{...}, “eight;” ’eser {...}, “ten;” and so on.  Numbers were, however, by the Phoenicians ordinarily expressed by signs, not words—­the units by perpendicular lines:  | for “one,” || for “two,” ||| for “three,” and the like; the tens by horizontal ones, either simple, {...}, or hooked at the right end, {...}; twenty by a sign resembling a written capital n, {...}; one hundred by a sign still more complicated, {...}.

The grammatical inflexions, the particles, the pronouns, and the prepositions are also mostly identical.  The definite article is expressed, as in Hebrew, by h prefixed.  Plurals are formed by the addition of m or th.  The prefix eth {...} marks the accusative.  There is a niphal conjugation, formed by prefixing n.  The full personal pronouns are anak {...} = “I” (compare Heb. {...}); hu {...}, “he” (compare Heb. {...}); hi {...}, “she” (compare Heb. {...}); anachnu, “we” (compare Heb. {...}); and the suffixed pronouns are _-i_, “me, my;” _-ka_, “thee, thy;” _-h_ (pronounced as _-oh_ or _-o_), “him, his” (compare Heb. {...}); _-n_ “our,” perhaps pronounced nu; and _-m_, “their, them,” pronounced om or um (compare Heb. {...}). Vau prefixed means “and;” beth prefixed “in;” kaph prefixed “as;” lamed prefixed “of” or “to;” ’al {...} is “over;” ki {...} “because;” im {...}, “if;” hazah, zath, or za {...}, “this” (compare Heb. {...}); and ash {...}, “who, which” (compare Heb. {...}). Al {...} and lo {...} are the negatives (compare Heb. {...}).  The redundant use of the personal pronoun with the relative is common.

Still, Phoenician is not mere Hebrew; it has its own genius, its idioms, its characteristics.  The definite article, so constantly recurring in Hebrew, is in Phoenician, comparatively speaking, rare.  The quiescent letters, which in Hebrew ordinarily accompany the long vowels, are in Phoenician for the most part absent.  The employment of the participle for the definite tenses of the verb is much more common in Phoenician than in Hebrew, and the Hebrew prefix m is wanting.  The ordinary termination of feminine singular nouns is _-th_, not _-h_.  Peculiar forms occur, as ash for asher, ’amath for ’am ("people"), zan for zah ("this"), &c.  Words which in Hebrew are confined to poetry pass among the Phoenicians into ordinary use, as pha’al ({...}, Heb. {...}), “to make,” which replaces the Hebrew {...}.[1311]