Phoenician was a language originally spoken in the coastal (Mediterranean) region then called "Canaan" in Phoenician, Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic, "Phoenicia" in Greek and Latin, and "Pūt" in Ancient Egyptian. Phoenician is a Semitic language of the Canaanite subgroup; its closest living relative is Hebrew, to which it is very similar; then Aramaic, then Arabic. The area where Phoenician was spoken includes modern-day Lebanon, coastal Syria, Palestine, northern Israel (as well as parts of Cyprus – along with Greek – and, at least as a prestige language, in some adjacent areas of Anatolia). It was also spoken in the area of Phoenician colonization along the coasts of the South-Western Mediterranean, including, notably, those of modern Tunisia and Algeria, as well as Malta, the west of Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and southernmost Spain.

Phoenician is currently known only from brief and unvaried inscriptions of official and religious character and occasional glosses in books written in other languages; Roman authors such as Sallust allude to some books written in Punic, but none have survived except occasionally in translation (e.g., Mago's treatise) or in snippets (e.g., in Plautus' plays). The Cippi of Melqart, discovered in Malta in 1694, were inscribed in two languages, Ancient Greek and Carthaginian. This made it possible for French scholar Abbé Barthelemy to decipher and reconstruct the Carthaginian alphabet. Further, since a trade agreement was found in 1964 written between the Etruscans and a group of Phoenicians, more Etruscan has been deciphered.