Editing Punic language (section)

===Early history===
Punic is considered to have gradually separated from its Phoenician parent around the time that [[Carthage]] became the leading Phoenician city under [[Mago I of Carthage|Mago I]], but scholarly attempts to delineate the dialects lack precision and generally disagree on the classification.<ref name="Punic">{{cite book|last=Guzzo|author-link=Maria Giulia Amadasi Guzzo|first=Maria Giulia Amadasi|editor=Jo Ann Hackett and Walter Emanuel Aufrecht|title="An Eye for Form": Epigraphic Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross|url=https://www.academia.edu/37534317|year=2014|publisher=Eisenbrauns|isbn=978-1-57506-303-4|chapter=Punic Scripts|quote=The place to begin is with a definition of what can be called a Punic script in relation to a Punic language. Conventionally, we call “Punic” the writing typical of Carthage, which spread to other colonies when the “New City” became the “capital” of the Phoenician west. Judging from the existing data on the history of the region, Carthage became leader of the other colonies around the middle to the end of the 6th century BC, when we first know of symbola with the [[Etruscan cities|Etruscan]] cities, the first treaty with [[Rome]] (ca. 509 BC), and the first Carthaginian involvement in wars in [[Sardinia]] and [[Sicily]]. One can suppose that, before this period, the Phoenician language, written according to Phoenician orthographic and paleographic conventions, was still in use in the west, with some local changes in the scripts from region to region or from city to city… As for language, the Phoenician-Punic grammars (the authors of which generally do not agree on the classification of the different phases and dialects of Phoenician) make a distinction between Phoenician and Punic. They lack precision, however, when they attempt to define the characteristics of Punic and the period in which it originated… We are able to distinguish Punic from Phoenician (in part) because of the orthography of the written language. The first linguistic characteristic we can recognize is the tendency to drop the pronunciation of the laryngeal ʾalep, followed by he (in Punic), and finally, the whole series of laryngeals and pharyngeals (in late Punic).}}</ref>

The [[Punics]] stayed in contact with the homeland of [[Phoenicia]] until the [[battle of Carthage (c. 149 BC)|destruction of Carthage]] by the [[Roman Republic]] in 146 BC. At first, there was not much difference between Phoenician and Punic. Developments in the language before 146 BC are largely hidden from us by the adherence of Carthaginian scribes to a traditional Phoenician orthography, but there are occasional hints that the phonology and grammar of Punic had begun to diverge from Phoenician after the sixth century BC.{{sfn|Amadasi Guzzo|2012|p=126}} The clearest evidence for this comes from [[Motya]] in western Sicily, but there are also traces of it in sixth-century Carthaginian inscriptions and it is unclear whether these developments began in western Sicily and spread to Africa or vice versa.{{sfn|Amadasi Guzzo|2012|p=130}} From the fifth-century BC, a shared set of alphabetic, orthographic, and phonological rules are encountered in Punic inscriptions throughout the western Mediterranean, probably due to Carthaginian influence.{{sfn|Amadasi Guzzo|2012|pp=129-130}}

Punic literary works were written in the period before 146 BC. For example, [[Mago (agricultural writer)|Mago]] wrote 28 volumes about [[animal husbandry]]. The Roman Senate appreciated the works so much that after taking Carthage, they presented them to Berber princes who owned libraries there. Mago's work was translated into Greek by [[Cassius Dionysius]] of [[Utica, Tunisia|Utica]]. A Latin version was probably translated from the Greek version. Further examples of Punic works of literature include the works of [[Hanno the Navigator]], who wrote about his encounters during his naval voyages around what is today Africa and about the settling of new colonies in Iberia, North Africa, and the Mediterranean.<ref>{{citation |url=http://history-world.org/Carthage,%20A%20History%201.htm |title=Ancient Carthage |last=Rollin |first=Charles |access-date=2014-06-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080509061500/http://history-world.org/Carthage,%20A%20History%201.htm |archive-date=2008-05-09 |url-status=usurped }}</ref>