Learn to Read Ancient Sumerian: An Introduction for Complete Beginners.

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Sometimes thought to represent a glottal stop /ʔ/ (so Zólyomi, e.g. 2017, and Jagersma, e.g. 2009). The signs for each chapter are not listed with their meanings at the end of each chapter. But this is likely because of the larger problem of a sign meaning more than 1 thing. All the various meanings of a sign are not listed. Transliteration of signs are listed with their meanings for each chapter but the sign for each transliteration is not shown side-by-side.

Shin Shifra, Jacob Klein (1996). In Those Far Days. Tel Aviv, Am Oved and The Israeli Center for Libraries' project for translating Exemplary Literature to Hebrew. This is an anthology of Sumerian and Akkadian poetry, translated into Hebrew. The verbal stem itself can also express grammatical distinctions. The plurality of the absolutive participant [76] can be expressed by complete reduplication of the stem or by a suppletive stem. Reduplication can also express "plurality of the action itself", [76] intensity or iterativity. [45] Yet, this is not entirely without problems, because a vertical wedge is not only the determinative "man", but also the sign for the number one and the word ana, "to". Monaco, Salvatore F., "Proto-Cuneiform And Sumerians", Rivista Degli Studi Orientali, vol. 87, no. 1/4, pp. 277–82, 2014

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Depending on the context, a cuneiform sign can be read either as one of several possible logograms, each of which corresponds to a word in the Sumerian spoken language, as a phonetic syllable (V, VC, CV, or CVC), or as a determinative (a marker of semantic category, such as occupation or place). (See the article Transliterating cuneiform languages.) Some Sumerian logograms were written with multiple cuneiform signs. These logograms are called diri-spellings, after the logogram 'diri' which is written with the signs SI and A. The text transliteration of a tablet will show just the logogram, such as the word 'diri', not the separate component signs.

GAZ means "to kill". If we reconstruct Si-lu in the lacuna and read ku as a syllable, we have "He killed Seleucus". Alternatively, we can reconstruct "ina TUKUL GAZ": "He killed with a weapon". This makes Babylonian cuneiform an entertaining puzzle. It must be noted that this is not without parallel in our own writing system; think of the song by The Artist Formerly Known As Prince, Nothing compares 2 u. (Just imagine Hamlet saying 2B or not 2B.) The Sumerian finite verb distinguishes a number of moods and agrees (more or less consistently) with the subject and the object in person, number and gender. The verb chain may also incorporate pronominal references to the verb's other modifiers, which has also traditionally been described as "agreement", although, in fact, such a reference and the presence of an actual modifier in the clause need not co-occur: not only e 2-še 3 i b 2-ši-du-un "I'm going to the house", but also e 2-še 3 i 3-du-un "I'm going to the house" and simply i b 2-ši-du-un "I'm going to it" are possible. [58] The imperative mood construction is produced with a singular ḫamṭu stem, but using the marû agreement pattern, by turning all prefixes into suffixes: mu-na-an-sum "he gave (something) to him", mu-na-e-sum-mu-un-ze 2-en "you (plur.) gave (something) to him" – sum-mu-na-ab "give it to him!", sum-mu-na-ab-ze 2-en "give (plur.) it to him!" Compare the French vous le lui donnez, but donnez-le-lui! [76] Syntax [ edit ]Reading the Assyrian- Babylonian cuneiform characters, however, is a difficult job, even to specialists, and both the layman and the professional scholar have to settle for a critical edition made by someone who has meticulously studied the tablet. In fact, the same holds for Greek and Latin texts. Only a few classicists actually study the medieval manuscripts. The stems of the 1st type, regular verbs, do not express TA at all according to most scholars, or, according to M. Yoshikawa and others, express marû TA by adding an (assimilating) /-e-/ as in gub-be 2 or gub-bu vs gub (which is, however, nowhere distinguishable from the first vowel of the pronominal suffixes except for intransitive marû 3rd person singular). The embedded structure of the noun phrase can be further illustrated with the phrase sipad udu siki-ak-ak-ene ("the shepherds of woolly sheep"), where the first genitive morpheme ( -a(k)) subordinates siki "wool" to udu "sheep", and the second subordinates udu siki-a(k) "sheep of wool" (or "woolly sheep") to sipad "shepherd". [60] Pronouns [ edit ]

However, I personally found the style irritatingly far too “chatty” and the author really over-labours most points. It came across as if he has simply transcribed his you-tube channel lectures (which are also extremely good) into the book. But that is just me. From the point of view of the authors I can see it must be difficult to know at what level to pitch such a book. If you pitch it too high you will drives one group of people away. If pitch it too low then you will irritate a different group of people. You will never please everyone. Eléments de linguistique sumérienne (by Pascal Attinger, 1993; in French), at the digital library RERO DOC: Parts 1–4, Part 5. Zakar, András (1971). "Sumerian– Ural-Altaic affinities". Current Anthropology. 12 (2): 215–225. doi: 10.1086/201193. JSTOR 2740574. S2CID 143879460. . Learn to Read Ancient Sumerian: An Introduction for Complete Beginners is written specifically for people with no training in ancient languages, letting the reader learn Sumerian without having to learn grammatical jargon first. Any grammatical terms that are used are explained in clear language, and a handy index provides definitions just in case you need a reminder! Volk, Konrad (1997). A Sumerian Reader. Rome: Pontificio Istituto Biblico. ISBN 88-7653-610-8. (collection of Sumerian texts, some transcribed, none translated)THUREAU-DANGIN, F. (1911). "Notes Assyriologiques". Revue d'Assyriologie et d'archéologie orientale. 8 (3): 138–141. ISSN 0373-6032. JSTOR 23284567. Ebeling, J., & Cunningham, G. (2007). Analysing literary Sumerian: corpus-based approaches. London: Equinox. ISBN 1-84553-229-5 The copula verb /me/ "to be" is mostly used as an enclitic: -men, -men, -am, -menden, -menzen, -(a)meš. A newer interpretation is that the last syllable in such examples is to be read -ne, i.e. 3rd person possessive -ni plus directive -e. In contrast, in the 1st and 2nd persons, we find this apparent -ni attached to 1st and 2nd person pronouns ( zig-a-g̃u-ni 'as I rose'), which leads Jagersma to interpret it as an otherwise obsolete locative ending: lit. 'at my rising' (Jagersma 2009: 672–674). In 1944, the Sumerologist Samuel Noah Kramer provided a detailed and readable summary of the decipherment of Sumerian in his Sumerian Mythology. [40]