (talk) 04:26, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Please call me CBMIBM, but never Wikinger - I abandoned Wikinger because it reminds me of nazi Wiking Jugend, and "Der Wikinger" nazi newspaper what I discovered recently here: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiking-Jugend , thus please even delete Wikinger account to purge all nazi reminescents. CBMIBM (talk) 09:14, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

It's actually just the German spelling of "Viking", and the Nazi stuff was mainly dark-haired Bavarians and Austrians fantasizing that they were blond-haired Scandinavians... Since you seem to use a variety of shifting aliases, but I first encountered you under the name Wikinger, and have had the most interaction with you under the name Wikinger, it will be hard for me to address you as anything but "Wikinger". AnonMoos (talk) 12:48, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

But please at least try. CBMIBM is my final and last alias here for consistency with other wikis. Wikinger reminds me Combat 18, Conquista 88 and other nazi-terrorist groups, thus better would be avoid it completely. CBMIBM (talk) 17:40, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Other article (perhaps merge?)

What this article needs is to be correlated with Middle Bronze Age alphabets (which is in much better shape than this one). What's the reason for having two separate articles? AnonMoos (talk) 13:30, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

A couple years ago s.o. insisted these need to be separate. I don't particularly care, but there is a distinction: the MBAA are actually attested, P-Can. is a reconstruction. — kwami (talk) 17:08, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

The more I think about it, the more I think merger would be a good idea, either to MBAA, or perhaps better, to Phoenician alphabet. — kwami (talk) 19:40, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, a good reason to keep this article separate might be to present information on the Albright decipherment, which has achieved some prominence, though it is not actually very widely accepted among scholars of the subject. A bad reason to keep this article separate would be to present the views of obscure small religious groupings who assign some special mystical significance to the second millennium B.C. Proto-Sinaitic or Proto-Canaanite alphabet which goes far beyond the accepted findings of mainstream linguistic scholarship. If such groups are prominent enough to merit their own Wikipedia articles, then their special religious views could be discussed on those articles, but they should not be presented as being factual on this article.

In particular, I must unfortunately take very strong exception to the "Semitic Early" or semear.ttf font which Wikinger used to create image Image:Proto-Canaanite_alphabet_reconstructed_23_glyphs.png and its replacement Image:Proto-Canaanite_alphabet_reconstructed_22_glyphs.png. A lot of Internet crackpottery and kookishness has congealed around that font, and the letter-shapes in that font aren't even that close to the letter-shapes in Albright's original book... AnonMoos (talk) 21:19, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I was about to merge with Phoenician, then realized that this would mess up the 'History of the Alphabet' template. Would it be a problem to merge the articles, and then either delete Proto-Canaanite from the template, or merge there as well, with a name like "Canaanite–Phoenician"? kwami (talk) 20:14, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Whether this article is merged or not, the important thing is to synchronize it with "Middle Bronze Age alphabets" and properly source material which comes from the Albright book to the Albright book. I have some ideas on how to do this, but haven't started on editing the article yet, sorry. On the template, just link to "Middle Bronze Age alphabets" instead of "Proto-Canaanite alphabet" -- it's not as if the exact relationships between second millennium B.C. alphabets were very well known... AnonMoos (talk) 10:49, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay, cleaned up the template a bit. Wasn't sure if the early date should go to Phoenician or not, since the Phoenicians arguably didn't exist as a distinct people at the time. kwami (talk) 16:53, 9 April 2008 (UTC)