Proto-Levantine

Proto-Levantine
PLV
Created by	Diego Martínez
Reconstruction of	Levantine languages
Region	Northern Anatolia
Era	3000 B.C.-1600 B.C.
Reconstructed ancestor	Proto-Indo-European

Proto-Levantine is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Levantine languages, spoken in modern day Israel, Lebanon and Egypt.

Phonology

Proto-Levantine was never written down, there's no special convention apart from using macrons to denote long vowels, so IPA is mostly always used

Consonants

Proto-Levantine consonant phonemes

		Labial	Coronal	Palatal	Velar		Glotal
					plain	labial
Nasal		*m	*n
Stop		*p, *b	*t, *d		*k, *g	*kʷ, *gʷ
Affricates			*t͡s, *d͡z,
Fricative		*ɸ	*s, *θ		*x, *ɣ		h
Liquids			*r *l	*j		*w

^1 /h/ was probably not allophonic anymore at this point due to Hittite loanwords

Vowels

Proto-Levantine consonant phonemes

	Short			Long
	Front	Central	Back	Front	Central	Back
Closed	*i		*u	*i:
Mid	*e, *ø		*o	*eː		*oː
Open-Mid	*ɛ
Open		*a			aː

^1 Long /i:/ and /u:/ have not been natively reconstructed in Proto-Levantine, but some loanwords do contain /i:/, so some scholars argue that it did have these phonemes natively and somehow lost them only in native words. It's also proposed that /u:/ could've existed