Sumerian's strange disappearance #linguistics #language #history

[tentothepowerof]

More like a language isolate in TIME and SPACE

[arnorrian]

There is a single Sumerian word used in Serbian, "kreč" meaning quicklime. It was "gîr" in Sumerian, then moved from Sumerian to Akkadian, Persian, Turkish, and finally getting into Serbian.

[KrisztiánKormos-nt]

I like the fact that the word for cumin in many modern languages is a loanword from Sumerian. It's 𒌑𒌁 (gamun), and is an important spice in ancient Mesopotamian cuisine.

[EmanAtef-vqzp]

Makes me proud of my fellow Coptic Christians in Egypt for sustaining the spoken ancient Egyptian language by using its direct descendent, the coptic language, in their prayers to this day.

[gordonroblin]

It’s also crazy that it’s believed they invented the first full script but there are no scripts today that are based on it, in the western half of Eurasia all the scripts can be traced back to Egyptian the first Egyptian script which developed shortly after cuneiform but wasn’t based on it

[aljohnson]

It's worth considering that the Sumer had more recently immigrated, probably by sea, to the region. The Akkad had been there for much longer, and were somewhat oppressed until the rise of the Akkadian empire. Written Akkadian was based on the spoken language of their people, but used the format of Sumerian phonetic cuneiform. Where the Sumer emigrated from originally is one of histories greatest mysteries, but they brought technology with them which was highly advanced for the time, which allowed them to dominate the region for thousands of years. Unfortunately a lot of speculative pseudo-science conspiracies stem from that mystery, but I can understand because it's fun to dream. I'm not an expert on the subject by any means, so feel free to critique what I said as I'd love to know more.

[Taipan]

It’s interesting that the Sumerian word for shepherd is sipad, which sounds similar to shepherd (especially if Sean Connery was to say sipad) but is completely unrelated.

[mr.flibblessumeriantransla]

And this is precisely why I’ve been studying Sumerian for over four years now. And it’s still just as fascinating.

[Yalazar]

There are many Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian vocabulary in the Iraqi Arabic dialect.

[KiwiFlopsHere]

I really wanna learn Sumerian. I spent a lot of time learning cuneiform during the pandemic forgot about it and I didn’t even learn it for Sumerian. I don’t remember which language it was for.

[t.dominey]

There are actually a few surviving sumerian descdent words in English, such as cane, cannon and canal.
All 3 come from the Latin "canna", from Greek "kanna", from the Akkadian "qanu" which ultimately derives from Sumerian "gi-na", meaning reed

[overpoweredjoe]

Its happening in morocco with amazigh (berber language) but the country has made efforts to preserve it and so far its succesful

[yyyyyk]

We have some borrowed words from Sumerian that are still used in Hebrew for common words!
Examples:
כִּסֵּא (kisé) = "chair"
תַּרְנְגוֹל (tarnegól) = "rooster"
כֶּתֶם (kétem) = "stain"
מַלָּח (malákh) = "sailor"
And also some words in Biblical Hebrew:
כֻּתֹּנֶת (kutónet)= "robe"
טַפְסָר (tafsár)= "clerk"
נַחְתֹּם (nakhtóm)= "baker"

[somethingsomething-sf]

question: what about its influence on other languages? as a persian there are some old summerian words that we use even now. like bara roughly means go in sumerian and boro means the same thing in persian. also i was checking the dictionary and there is bar-šè which i think is pronounced barshe, meaning out, away, and in our native dialect we say beshe meaning get out

[ZeldaboyOG]

Main reason why you should never let language die is because of the Navajo code talkers.

Keeping a native language alive means you can speak in code to people you might more likely trust, and who have a common background.

Having both a common and and native language means you can subvert your rulers.

[kreuner]

If sumerian survived in some form we would be able to translate much better and maybe understand the dog bar joke

[playerone]

I'm guessing Sumerian may have affected Akkadian a Bit

[rabiithous]

does sumerian have influence on modern etymologies? i imagine in that process of bilingualism between sumerian and akkadian, sumerian ended up influencing akkadian quite a bit right?

[walterht]

Sumerian continued being use as a prestige elite language of Babylonian and Assyrian temple priests until late in the Iron Age, so, closer to 2000 years ago than 3000 years ago. I'm not an expert but it seems to me that what finally killed Sumerian (as an educated language of literary elites) is the same thing that killed Babylonian and Assyrian, the Alphabet + the Aramean language spreading to Mesopotamia and making Cuneiform writing an obsolete antiquarian thing that only survived due to millenary tradition. Once it stopped being necessay for a kid to begin training as a scribe since a very young age to belong to the minority of people who could read and write, that whole tradition became doomed.

[C-ewsjdgsdjsime]

Something I thought about (someone might have commented this before) is that there probably exist languages that not only have no native speakers, not only have no modern descendants, but also have no known written records. We likely would have only the smallest pieces of information on these languages.