# Hebrew or Phoenician?



## Esioul (Dec 8, 2005)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4422628.stm

This appears to be a very ancient alphabet, either Hebrew (posibly dubiously) or Phoenician. what do you gusy think? If it was Hebrew, would it not be a different type of language to Phoenician, which I was aware was the ancestor of Greek and Latin and therefore our own langauges, and Hebrew is a semitic language, a different type if language? So I wonder why they are so similar here that there is confusion as to which one it is?


----------



## Brian G Turner (Dec 10, 2005)

I'm under the impression that Phoenician was a Canaanite language and part of the semitic language group - so indeed it may be a precursor to the general set of languages, but probably not identifiable as with any specific one.


----------

