Michael Everson wrote:

>
> At 17:22 -0400 2004-08-05, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> >(Why are the Arabic letter names given in some colloquial? "beh" is
> >impossible in Standard Arabic; the name is baa'.)
>
> The spellings of the characters as named in the
> Unicode Standard are given for the convenience of
> its users.
>
> > > The term "alphabet" is derived from the first two letters of the
> >> Phoenician script (ALF, BET).
> >
> >No it isn't; it's from the first two letters of the Greek script.
>
> I can live with that and accept the change.
>
> >(And the Phoenician would be ALP.)
>
> The Phoenician names under ballot for inclusion
> in the Unicode Standard are those reconstructed
> by Theodor Nöldeke in 1904, as given in Powell
> 1996. See
> http://www.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n2746.pdf

Could you identify Powell 96 without making me download a .pdf of
unknown size?

I doubt that Nöldeke postulated spirantization for Phoenician, and even
if he did, it wouldn't have occurred postconsonantally. (Unfortunately
the time I had the opportunity to buy N's Beiträge und Neue Beiträge --
at Schoenhof's, in fact -- I didn't.)
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...