32
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Why are the orthographies of Ancient/Proto Languages so Impractical?
First, it's worth noting that these are transcriptions, used by linguists, not actual orthographies used by native speakers. The ancient Sumerians didn't write their word for "god" as diĝir; they ...
- 68.3k
10
votes
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How to find source for cuneiform sign PAN 𒉼?
The first step is finding a good sign list for the period you're interested in. This is where you'll find accurate drawings of the sign for different periods. My specialty is Hittite, so the one I ...
- 68.3k
10
votes
How to find source for cuneiform sign PAN 𒉼?
As an addendum to Draconis' excellent answer, one source worth trying if you're looking for attestations of a sign in a certain period would be CDLI, whose advanced search form allows searching by ...
- 1,261
9
votes
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Similarities between Sumerian and Semitic languages
First off, it's worth noting that the main contact between Semitic and Sumerian involved Akkadian, not Hebrew, and the Akkadian words are a bit different—"mother" is ummu, and "father" is abu. And ...
- 68.3k
8
votes
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(How) did Hittite borrow words from Sumerian?
Firstly, even though Sumerian had died out by the time Hittite was spoken, the Akkadian priesthood kept using it for religious purposes, and so they would have preserved some knowledge of its ...
- 1,023
8
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How do Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs differ?
The biggest difference, as you mention, is that the oldest forms of hieroglyphic writing don't indicate vowels at all and the oldest forms of cuneiform writing do. (By "oldest forms" here I ...
- 68.3k
7
votes
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When/Where are Auslauts used in Sumerian?
As I understand it, auslauts are written whenever a suffix starting with a vowel is attached to a form ending in a consonant. In other words, you would indeed write lugal-le and lugal-la. This isn't a ...
- 68.3k
6
votes
How do we know that Sumerian determinatives were not pronounced?
Another good indication is the use of determinatives in linguistically-unrelated languages that share the same writing system.
Classical Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform was used to write Sumerian (a ...
- 68.3k
5
votes
How do we know that Sumerian determinatives were not pronounced?
A good argument for determiners being silent can be this: names of different kinds of trees and names of wooden things were preceded by the determiner G̃IŠ (tree, wood, tool), for example:
G̃IŠ.nàd, ...
- 18.6k
5
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Do we know how to ask yes/no questions in Sumerian?
In his award-winning doctoral thesis A descriptive grammar of Sumerian, 2010, Bram Jagersma devotes 2 sections to questions: 8.5 Interrogative pronouns (page 228) and 30.3 Interrogative clauses (page ...
- 18.6k
4
votes
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Do we know how to ask yes/no questions in Sumerian?
Surprisingly, Foxvog (my usual go-to for Sumerian grammar) doesn't seem to touch on this. But according to ETCSL's grammatical overview:
Most Sumerian clauses simply make a statement and, like the ...
- 68.3k
4
votes
Why are the orthographies of Ancient/Proto Languages so Impractical?
There are numerous reasons specific to the language in question. Semitic transcription practices were established a long time ago before the IPA swept the field of linguistics (likewise Finno-Ugric, ...
- 83.3k
4
votes
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How to decode the Cuneiform ORACC data?
A is the conventional name for a particular cuneiform glyph, typically its most common or best-known pronunciation. But the sign A can be read as a, aya₂, e₄, ea, ŋa₁₀, or many others. The JSON is ...
- 68.3k
4
votes
Why was polyphony a failure for the Sumerians, when English functions with heteronymy?
In my opinon, English heteronymy is not the same thing. English words are not a single sign; each word is made up of multiple signs (letters) and even heteronyms have a phonetic basis for their ...
- 6,891
4
votes
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Can you build words by sound in Sumerian Cuneiform?
Yes, Sumerian scribes did sometimes write words entirely or partly phonetically using syllable signs. This could occur for several reasons:
As Draconis already noted, grammatical prefixes and ...
- 1,261
4
votes
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Are there non-binary or gender-neutral cuneiform determinatives?
If I'm not mistaken, the determiner DIŠ (which is literally just the sign for "one", a single cuneiform wedge) can sometimes be found also with female names. The double determiner DIŠ.MUNUS is also ...
- 1,261
4
votes
How do we name a sign when we don't know any of its readings?
A relatively common convention (see e.g. the ETCSL sign list and Wikipedia) is to notate such "juxtaposed" compound signs by joining the component sign names with a period (.). That is, ...
- 1,261
3
votes
Is there a connection between the Sumerian En and the Semite El?
The Sumerian word en could be translated as "lord" in English, but "lord" doesn't mean "god." A landlord isn't a "land-god", nor are the "lords and ladies&...
- 977
3
votes
(How) did Hittite borrow words from Sumerian?
dumumeššu and dingirmešša are not Hittite, nor are they Sumerian. They are Sumero-Akkadian heterograms for Hittite words.
- 24.4k
3
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Did Sumerian have /ħ/?
Jagersma agrees with Gelb that Sumerian had "hidden" phonemes /h/ and /ʔ/, but disagrees about /ħ/.
He points out that transcriptions of É (or É.GAL) generally use /h/, even in languages ...
- 68.3k
3
votes
How do you form demonyms in Sumerian as well as Akkadian?
Sumerian has very few words that can be described as "adjectives". Someone's homeland would instead be indicated by just combining nouns: lú adabki "the man from Adab". So if you ...
- 68.3k
3
votes
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What was the meaning of the word "Guedena"?
The name was written literally GU-EDIN (or GU-EDIN-NA) in cuneiform. Radau suggests that GU here means Akkadian mātu "flat land, field" and EDIN means bamātu "open country, plain". ...
- 68.3k
3
votes
How do you form demonyms in Sumerian as well as Akkadian?
Most Afro-Asiatic languages would indicate this with a nisba suffix (or as Huehnergard calls it, a "relative adjective"). And indeed, Akkadian has (or at one point had) that suffix too, ...
- 68.3k
3
votes
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What is a "direction prefix" in this context?
I believe this is what Jagersma calls the ventive marker, indicating that the action is somehow oriented toward the speaker. This sometimes changes the meaning of the verb:
É-e ʔi-ba-ŊEN-∅
building-...
- 68.3k
3
votes
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A question about cuneiform transliteration
Yes, when a sign is transliterated in lowercase, it's being used to indicate the pronunciation of an Akkadian word—but the origin of that pronunciation is not specified. For example, the sign a is ...
- 68.3k
3
votes
Can 𒂔 mean Garden?
The logogram EDEN can have a few different meanings, but none of them are especially close to "garden". Nor do I see any compound logogram like É.DEN or E.DEN, though the compound É.KÚRUN &...
- 68.3k
2
votes
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Difference between 𒄣 and 𒄤
gum (
𒄣) usually means to beat something to pieces, while gaz (
𒄤) means to crush something.
This glossary shows gaz as something similar to gum. They're synonyms.
- 71
2
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How do Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs differ?
I don't think much is known about the early stages of Egyptian writing. We get either a few objects with Hieroglyphic labels in the first few centuries or full blown passages in the pyramid texts a ...
- 827
2
votes
Sumerian: Why would 'gi(r)' in 'Ki-en-gi(r)' not simply mean 'reed'?
To add on to Arnaud Fournet's answer:
Sumerian seems to have had a phonological process much like modern French, where most consonants aren't pronounced at the end of words. This means that gi "...
- 68.3k
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