# Sumerian



## sokol

*Split off from this thread.
Frank, mod EHL*



franz rod said:


> Also Sumerian had a great influence on Hittite (for example Lugal, king from lu=man and gal=big)



Yes, but only indirectly - as mentioned by me above: Sumerian had influence on Akkadian had influence on Hittite.
Sumerian already was a dead language when the Hittites had their first great empire.


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## franz rod

> Yes, but only indirectly - as mentioned by me above: Sumerian had influence on Akkadian had influence on Hittite.
> Sumerian already was a dead language when the Hittites had their first great empire.



Sumerian was a dead language for the people, not for the men of great learning (like latin in middle age).  And this persons introduced cuneiform scripture.

I have read some text in hittite and a lot of sumerian words and determiners (?) (like LU, MES, URU, D, ...  in Italian we say determinativi but I don't know the name in english) were used (for example we don't know the hittite word for bread beucause we find only sumerian word).


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## sokol

franz rod said:


> I have read some text in hittite and a lot of sumerian words and determiners (?) (like LU, MES, URU, D, ...  in Italian we say determinativi but I don't know the name in english) were used (for example we don't know the hittite word for bread beucause we find only sumerian word).



I have read Hittite too.
These Sumerian qualifiers (I do not know either if this is the correct _English _term) are a convention of script and (most likely) not expressed in speech: they determine that a certain name is the name of a king, that another name is the name of a land, and so on.

Sumerian qualifiers came to Hittite through Akkadian: it was the Akkadian language that was the model for the Hittite script.
The cuneiform script has a great many irregularities which causes huge difficulties in giving the "correct" Old Hittite speech form, but I think it is not the place here to discuss this. (Especially as Hittite surely had no impact at all on later IE languages, as well as on modern Semitic languages.)

By the way, I'd like to emphasize, as already stated above, that it is pointless to discuss about _accidental _similarities (especially between ancient Sumerian and modern languages without considering the oldest documented - or reconstructed - word forms). (And personally I will not contribute to accidental similarities discussions.)


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## franz rod

> These Sumerian qualifiers (I do not know either if this is the correct _English _term) are a convention of script and (most likely) not expressed in speech: they determine that a certain name is the name of a king, that another name is the name of a land, and so on.


I know that, but it is significative to show the importance of Sumerian.



> Sumerian qualifiers came to Hittite through Akkadian: it was the Akkadian language that was the model for the Hittite script.


Sumerian language was the Latin of ancient Mesopotamia. like I had already written, every "writer" had to know it. You can find more Sumerian words than Akkadian ones in Hittite text.


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## Mahaodeh

I have to disagree with your last statement. If you were comparing to Latin, I would say that Akkadian was probably the Latin of ancient (and contemporary) Mesopotiamina or even the Fertile Cresent (to include at least Greater Syria); maybe Sumerian was the ancient Greek?

Anyway; I do know that Arabic is influenced by Akkadian, Babilonian, Aramaic, Syriac and Hebrew; mostly shared roots but there are also quite a considerable number of loan words. I don't recall ever hearing that there is a Sumarian loan word, the one that comes to mind is Ur (city or town) but while it existed in many Semitic languages, it does not in Arabic.


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## sokol

Sumerian died out as a spoken language around about 2000 BC (a little bit later around Nippur) and was practically dead at the times of the first Hittite Empire, and even though Sumerian was still important for centuries after (even till shortly before the Roman Empire) Akkadian was the _lingua franca _of the times of the Hittites.

I don't think that the qualifiers (determiners, whatever) really count as "Sumerian" influence if you look at it at around 1500 BC: these qualifiers also were used in Akkadian script, and they do not count as loans in spoken language but loans only concerning normative rules in writing.

I haven't quite the time at the moment to elaborate on the script (Hittite and Akkadian) now, if you like you can do so, franz rod, else I'll be glad to add some more detail to what I've just said above, so that people who never read Hittite (or Akkadian) understand what this is all about.

Another problem with Sumerian and Akkadian script is that the Hittites did use "Sumerograms" (as we called them at university), that is *pictograms *of Sumerian words (also Akkadograms, of course) - but for us it is extremely difficult to decide if the Hittites read ans spoke the Sumerian (or Akkadian) word when reading these pictograms, or if they read and spoke the corresponding Hittite word: both is possible, of course.

So it is really difficult to ascertain the exact number of Sumerian (and Akkadian) loans in Hittite, especially as the language is extinct long since.


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## Outsider

Here's an interesting site about writing systems, with a brief explanation of cuneiform writing.


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## raptor

[Speaking without experience,] I have difficulty believing that civilizations like Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, and so on had little or no impact on the languages around them and that followed them.

Although I agree that these languages were in use quite a long time ago, they were by no means the only ones used in that time and place, nor the earliest. So I would guess that even these languages would have had histories of their own (though I don't know how ancient), and so have sister languages that evolved from an earlier one, like Latin did in Europe. 

So there are still, even that long ago, many possible sources for a words' roots. However, the prominence of a language would definitely determine how much of it would be passed on to new languages and dialects, still evolving, to eventually become languages we know more about.

I think a reason many dictionaries do not give etymologies past Latin or Greek may be because there is no firm connection yet made.  There must be evidence to support an etymology, not just coincidental sounds...

Respectfully,

raptor


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## Outsider

raptor said:


> [Speaking without experience,] I have difficulty believing that civilizations like Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, and so on had little or no impact on the languages around them and that followed them.


They did have an impact, but it was all a very long time ago. Times change, civilizations rise and fall, peoples migrate, new languages replace the old ones.

We didn't even know the Sumerian civilization had existed, 150 years ago!

_Sic transit gloria mundi._ 



raptor said:


> Although I agree that these languages were in use quite a long time ago, they were by no means the only ones used in that time and place, nor the earliest.  So I would guess that even these languages would have had histories of their own (though I don't know how ancient), and so have sister languages that evolved from an earlier one, like Latin did in Europe.


You are only half right. Akkadian does have several sister languages in the Middle East. Hebrew and Arabic are related to it, as is Aramaic. Sumerian, however, was a language isolate. No language related to it has ever been found. Some say the founders of the Sumerian civilization migrated to the Middle East from farther east (India?)


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## franz rod

> I don't think that the qualifiers (determiners, whatever) really count as "Sumerian" influence if you look at it at around 1500 BC: these qualifiers also were used in Akkadian script,



But there weren't only qualifiers.  Now I'm watching an hittite text and there are a lot of sumerian words (ERIN , DAM, ...).

I found also the name of Babylon  URU KA.DINGIR.RA 
URU is qualifier, but KA.DINGIR.RA is clearly a sumerian word (gateway of god)
the Akkadian name is _BAB-ILU_



> and they do not count as loans in spoken language but loans only concerning normative rules in writing.



Yes, it's true, but Hittite substituted also Akkadian word.  They used Sumerian words, so they had to know it


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## raptor

> You are only half right. Akkadian does have several sister languages in the Middle East. Hebrew and Arabic are related to it, as is Aramaic. Sumerian, however, was a language isolate. No language related to it has ever been found. Some say the founders of the Sumerian civilization migrated to the Middle East from farther east (India?)


 
I wonder, maybe if they came from Northwest India, the Indus Valley area. I don't know much about the history of this area yet, but wasn't the Indus Valley one of the earliest to have 'invented' agriculture (is agriculture an invention?) Or was it in Lower Mesopotamia, what is now the Persian Gulf? Are there any examples where the ancient languages of the area may be related in some way to Sumerian?  http://asnic.utexas.edu/asnic/subject/peoplesandlanguages.html gives some dates that I think correspond, and says that the script has not been deciphered.  Maybe a forum guru will be able to come to some solid conclusions 

Are language isolates common? And the problem is, since they exist, they have a history: they either evolved from something, or were created/designed. If they evolved, there should, theoretically, be sister languages that made their mark somewhere. If they were designed, someone would have had to designed a completely new language, from scratch and without reference to the one they were already using, and then gotten people to follow it. 

Back on track , was Sumerian actually extinct when Akkadian began it's reign, and/or did (m)any words, phrases, etc end up in the Akkadian language? We would then have another step further back from Akkadian that you say is already an established root of some modern languages.


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## sokol

franz rod said:


> I found also the name of Babylon  URU KA.DINGIR.RA
> URU is qualifier, but KA.DINGIR.RA is clearly a sumerian word (gateway of god)
> the Akkadian name is _BAB-ILU_



Excellent example, franz rod, but this still is no proof that the word was used (and spoken) in the Sumerian form, or it may be that it was only spoken Sumerian until a certain point in time.

It is very well possible that a Sumerian word was used as a sign symbol (like Egyptian hieroglyphes) for the Akkadian name and word (that is, it is possible that - even though the sign was Sumerian - the actual wording was Akkadian).
The same certainly was quite usual in Hittite, so not each Sumerogram (or Akkadogram) necessarily is a Sumerian (or Akkadian) loan.

As I am off for the weekend come friday I fear I won't be able to come back to this topic for some days: I'll have to take a closer look into my old university scripts, it was quite some time ago that I've read Hittite. So this here is just for your confirmation that I'll come back to this topic later. - With a more detailed synopsis of cuneiform writing systems.


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## Outsider

raptor said:


> I wonder, maybe if they came from Northwest India, the Indus Valley area. I don't know much about the history of this area yet, but wasn't the Indus Valley one of the earliest to have 'invented' agriculture (is agriculture an invention?) Or was it in Lower Mesopotamia, what is now the Persian Gulf?


I don't know enough about the history of agriculture to answer your questions about it. But the onset of the Sumerian civilization predates the Indus Valley civilization by a full millennium. Of course, there could have been people already living in the Indus Valley in small communities before that. 



raptor said:


> Are there any examples where the ancient languages of the area may be related in some way to Sumerian?


If we knew for sure of any language that was related to Sumerian, it wouldn't be called a language isolate. 



raptor said:


> Are language isolates common?


I don't know how common they are, but there are several known examples in the world. In Europe there is currently one: Basque, spoken in parts of France and Spain.

Here's an extensive list of language isolates.



raptor said:


> And the problem is, since they exist, they have a history: they either evolved from something, or were created/designed. If they evolved, there should, theoretically, be sister languages that made their mark somewhere.


Or its speakers could have slowly switched to another language, genetically unrelated. This was what probably happened to Sumerian.



raptor said:


> Back on track , was Sumerian actually extinct when Akkadian began it's reign, and/or did (m)any words, phrases, etc end up in the Akkadian language?


After an initial period of independence, Sumeria was successively conquered by various neighbouring peoples: the Elamites, the Akkadians, and finally the Babylonians. Sumerian culture was slowly diluted into a Mesopotamian melting pot, if you will, and eventually the Sumerian language itself was replaced by others, and abandoned.

Most of the first conquerors, however, adopted the religion of the Sumerians, and so Sumerian continued to be used by priests as a liturgic language, and writings in Sumerian were preserved long after there were any living native speakers left. A bit like Latin in Europe. Many of the Sumerian texts available today come from the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, found among the ruins of the old city of Niniveh in the 19th century.

But this was all a very long time ago. Eventually the Assyrian Empire (which had conquered the Babylonian Empire) fell and Mesopotamia saw new rulers and new civilizations, and new religions that displaced the old. The Sumerians, their culture, their language, and their cities lay forgotten, buried under the sand.

The story of the rediscovery of the Sumerians and of the decipherment of Sumerian in the 19th and 20th centuries is fascinating. If you find a book about it, it will be worth your time. Unfortunately, I don't know enough to recommend you a good one.


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## franz rod

> It is very well possible that a Sumerian word was used as a sign symbol (like Egyptian hieroglyphes) for the Akkadian name and word



But Hittites wrote also in Akkadian, so if they wanted to write in Akkadian, they could do it  (-->writing in Sumerian an Akkadic word is very strange...).


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## sokol

franz rod said:


> But Hittites wrote also in Akkadian, so if they wanted to write in Akkadian, they could do it  (-->writing in Sumerian an Akkadic word is very strange...).



This is not the point exactly.

Well, I'll give a very short summary of *Ungnad-Matouš*'s chapter about Akkadian script in the *"Grammatik des Akkadischen" *(1969/1979; my rephrased translations from the German original); much of what is written there reminds one of the Hittite use of Akkadian cuneiform script, it is really clear that the Hittite script was taken over from Akkadian use (and certainly not from Sumerians); of course these Akkadians (the educated ones, that is) also knew Sumerian, but they were native speakers of Akkadian or another Semitic language (mostly):

On *pages 8-10 Ungnad-Matouš* explain the basics of cuneiform script:

- *syllabograms *= signs for syllables (phonological signs) /a/ /ab/ /ba/ etc.

- *logograms *= signs for words or pictograms (like Egyptian hieroglyphs); it is possible in Akkadian to write a pictogram + phonological sign for one word, e. g. "ali-ja" where "ali" = "town" = pictogram and "ja" = possessive suffix = written with syllabic sign*)

- syllabograms are used freely to a degree (a hyphen indicates the used syllable signs): the word /kur/ may be written /kur/ or, in two syllables, /ku-ur/ (this indicates no special pronunciation but only individual style!); similarly: /šarrum/ "king" may be written with a logogram meaning the word, or syllabic, where several versions exists, all of them pronounced the same way (supposedly; obviously, we have no phonetic documents ): /šar-rum/, /ša-ar-rum/, /šar-ru-um/, /ša-ar-ru-um/ and sometimes /šar-um/; further, /ellet/ may be written /el-li-it/ but nevertheless was certainly pronounced /ellet/ according to U.-M.**)

- "Determinative" in German and *determinatives *in English (so not "qualifier" as suggested by me above, see the site linked by Outsider)): these are (it seems) *always *Sumerian and not spoken, for example: sum. "dingir" = "God" = a determinative stating that the following name is the name of a God: (dingir)Marduk = read "Marduk" and the (not read) determinative stating that Marduk is a God; these determinatives aren't exactly necessary in Akkadian (nor Hittite, for that matter) but were a Sumerian tradition (see below)


My notes:
*) So, similar like in Japanese with Kanji (pictograms) on the one hand and Hirakana/Katakana on the other one (syllabic signs).
**) In Hittite texts also great inconsequencies like this occur. This obviously was a tradition and (most likely) not meant to signify different pronunciation.


I hope that now is clear why not every Sumerian "word" really has to be a Sumerian loan in Akkadian.
The determinatives certainly were not Sumerian loans in spoken language, but only used for written language and not spoken.
Further, of logograms we do not know for sure if (in Akkadian texts) they stood for an Akkadian word or a Sumerian loan, or (in Hittite texts) if they stood for a Hittite word or an Akkadian or Sumerian loan.

In Hittite there are instances when a word is once written in syllables, in Hittite, and another time written with a pictogram: in these instances one can suppose that both times the Hittite word was used, not the Sumerian (or Akkadian) one.
Same thing with Akkadian, obviously, according to Ungnad-Matouš. (But as I have never read Akkadian myself I can certainly offer no opinion at all as to how common _real _Sumerian loans in Akkadian were, obviously.)


As for the *original Sumerian script* (thanks to Outsider for providing the site on Sumerian scripts above, given here a second time), this developped:
- as *logographic *script
- later logograms developped into *syllabograms *(the site describes how Sumerian has many monosyllabic words, so a great many logograms stood for one syllable anyway)
- later there were so *many ambiguities* (it was not clear, many times, if a sign was used as a logogram or as a syllabogram, and then there were many cases of homophony on the one hand and polyphony on the other one) that *determinatives *were invented to make reading of Sumerian texts easier

On this site there's also stated that Sumerian finally died out as spoken language in the 18th century (and was used in its written form till close before the Roman occupation of Asia).
But from my courses during my studies at university I know that Semitic tribes already had outnumbered by far Sumerians long before; in its written form Akkadian surfaced around 2350 BC according to Ungnad-Matouš, it surely played an important role in Mesopotamia even before that time.

Interesting as Sumerian influence is on the region at the time, it is quite clear that the logograms and determinatives of Sumerian origin in other languages do not necessarily mean anything else but writing tradition links.

As is the case with Japanese Kanji, as already mentioned above.


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## franz rod

> syllabograms are used freely to a degree (a hyphen indicates the used syllable signs): the word /kur/ may be written /kur/ or, in two syllables, /ku-ur/ (this indicates no special pronunciation but only individual style!)


Not exatly.  Recent theories say that Hittites prefer to write, for example, E-ES-TA (he/she/it was) to indicate long vowel.



> of course these Akkadians (the educated ones, that is) also knew Sumerian, but they were native speakers of Akkadian or another Semitic language (mostly):





> Interesting as Sumerian influence is on the region at the time, it is quite clear that the logograms and determinatives of Sumerian origin in other languages do not necessarily mean anything else but writing tradition links.


It's true that Akkadian and other Semitic populations slowly overcome Sumerians, but the Sumerian heritage continue to influence Akkadian society.  Special was the situazion of writing:  only a little elite was able to write and the knowledge of Sumerian was strictly necessary. This persons spread the writing and culture evidence linked to this.


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## sokol

franz rod said:


> Not exatly.  Recent theories say that Hittites prefer to write, for example, E-ES-TA (he/she/it was) to indicate long vowel.


I know this, I didn't elaborate too much on the syllabic writing as the discussion mainly was about Sumerograms.
The syllables E-ES (or RE-E-ES, etc. - these being "nonsense syllables" as this is not about meaning but writing) also in Akkadian would indicate long vowel, whereas RE-ES would not. (And there would be much more to say here, but let us not deviate on this mere writing problem and bore the other foreros with it. )



franz rod said:


> It's true that Akkadian and other Semitic populations slowly overcome Sumerians, but the Sumerian heritage continue to influence Akkadian society.  Special was the situazion of writing:  only a little elite was able to write and the knowledge of Sumerian was strictly necessary. This persons spread the writing and culture evidence linked to this.


If indeed the knowledge of Sumerian (language!) *culturally *would have been strictly necessary [required as an ability in order to be allowed to fulfill the profession of a writer], then please provide a source.
Because *technically *it would *not *have been necessary to know Sumerian - it would have sufficed to know the Sumerian logograms and determinatives with their *meanings *(but not necessarily their Sumerian phonology!) to produce correctly written Akkadian and Hittite.
Apart from that this also is not quite the question here - or is it? (It is the question of the thread this one was split off from.)


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## franz rod

> If indeed the knowledge of Sumerian (language!) *culturally *would have been strictly necessary [required as an ability in order to be allowed to fulfill the profession of a writer], then please provide a source. Because *technically *it would *not *have been necessary to know Sumerian - it would have sufficed to know the Sumerian logograms and determinatives with their *meanings *(but not necessarily their Sumerian phonology!) to produce correctly written Akkadian and Hittite


Sumerian language in writing was used also after. Every book I read said that Sumerian was the "language of culture" in Mesopotamia.   Did you have a source saying something different? If Sumerian language wasn't used, why, how I showed, they used Sumerian name of Babylon and not Akkadian one?


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## sokol

franz rod said:


> Sumerian language in writing was used also after. Every book I read said that Sumerian was the "language of culture" in Mesopotamia.   Did you have a source saying something different? If Sumerian language wasn't used, why, how I showed, they used Sumerian name of Babylon and not Akkadian one?



No, and I do not doubt that Sumerian was important culturally, but this is not the point here really. As already explained above.

To know wether a Sumerian word was used or only a Sumerogramm (of which we do not know if it was spoken out loud with Sumeric phonemes or Akkadian phonemes) would require more than your example.
One would have to know to read the cuneiform script themself and also have some knowledge of when which sign means what, in what language (even the ones proficient in cuneiform script sometimes cannot tell; and you and I, would be my guess, too can't: I always have read the transliterated texts, and NOT the cuneiform script itself - I absolved a very short introduction into cuneiform script and then instantly moved on to the transliteration. My guess would be that it was the same with you.)

Apart from that, this still would not be the topic here - if a Sumerogramm was spoken out loud in Sumerian too. It was the topic of the thread from which this one was split. (Therefore, this will be my last post on this particular topic. I do not see any reason discussing this here - there's an own thread for it.)


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## franz rod

We know that only a little elite of persons could write, and this people were polyglot and the knew both Sumerian and Akkadian.



> To know wether a Sumerian word was used or only a Sumerogramm


If it wasn't, they would use Akkadian word. If they don't know Sumerian, why they used it? we know also how to pronunce it, so it can't be only a pictogram (which are used at most for determinatives)...  



> Apart from that, this still would not be the topic here - if a Sumerogramm was spoken out loud in Sumerian too. It was the topic of the thread from which this one was split. (Therefore, this will be my last post on this particular topic. I do not see any reason discussing this here - there's an own thread for it.)


It was already answered:  probably Hitites read Sumerian and Akkadian word in their mother language.


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