nor syllabaries; rather, they are mixed scripts that are normally identified as semi-syllabaries. Regarding their origin there is no agreement among researchers; for some they are linked only to the Phoenician alphabet, while for others the Greek alphabet played a part. Southeastern (or Meridional) Iberian script The southeastern Iberian script is a semi-syllabary too, but it is more similar to the Tartessian script than to the northeastern Iberian script. The southeastern Iberian inscriptions have been found mainly in the southeastern quadrant of the Iberian Peninsula: eastern Andalusia, Murcia, Albacete, Alicante and Valencia. This script is not completely deciphered. Greco-Iberian alphabet The Greco-Iberian alphabet is a direct adaptation of an Ionic variant of a Greek alphabet to the specificities of the Iberian language. The inscriptions that use the Greco-Iberian alphabet have been found mainly in Alicante and Murcia. Description Current extent of linguistic knowledge Very little is known for certain about Iberian. The investigation of the language is past its initial phase of transcription and compiling of material, and is currently in the phase of identifying grammatical elements in the texts. The hypotheses currently proposed are unconfirmed, and are likely to remain so unless the discovery of a bilingual text allows linguists to confirm their deductions. Phonology Vowels Iberian appears to have five vowels commonly transcribed as . Some other languages on the peninsula such as Basque and modern Spanish also have such systems. Although five-vowel systems are extremely common all over the world, it has been suggested that this may point to a Sprachbund amongst the ancient languages of the Iberian peninsula. The unrounded vowels (in frequency order: ) appear more frequently than the rounded vowels (). Although there are indications of a nasal vowel (), this is thought to be an allophone. Judging by Greek transcriptions, it seems that there were no vowel length distinctions; if this is correct then Iberian uses the long () as opposed to the short epsilon (). Diphthongs It seems that the second element of diphthongs was always a closed vowel, as in (), (), and (). Untermann observed that the diphthong could only be found in the first cluster. Semivowels It is possible that Iberian had the semivowels (in words such as or ) and (only in loanwords such as from Gaulish). The fact that is lacking in native words casts doubt on whether semivowels really existed in Iberian outside of foreign borrowings