Sumer PalaeographySumerian Language Sumerian is the oldest written language in existence. First attested about 3100 BC in southern Mesopotamia, it flourished during the 3rd millennium BC. About 2000 BC, Sumerian was replaced as a spoken language by Semitic Akkadian (Assyro-Babylonian) but continued in written usage almost to the end of the life of the Akkadian language, around the beginning of the Christian era. Sumerian never extended much beyond its original boundaries in southern Mesopotamia; the small number of its native speakers was entirely out of proportion to the tremendous importance and influence Sumerian exercised on the development of the Mesopotamian and other ancient civilizations in all their stages.
Around the time of Christ, all knowledge of the Sumerian language disappeared along with that of cuneiform writing, and in the succeeding centuries even the name Sumer vanished from memory. Unlike Assyria, Babylonia, and Egypt, whose histories and traditions are amply documented in biblical and classical sources, there was nothing to be found in non-Mesopotamian sources to make one even suspect the existence of the Sumerians in antiquity, let alone fully appreciate their important role in the history of early civilizations.
When the decipherment of cuneiform writing was achieved in the early decades of the 19th century, three languages written in cuneiform were discovered: Semitic Babylonian, Indo-European Persian, and Elamite, of unknown linguistic affiliation. Only after the texts written in Babylonian had become better understood did scholars become aware of the existence of texts written in a language different from Babylonian. When the new language was discovered it was variously designated as Scythian, or even Akkadian (that is, by the very name now given to the Semitic language spoken in Babylonia and Assyria). It was only after knowledge of the new language had grown that it was given the correct name of Sumerian.
The linguistic affinity of Sumerian has not yet been successfully established. Ural-Altaic (which includes Turkish), Dravidian, Brahui, Bantu, and many other groups of languages have been compared with Sumerian, but no theory has gained common acceptance. Sumerian is clearly an agglutinative language in that it preserves the word root intact while expressing various grammatical changes by adding on prefixes, infixes, and suffixes. The difference between nouns and verbs, as it exists in the Indo-European or Semitic languages, is unknown to Sumerian. The word dug alone means both "speech" and "to speak" in Sumerian, the difference between the noun and the verb being indicated by the syntax and by different affixes.
The distinctive sounds (phonemes) of Sumerian consisted of four vowels, a, i, e, u, and 16 consonants, b, d, g, h, h, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, sh, s, t, z. In Classical Sumerian, the contrast between the consonants b, d, g, z and p, t, k, s was not between voiced (with vibrating vocal cords) and voiceless consonants (without vibrating vocal cords) but between consonants that were indifferent as to voice and those that were aspirated (pronounced with an accompanying audible puff of breath). The semivowels y and w functioned as vocalic glides.
In the noun, gender was not expressed. Plural number was indicated either by the suffixes -me (or -me + esh), -hia, and -ene, or by reduplication, as in kur + kur "mountains." The relational forms of the noun, corresponding approximately to the cases of the Latin declension, include: -e for the subject (nominative), -a(k) "of" (genitive), -ra and -sh(e) "to", "for" (dative), -a "in" (locative), -ta "from" (ablative), -da "with" (commitative).
The Sumerian verb, with its concatenation of various prefixes, infixes, and suffixes, presents a very complicated picture. The elements connected with the verb follow a rigid order: modal elements, tempo elements, relational elements, causative elements, object elements, verbal root, subject elements, and intransitive present-future elements. In the preterite transitive active form, the order of object and subject elements is reversed. The verb can distinguish, in addition to person and number, transitivity and intransitivity, active and passive voice, and two tenses, present-future and preterite.
Several Sumerian dialects are known. Of these the most important are eme-gir, the official dialect of Sumerian, and eme-SAL, the dialect used often in the composition of hymns and incantations.
Sumerian Dictionary on Web
[X] Web-site: Lexicon of Sumerian Logograms by John A. Halloran, with downloadable cuneiform fonts(http://www.primenet.com/~seagoat/sumerian/sumerlex.htm) [Mesopotamian Protohistory] [Cuneiform Writing] [Sumer Writing] [Sumer Language] [Historical Sources] [Material Sources]
