Actually, the alphabet invention was precisely that the same alphabet could be used for different languages.
They did not agreed on using certain sounds for specific things. They already did that on their own languages, each with their specific sounds. What the Phoenician Alphabet did was transcribing those sounds that already existed to a writing system that was common.
The Phoenicians did not invent the alphabet but they used it so much that developed it a lot. They used it for communication as a Lingua Franca for commerce in the Mediterranean.
It actually became a language on its own. They will use a native word from the native language of some particular good or commodity and then everybody around the Mediterranean Sea will use that written name and sound for referring to that thing.
It was extremely useful, so people used it more and more creating over time latin and greek scripts.
> Actually, the alphabet invention was precisely that the same alphabet could be used for different languages.
No. Multiple languages were written with the same alphabet because of the borrowing of that technology by speakers of other languages, not because it was designed as such.
Actually the process of borrowing is fondamental to the emergence of alphabets: the three biggest (by corpus size) logographic scripts all gave birth to more phonetic scripts across language boundaries. That happened with hieroglyphics (the case we are discussing), but also with Sumerian cuneiform > Akkadian writing and Chinese characters > Japanese kanas.
We have the notes from a zoom meeting between the priests of Ba'al and some early Phoenician scribes when they were designing the alphabet and outside of sacrificing children they were actually really concerned about accessibility standards
They did not agreed on using certain sounds for specific things. They already did that on their own languages, each with their specific sounds. What the Phoenician Alphabet did was transcribing those sounds that already existed to a writing system that was common.
The Phoenicians did not invent the alphabet but they used it so much that developed it a lot. They used it for communication as a Lingua Franca for commerce in the Mediterranean.
It actually became a language on its own. They will use a native word from the native language of some particular good or commodity and then everybody around the Mediterranean Sea will use that written name and sound for referring to that thing.
It was extremely useful, so people used it more and more creating over time latin and greek scripts.