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Sumerian and Akkadian and Cuneiform | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6508 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 1 of 49 27 August 2011 at 2:05pm | IP Logged |
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So, as promised in my (currently a little dead) Latin-log, here’s a log for Akkadian. I will be studying Old Babylonian
at University this fall, which is an Akkadian dialect, and the one that students usually are introduced to. Alongside with that we will be taught neo-assyrian cuneiform signs. (The youngest signs, the oldest language.. why they mix them like this, I do not know..). My material will be: Introduction to Akkadian A concise dictionary of Akkadian (it’s not concise at all, its FAT!) Material provided to me by the university Whatever I can find online for some extracurricular exercises Akkadian is a semitic language written with a mix of phonetic and logograpghic signs, just like present day japanese. Just as japanese they have multiple readings, some derived from sumerian (on’yomi ;P), some derived from the akkadian word for the meaning (kun’yomi) and some just used for the sound value, taken form either sumerian or akkadian word of meaning. Edited by Hampie on 26 January 2012 at 8:15am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6508 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 2 of 49 28 August 2011 at 3:17pm | IP Logged |
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Akkadian has four cases: nominative, accusative and genitive. UH.. That’s three. Oh yea, they have oblique in plural
which is the accusative and genitive merged together. That’s four :D. The endings are um, am, im. And, as most other semitic languages, Akkadian has genders, and the feminine marker is t as in most other semitic languages, so feminine endings are thus tum, tam, tim. King: sharrum, sharram, sharrim; Queen; sharratum, sharratam, sharratim. This series of vowels u-a-i can easily be remembered with the cute mnemonic: You are free. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6508 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 3 of 49 31 August 2011 at 1:00am | IP Logged |
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Masculine plurals are so easy it’s boring, feminine are so weird it’s scary. Masculine takes -û in nominative, and i in
genitive and accusative, this one is also called the oblique case. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6508 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 4 of 49 02 September 2011 at 2:45pm | IP Logged |
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Yesterday I terrorised the Ph.D-student who are going to be the teacher in charge of Akkadian with a message in
Swedish written in cuneiform. Cuneiform works a bit like Japanese Kana, but has there kinds of syllable signs. CV, VC and CVC. Thus: ab, ba, and bab; though there are not CVC-signs for all possible closed syllables, but rather for the most common word endings, such as -um, -am and -im. To write a closed syllable, where there is no signs for it, you use a CV and a VC-sign: sha-ar-ru-um, for sharrum. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6508 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 5 of 49 05 September 2011 at 11:21pm | IP Logged |
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First seminar, yet, none of the language was, sadly, covered except accentuation. That’s kind of sad — however it
was the ‹introduction› so I did not really expect much more. The teacher is very, very enthusiastic and he loves, for some reason, Akkadian more than life (it seems). I was a bit afraid that he would be a very dry person more in love with grammatical theories rather than languages themselves, but, he isn’t. He even told us that we’re going to get to write with styli in clay during the course: yay! I was planning on doing that myself at home, but, it’s cool that he has planned to get that into the curriculum. The class is divided in two parts: the semitists and theologist with a base in Hebrew who aim to broaden their knowledge of semitic languages and the Ancient Far East; and the rest of us young people interested in languages and old cultures. Is anyone reading my log, by the way? Haha, unless I get at least sooome feedback, it’s not really that rewarding to write.. :(. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5991 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 6 of 49 05 September 2011 at 11:39pm | IP Logged |
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I'm reading! I'm interested to hear about your experience with Akkadian, because I don't know of anyone else who has studied it before.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5111 days ago 2238 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 7 of 49 06 September 2011 at 1:34am | IP Logged |
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Hey, dude! Akkadian rocks!!! Learning Akkadian, now that's what I call "kickin' it old school!
2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6508 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 8 of 49 07 September 2011 at 11:03pm | IP Logged |
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Yesterday I bought modelling clay: writing cuneiform characters on paper is kind of cool, but pressing them into
clay is totally what the old scribes did. And man is it hard! Due to a lack of a wedge shaped reed stylus I have carved a chopstick with a kitchen knife — it’s not optional and I might have to seek other alternatives, but on the other hand it might be that I’m not yet a very good cuneiform scribe. Only time will tell. I’m also trying to incorporate Anki into the studies of the Ancient far east — however a problem has arisen and Anki won’t display the cuneiform correctly, more about that here: http://how-to-learn-any- language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=29352&PN=1 (I will gladly share the decks I make if anyone’s help will give me the information required for it to work. I will be making a deck for ‹Introduction to Akkadian› by a man named Richard Caplice and ‹Knowledge and Power› by Eleanor Robson from the Higher Education Academy - the latter course can be found free online) Over and out! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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