Description
Punic is an extinct variety of the Phoenician language spoken in the oversea Phoenician empire in North Africa, including Carthage, and the Mediterranean. It is known from inscriptions (most of them religious formulae) and personal name evidence. The play Poenulus by Plautus contains a few lines in spoken Punic, which have been subject to some research because, unlike inscriptions, they largely preserve the vowels.
Augustine of Hippo is generally considered the last major ancient writer to have some knowledge of Punic, and is considered "our primary source on the survival of Punic". According to him, the Punic language was still spoken in his region (Northern Africa) in the 5th century AD, centuries after the fall of Carthage, and there were still people who called themselves "chanani" (Canaanite, i.e: Carthaginian) at that time. Writing around AD 401, he says:
Quae lingua si improbatur abs te, nega Punicis libris, ut a viris doctissimis proditur, multa sapienter esse mandata memoriae. Poeniteat te certe ibi natum, ubi huius linguae cunabula recalent.
And if the Punic language is rejected by you, you virtually deny what has been admitted by most learned men, that many things have been wisely preserved from oblivion in books written in the Punic tongue. Nay, you ought even to be ashamed of having been born in the country in which the cradle of this language is still warm. (Ep. xvii)
Besides Augustine, the only proof we have of Punic-speaking communities at such a later period is a series of trilingual funerary texts found in the Christian catacombs of Sirte, Libya. The gravestones are carved in Classical Greek, Latin and Punic.
The idea that Punic exerted an influence on the modern Maltese language was first raised in 1565. This theory has been mostly discredited; mainstream theories hold Maltese to be derived from Siculo-Arabic, with a large number of loanwords from Italian. Punic was indeed spoken on the island of Malta at some point in its history, as evidenced by the Cippi of Melqart, integral to the decipherment of Punic after its extinction, and other inscriptions found on the islands.
Read more about this topic: Punic Language
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