# Does Tunisian Arabic Have any Punic influence?



## ahmar

Hi recently I was doing a little research on the Phoenician language and I tried finding out if Tunisian (where carthage was) has any connection to it. I can't seem to find anything.

There's evidence that punic was spoken in Tunisia after the Roman conquest, and perhaps even after the Arabic conquest, so it's kind of strange if punic didn't leave a mark on Tunisian Arabic. What do you think?


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## Hemza

Hello,

In my opinion, talking about "Tunisian" is irrelevant here, because first, Carthage was a city (not a whole country like Tunisia), secondly, Tunisia didn't exist and thirdly, you could find Phenician built places in Algeria, Morocco and Libya too but people often link Phenician with "Tunisian" when looking on the North African shore.

For your question, finding Phenician language influence on Tunisian is also irrelevant since Phenician is really close to Arabic, so how can we know that this or that feature should be backed to Arabic or Phenician?

It's off topic but as you're Maltese, this is also a mistake made by many people to make a very simple shortcut: Maltese is close to Tunisian. As languages ignore politican borders, in fact Maltese is a what we would call a "pre hilalian dialect" if we link it to Maghrebi dialects. Thus, Maltese is as close to some Tunisian dialects than it is to some Algerian, Moroccan and Libyan dialects (without being far from others). From my own experience, I never heard spoken Maltese but the first time I read it, I understood almost everything (as a Moroccan).


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## djara

As far as I can see, only some toponyms are undeniably traceable to punic: Carthage being the best example (new city). Another one, interestingly, is Mellita which apparently means refuge (for ships) which you find twice in Tunisia's two islands (Djerba and Kerkena) and also in Libya. The name Malta is said to have the same etymology, as well as Malaga in Spain and Mellila.
I agree in part with Hemza when he says that Arabic and punic being of the same language family, it is difficult today to recognize any punic terms that may have survived in modern Tunisian.


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## ahmar

Thanks for the replies. Phoenician is basically the same as Hebrew and I know that they are similar to arabic, but they're still quite different (in fact they're not mutually intelligible). So it's still strange that it left literally no mark (as far as we can tell) in the Tunisian language. There have been several studies to find any traces of punic in the Maltese language, and none was ever found (even words of uncertain origin are not derived from punic). But Malta was ruled by the Romans/Byzatines for a millienium after the punics so it's very likely that the language was no longer in use by the time of the Arabic conquest. With Tunisia it's different... the center of the Punics, Carthage, was situated in Modern day Tunisia, and the language was supposed to have remained in use for a long time after the roman conquest - Augustine of Hippo is said to have spoken it and some historians speculate that it might have survived the arab conquest.

That's why I said earlier that I find it hard to believe that Punic would assimiliate with Arabic without leaving any trace. Perhaps the historians are wrong about Punic surviving for that long.


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## Hemza

I think Phenician and Hebrew are the same language (I do not talk about Modern Hebrew) since they were both written with the same abjad (alphabet) and spoken in the same area. I suppose the differences were very few and we don't know if both were intelligible or not since I don't think many people speak Phenician today, although languages being intelligible is also a matter of accents, etc. Written, the language is always easier to understand than its spoken form since there are no accent, intonation, stress, etc.

We cannot even prove in Phenician assimilated with Arabic since both "languages" (don't know if we should call both languages or dialects) are so close with each other that we can't in most cases say if a word come from the first or the latter.

As for the punic traces, I guess it's very hard to tell. Also, remember that Carthage and other Phenician-Berber built places were only cities/locations, it doesn't mean the whole country with its current borders has to be taken into account, you have to "dive into the current context" as we say in French and at this time, Tunisia with its borders didn't exist. Also If I'm not wrong, Augustine of Hippo is from current day Algeria, not from Carthage (but he might have lived there, I don't know). Also, even if Punic had survived the Arab conquest, it might have been only in few places and Berber was probably much more used at this time.

I guess as Djara showed, the best way to find Punic (or any language) influences is within toponyms (and even in Spain, Morocco, Algeria and Libya you find Phenician toponyms).

Ps: That's not because Tunisia didn't exist that it erases Carthage as a beautiful heritage of my Tunisian fellows of course .


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## ahmar

Yes I think ancient Hebrew was Phoenician too. The ancestors of Jews were probably phoenicians, who later on developed different beliefs and diverged.
And yes I'm well aware that Tunisia with it's modern borders did not exist. I mentioned Tunisian Arabic because that's probably the most likely dialect to have Punic traces given its history.

EDIT:

Speaking of placenames. The placenames of Malta are almost all arabic in origin, with the rest being European. A strange placename of unknown origin is "siggiewi" (spelled sijjiewi) which seems semitic but as far as I know no arabic explanation has been found for it. Except for the name of "Malta" I'm not aware of any phoenician toponym in my country, and even the name Malta is disputed because some say it's of greek origin( which means honey)


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## Sardokan1.0

ahmar said:


> Hi recently I was doing a little research on the Phoenician language and I tried finding out if Tunisian (where carthage was) has any connection to it. I can't seem to find anything.
> 
> There's evidence that punic was spoken in Tunisia after the Roman conquest, and perhaps even after the Arabic conquest, so it's kind of strange if punic didn't leave a mark on Tunisian Arabic. What do you think?



From the words of St. Augustine of Hippo (north Africa) we know that in Vth century A.D. Punic language was still spoken in the countryside, perhaps Punic language endured until the Arabic conquest

St. Augustine words :

_Interrogati rustici nostri quid sint, Punice respondentes Chanani_ (if you ask our peasants who they are, they will answer in Punic, Canaanites.)


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## djara

ahmar said:


> So it's still strange that it left literally no mark (as far as we can tell) in the Tunisian language.


Not so sure! There are many unknowns in the Tunisian language: features that are traceable to none of the 'obvious' sources, i.e. berber, latin, greek, arabic, turkish, and modern European languages. 
It is funny that Tunisian historians specializing in the Carthaginian period recognize customs, traditions, designs, traceable to the Carthaginians, but as far as I know they have been unable (uninterested?) to find vocabulary in modern Tunisian that goes back to that period.


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## ahmar

djara said:


> Not so sure! There are many unknowns in the Tunisian language: features that are traceable to none of the 'obvious' sources, i.e. berber, latin, greek, arabic, turkish, and modern European languages.
> It is funny that Tunisian historians specializing in the Carthaginian period recognize customs, traditions, designs, traceable to the Carthaginians, but as far as I know they have been unable (uninterested?) to find vocabulary in modern Tunisian that goes back to that period.



Are Tunisians (in general) proud of their Punic heritage or do they tend to ignore it?


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## berndf

ahmar said:


> And yes I'm well aware that Tunisia with it's modern borders did not exist. I mentioned Tunisian Arabic because that's probably the most likely dialect to have Punic traces given its history.


I think you shouldn't focus on Tunisia. The Punic empire reached from the Pyrenees to Tripolitania. Hannibal, e.g. came from modern Spain. Reducing it to the city of Cartage is as wrong as reducing the Roman empire to the city of Rome.


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## ahmar

berndf said:


> I think you shouldn't focus on Tunisia. The Punic empire reached from the Pyrenees to Tripolitania. Hannibal, e.g. came from modern Spain. Reducing it to the city of Cartage is as wrong as reducing the Roman empire to the city of Rome.



I'm well aware of that and I'm not reducing it to Carthage. Carthage was the center of Punic civilization same way Rome was the center of the Roman Empire. Therefore if someone wants to find traces of the Punic language the Tunisian area where carthage was would be one of the most ideal places.


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## djara

ahmar said:


> Are Tunisians (in general) proud of their Punic heritage or do they tend to ignore it?


It's not on their mind every day! But a few are certainly proud of Carthage, Hannibal and Dido. Another category tends to minimize whatever is pre-Arab/Islamic.
On the whole, the average Tunisian is proud of the nation's 'three thousand years of civilization'.


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## Hemza

berndf said:


> Hannibal, e.g. came from modern Spain..



Unless you're not talking about Hannibal barqa, he's not from Spain but from current day Tunisia.


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## berndf

Hemza said:


> Unless you're not talking about Hannibal barqa, he's not from Spain but from current day Tunisia.


True, Hannibal was born in Carthage but he grow up in modern Spain.


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## Hemza

My bad, I didn't know. Thanks


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## fdb

Just to clarify one point: Phoenician and Hebrew are not “the same language”, but they are closely related. Punic (the language of the descendants of the Phoenician colonists in Carthage) moved away considerably from Phoenician, for example by losing the Semitic laryngeals.


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## Hemza

How do we know about Punic pronunciation?


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## fdb

Mainly through Punic texts in Latin script. And from peculiarities of of Punic script, for example the use of 'ayin as a vowel sign in the transcription of Latin names.


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## Hemza

fdb said:


> Mainly through Punic texts in Latin script. And from peculiarities of of Punic script, for example the use of 'ayin as a vowel sign in the transcription of Latin names.



But that doesn't give us information about the way letters were pronounced. I mean how to be sure that this or that consonnant/vowel was pronounced or not if we have no record, no one who talks it? Or are these hypothesis?


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## fdb

Everything is a hypothesis, but some hypotheses are more likely than others. The Romans wrote Punic names the way they heard them pronounced, not the way they are written in Phoenician script.


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## Hemza

fdb said:


> Everything is a hypothesis, but some hypotheses are more likely than others.



I agree



fdb said:


> The Romans wrote Punic names the way they heard them pronounced, not the way they are written in Phoenician script.



It's like asking a  French speaker to write with Latin script, how he/she would hear a name in Gujarati for example. I don't think it is an accurate way to base hypothesis about pronunciations. Unless the Latin script had been adapted like it is for Maltese


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## berndf

Hemza said:


> It's like asking a French speaker to write with Latin script, how he/she would hear a name in Gujarati for example. I don't think it is an accurate way to base hypothesis about pronunciations. Unless the Latin script had been adapted like it is for Maltese


We have:

Punic words written by Carthaginians with Phoenician script.
Punic words written by Carthaginians with Latin scripts.
Latin names transcribed by Carthaginians with Phoenician script.
Punic names transcribed by Romans in Latin script.
In sum this gives us a relatively solid picture. Of course, as with all reconstruction, they ultimately remain conjectural.


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## Flaminius

We should also note that Plautus's comedy Poenullus contains a few Punic lines.  Charles R. Krahmalkov argues they are more-or-less accurate transcription from the Carthaginian translation from the Greek version.


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## fdb

Flaminius said:


> translation from the Greek version.



I think you mean "Latin".


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## Flaminius

No, Greek.
From page 3 of _A Phoenician-Punic Grammar_ by Charles R. Krahmalkov, 2000:


> (...) Sometime early in his career, Plautus, whose first plays were produced ca. 200 b.c., undertook to translate for the Roman stage the Athenian comedy _Karkehdonios_
> (“Carthaginian”), perhaps the play of this name by the poet Alexis (ca. 375-275 b.c.). If Plautus’s translation is true to the plot of the original, the _Karkhedonios_ told the story of the tireless quest of the noble Hanno of Carthage for his daughters and nephew, who had been abducted from Carthage as children, and his joyous discovery and reunion with them in the city of Calydon. Plautus called his version of the play _Patruus_ (“The Uncle”), but the work acquired a second name, _Poenulus_ (“Little Phoenician”), by which it is today better known.
> At the time Plautus was translating the _Karkhedonios_ into Latin, he learned of the existence of a Punic translation of the play. Consistent with his unique sense of the comic, Plautus conceived the highly original idea to incorporate lines of the Punic version of the Greek play into his own Latin version: in his play, Plautus would have the Carthaginians speak authentic Punic, not Greek as in the sedate Attic original of Alexis.


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## fdb

Krahmalkov's hypothesis of a "Punic version of the Greek play" is (shall we say) not a mainstream view. The Punic passages in the Poenulus have been studied for years without the emergence of any clear consensus. The following very recent article gives a reasonable overview of the status quaestionis.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/34185356/Plautus-Poenulus.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ56TQJRTWSMTNPEA&Expires=1475771075&Signature=n5EOlba46iAUYCdT/GYx59SuNtE=&response-content-disposition=inline; filename=Zum_Monolog_des_Hanno_im_plautinischen_P.pdf


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## Hemza

I never meant that there are no Punic traces nor inscriptions (either in Phenician or Latin script), I talked about the pronunciation. It seems that what you provided doesn't prove how Punic was pronounced.



berndf said:


> We have:
> 
> Punic words written by Carthaginians with Phoenician script.
> Punic words written by Carthaginians with Latin scripts.
> Latin names transcribed by Carthaginians with Phoenician script.
> Punic names transcribed by Romans in Latin script.
> In sum this gives us a relatively solid picture. Of course, as with all reconstruction, they ultimately remain conjectural.



Punic written with phenician script doesn't inform us about the pronunciation nor the others. I mean, I might be able to read Hindi, read Hindi but have no idea how speakers pronounce it if I never heard them and I might mispronounce it.

I know all of this are hypothesis as most other things with history but I'm just wondering how, with written sources, we know about the pronunciation of a language which isn't spoken anymore for centuries (except if an author describes it or there are remains in current day languages which may give an idea)


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## Hulalessar

Hemza said:


> I know all of this are hypothesis as most other things with history but I'm just wondering how, with written sources, we know about the pronunciation of a language which isn't spoken anymore for centuries (except if an author describes it or there are remains in current day languages which may give an idea)



I have often wondered the same thing. I also get the impression that theories in anthropology and archaeology are sometimes based on the flimsiest of evidence.


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## Hemza

Hulalessar said:


> I have often wondered the same thing. I also get the impression that theories in anthropology and archaeology are sometimes based on the flimsiest of evidence.



If not politically motivated, unfortunately (more broadly, not pointing at this topic) and God knows how much I love history.


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## berndf

Hemza said:


> I talked about the pronunciation.


So did I. The historical pronunciation of both the Phonetician and the Latin alphabets are by and large rather well understood. Also, the late Punic phonology developed gradually from Phonetician which means that shifts in spelling and transcriptions can be cross-referenced. If Punic had been a completely different language that had only happened to be using the Phonetician alphabet your analogy with Hindi might have been appropriate but this is not the case.


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## Flaminius

fdb, thank you.  Krahmalkov sounded too sure on a very comolicated subject.  I believe you meant this article?
Zum Monolog des Hanno im plautinischen „Poenulus“ (V. 930-960)
  The link for direct downloading has expired.


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## fdb

Flaminius said:


> fdb, thank you.  Krahmalkov sounded too sure on a very comolicated subject.  I believe you meant this article?
> Zum Monolog des Hanno im plautinischen „Poenulus“ (V. 930-960)
> The link for direct downloading has expired.



Yes, that is the one.


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