Talk:Middle Bronze Age alphabets

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What is the relation of MBA alephbeths (1800, 1500 BCE) and LINEAR A, "in use before 1400 BCE"? If Linear A was in use for any length of time, it would have to be nearly as old as MBA's!

why the "Ħ"? Is that supposed to be the uppercase version of ẖ? If so, this should be pointed out at Arabic alphabet, otherwise people won't know what to make of the letter. dab (ᛏ) 15:19, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

It's the catital of the letter "ħ", which is both the appropriate IPA symbol, and the letter used when writing Arabic in the Latin alphabet (that is, the Maltese lect of Arabic). But you're right, I should do something about the alphabet transcription page. kwami 18:58, 2005 May 24 (UTC)

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I've removed the phrase "as well as being more esthetically satisfying" from the "Origins of the alphabet" chapter. That a writing system is aesthetically satisfying or not is definitely POV. However, I'd rather have reworded the phrase than straight-out removed it, since it may be worth to say that the Egyptian script had a "pictorial potential" that was exploited by scribes making it a form of art besides a script. But I'm not sure how to write this down concisely - certainly, "it's more aesthetically satisfying" is not it.

Besides this, I've edited the phrase "they are superior to alphabets when it comes to reading". AFAIK, there is strong debate over this. And, AFAIK again, there is no real evidence that this is true. I've changed it to "sometimes considered superior", but I'd ask whether it wouldn't be better to remove that phrase completely; the following paragraph would lose its meaning, though. Perhaps "sometimes considered superior by those who have learnt it as their first writing system".

LjL 22:13, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Well, kanji is not my first writing system, and I was an adult before I leaned it, and yet I find it much easier to read than the Latin alphabet (given my limitations with the language being written, of course). kwami 18:30, 2005 July 31 (UTC)

Contents 1 merge? 2 Ħ, ħ 3 Linguistic reconstruction 4 Table

[edit] merge?

Someone put in a merge notice for History of alphabets (who changed it to that unfelicitous title?). As the one who wrote both articles (at least in their present forms), I must say this doesn't make any sense to me. There are several scripts that have been very important to the history of the alphabet. This is one. Imperial Aramaic and Latin are others. I don't think anyone would suggest we merge the article on the Latin alphabet into History of the Alphabet. However, I could understand that there may be too much overlap for some people's tastes. kwami 22:13, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

After reading this article (and Sacks' book a few months ago) I have to agree with user kwami that it would be a mistake to merge this article into the article History of the alphabet (History of alphabets is a redirect). This article is very informative, uses its graphics well, and only becomes overly technical in a few places. Most linguistic articles on WP read at a very advanced level. The proposed destination article does need some attention, however, in terms of layout, mostly in the good use of white space and graphics. -Acjelen 00:47, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Don't merge. This article is too detailed to fit well into the overall History of the Alphabet page. --Macrakis 20:40, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

don't merge. This is the article about the Wadi el Hol finds in particular. dab (ᛏ) 19:30, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm going to remove the merge tag. I am, however, adding a merge tag for the other article, which should merge here. That will be a readily easy job, but I'm wiking on the sly at work. -Acjelen 20:21, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

yes, I found a delapidated stub at Proto-semitic alphabet, and moved the content from here to there. If we redirect it here, the link should be removed from the {{alphabet}} template, too. dab (ᛏ) 16:01, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, no one's objected, so I'll merge. Since the info is completely duplicated (that was me, I think), it's a question of either merge or split up this article. Since the two scripts may turn out to be the same, merging is probably a better idea. kwami 20:10, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ħ, ħ

I know I have brought this up before (see top of page), but I am convinced now that we shouldn't spell Ħol, since the name is not Maltese, and Arabic isn't transliterated in IPA, and IPA is never capitalized anyway. See Arabic transliteration: the proper spelling is ẖ or ḫ therefore, if at all, Wadi el-Ḫol. dab (ᛏ) 16:26, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

You may be right. I was thinking in practical terms: many people will not see the higher-numbered unicode glyphs at all, and if we use diacritics they won't align properly on many browsers. The Maltese letters, by contrast, are almost universally supported, and there are no display problems. kwami 22:27, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I tried to introduce correct Unicode encoding of Semitic transliteration now; there seems to have been some confusion of ḥ vs. ḫ, I hope I got it right. dab (ᛏ) 19:37, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

It's still a mixed system, but more importantly, it's illegible. In the old system you could tell the letters apart. kwami 20:28, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but this is the standard transliteration of Semitic languages; it's not my fault if ḥ looks similar to ḫ in your browser; anyway, we can look for improvements. The important thing is that we have got all letters right first. We can still opt to represent ḫ as x (in the transcription of ancient alphabets, not in the transliteration of Arabic, though) -- we'd just have to make this choice clear at the beginning. Maybe even a short section addressing transliteration issues first? dab (ᛏ) 20:42, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Linguistic reconstruction

The second "a" vowels in Hebrew Ba`al (masculine) and Ba`alah (feminine) are epenthetic vowels (introduced by two different epenthesis processes), and probably didn't exist at the time that the Sinaitic inscriptions were written -- so that the pronunciation would have been more like Ba`lat, not Ba`alat. AnonMoos 06:01, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Table

Wouldn't it be better to use the older Phoenician (the source of most alphabets) than Hebrew to demonstrate the alphabetic changes? — ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 07:00, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

yes, but we need to make clear exactly what our sources are here. The statement "Only the Colless reconstruction is shown here. For the Albright identification of the Egyptian prototypes, see the Proto-Canaanite alphabet." is unsatisfactory. Both reconstructions (and others, if we find them) should be discussed and compared here. dab (ᛏ) 08:38, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Brian E(dric) Colless responds: I am very pleased with the table showing my identifications for the characters of the proto-alphabet, and I am grateful to the person who has taken the trouble to construct it. My own version has never been published in print in this complete form.

The sources for my thoughts on the proto-alphabet and the Wadi el-Hol Canaanite (West Semitic) graffit are in the archives of listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane, notably:

Wadi el-Hol Alphabetica (4) and (5)

https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane/2005-February/017682.html https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane/2005-February/017858.html

"Cuneiform alphabet and picto-proto-alphabet"

https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane/2004-November/015436.html

This has a list of all my publications on the Canaanite proto-alphabet:

COLLESS, Brian E., "Recent Discoveries Illuminating the Origin of the Alphabet", Abr-Nahrain, 26 (1988), pp. 30-67. A preliminary attempt to construct a table of signs and values for the proto-alphabet, and to make sense of some of the inscriptions from Sinai and Canaan.

COLLESS, B.E., "The Proto-alphabetic Inscriptions of Sinai", Abr-Nahrain, 28 (1990), pp. 1-52. An interpretation of 44 inscriptions from the turquoise-mining region of Sinai.

COLLESS, B.E., "The Proto-alphabetic Inscriptions of Canaan", Abr-Nahrain, 29 (1991), pp. 18-66. An interpretation of 30 brief inscriptions from Late-Bronze-Age Palestine.

COLLESS, B.E., 1996, The Egyptian and Mesopotamian Contributions to the Origins of the Alphabet, in Cultural Interaction in the Ancient Near East, ed. Guy Bunnens, Abr-Nahrain Supplement Series 5 (Louvain) 67-76.

And also my articles on the Canaanite syllabary ("Byblos pseudo-hieroglyphic script") in Abr-Nahrain (now Ancient Near Eastern Studies) from 1992 to 1998, culminating in:

Colless, Brian E.,The Canaanite Syllabary, Abr-Nahrain 35 (1998) 28-46.

From Thebes in Egypt we also have a copy of the proto-alphabet (published by Flinders Petrie in 1912) which has been ignored ever since. See now my discussions on: Cryptcracker.blogspot.com 27 August 2006 BEC