The body of Canaanite epigraphy found in the region is described as Moabite; this is a very small corpus limited primarily to the Mesha Stele and a few seals.
[2] Moabite, together with the similarly poorly-attested Ammonite and Edomite, belonged to the dialect continuum of the Canaanite group of northwest Semitic languages, together with Hebrew and Phoenician.
The inscription on Mesha Stele is also referred to as “Kanaanäische und Aramäische Inschriften” (KAI), which is German for “Canaanite and Aramaic Inscriptions.” It is to be read from right to left.
Vowel values and diphthongs, which had potential to vary wildly between Semitic languages, were also largely typical of other Semitic tongues: there is inconsistent evidence to suggest that ā shifted to ō much like in Hebrew and later Phoenician, at the same time, there is evidence to suggest that the diphthongs /aw/ and /ay/ eventually contracted to ō and ē, another characteristic shared by Hebrew and later Phoenician.
[12] The absolute numeral precedes singular (collective) nouns, for instance “thirty years” is expressed as “šlšn.št” in line 2 of KAI; it has been transliterated as well as translated by Alvierra Niccani.
[15] A. Poebel offers a different explanation and states that vertical strokes are used to separate sentences forming a mentally cohesive group.
The coastal languages, Phoenician and Ugaritic, both used the root *KWN, and that seems to be the case in the mother tongue of the Amarna scribes from Canaan as well; and it is also standard in Arabic.