Phrygian alphabet
Earliest writing script of the Phrygians
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The Phrygian alphabet is the script used in the earliest Phrygian texts.
It dates back to the 8th century BCE and was used until the fourth century BCE ("Old-Phrygian" inscriptions), after which it was replaced by the common Greek alphabet ("New-Phrygian" inscriptions, 1st to 3rd century CE). The Phrygian alphabet was derived from the Phoenician alphabet and is almost identical to the early West Greek alphabets .
The alphabet consists of 19 letters – 5 vowels (a, e, i, o, u) and 14 consonants (b, g, d, v, z, y, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t). [1] A variant of the Phrygian alphabet was used in the inscriptions of the Mysian dialect . Words are often separated by spaces or by three or four vertically spaced points. It is usually written from left to right ("dextroverse"), but about one-sixth of the inscriptions was written from right to left ("sinistroverse"). [2] In multi-line inscriptions there is usually a spelling of boustrophedon (a few dozen inscriptions). [3] [4]
Alphabet
The nineteen characters of the Old-Phrygian alphabet are: [5]
Writing direction | Transcription | Phoneme |
New-Phrygian
equivalent [6] |
|
---|---|---|---|---|
ΑΒΓ⇒ | ΑΒΓ⇒ | |||
a | /a/ , /aː/ | Α | ||
Β, 8 | B | b | /b/ | Β |
Γ | Γ | g | /ɡ/ | Γ |
Δ, Λ | Λ, Δ | d | /d/ | Δ |
Ε, | , | e | /e/ , /eː/ | Ε, Η |
F | F | v | /w/ | ΟΥ |
Ι | Ι | i | /i/ , /iː/ | Ι, ΕΙ |
Κ, , ᛉ, 𐊜, | 𐊜 ,ᛉ ,K | k , , ᛉ, 𐊜, | /k/ | Κ |
l | /l/ | Λ | ||
m | /m/ | Μ | ||
n | /n/ | Ν | ||
Ο | Ο | o | /o/ , /oː/ | Ο, Ω |
p | /p/ | Π | ||
Ρ | Ρ | r | /r/ | Ρ |
, , , | , | s | /s/ | Σ |
Τ | Τ | t | /t/ | Τ |
u | /u/ , /uː/ | ΟΥ, O | ||
, X | , | y | /j/ | Ι |
ᛏ, Φ, , Ͳ | ᛏ | ᛏ, Φ, , Ͳ | /z/ ( /zd/ ?) | Ζ |
Notes
- ↑ Obrador Cursach, Bartomeu (2018). Lexicon of the Phrygian Inscriptions (PDF) . Doctoral dissertation, Universitat de Barcelona. pp. 31–50 . Retrieved 2021-07-06 .
- ↑ Claude Brixhe (2008), 'Phrygian', in: Roger D. Woodard (ed.), The Ancient Languages of Asia Minor (Cambridge etc.: Cambridge University Press), pp. 69-80: p. 73: "a little less than one-third" was written from right to left. On the contrary, Obrador Cursach (2018), p. 35, implies that the majority was sinistroverse : according to him only a small minority ("66 out of 395" Old-Phrygian inscriptions) were "dextroverse". However, his comprehensive catalogue of inscriptions in the same book, pp. 349-420, shows that in fact 84 out of ca. 550 Old-Phrygian inscriptions listed) are marked "←", and therefore the minority is "sinistroverse" (reading from right to left), so Brixhe is right. Apparently on p. 35 Obrador Cursach has inadvertently interchanged the words "dextroverse" and "sinistroverse".
- ↑ Obrador Cursach (2018), p. 35.
- ↑ Phonetic system in the Phrygian language (in Russian)
- ↑ Obrador Cursach (2018), p. 34.
- ↑ Obrador Cursach (2018), p. 55-58.
See also
External links
- Media related to Phrygian alphabet at Wikimedia Commons