Thank you for this great content, I'm an Iraqi from Babel and i really want to learn the Mesopotamian languages and you are helping me a lot with these great videos🙏🏼
My brain feels like it's been working hard to understand this, but I've definitely gotten everything that you have said on this video! This is really opening my eyes to the complexity of the evolution of language, never mind JUST written language is. Goshhh, this is amazing, thank you SO much for this! :D
لإخواني الناطقين بالعربية: لفظ بِيتُم يقابله في العربية بَيتٌ، والميم التي في آخره تقابل التنوين الذي عندنا في العربية (بَيْتُن) وهي نونٌ تثبُت لفظًا لا خطّا، وقد نرمز لها بتَكرار حركة نهاية الاسم، وتفيد أن الاسم نكرة. وكما يختفي التنوين عند إضافة الاسم (بيتُ رجلٍ) فإن الميم تختفي أيضا في حال الإضافة في اللغة الأكدية (بِيت أَوِيلِم)، والكسرة الظاهرة على اللام هي علامة جر أَوِيل لأنه مضاف إليه. وقد نسمي إضافة الميم في الأكدية تَمْيِيمًا قياسًا على التنوين. والله تعالى أعلم.
@@moroccandeepweb5880 اكتب بللغه الي اريدها. ومحاولتي لكتابة بلعربية لتتفهم:/ اذهب واطلع عن علم للغويات وخصوصا للغات الشرق الاوسط وتفهم قبل ان تاتي بكلمة وتحاول تربطها بللغه الاكادية /اضافة ان للغات بلاد الرافدين هي للغه مقطعية وليس ابجدية. اما للغات التي يطلق عليها السامية فهي تبداء بللغه ارامية والتي انبثقت منها للهجات المعروفة (السريانية والعبرية والعربية / كلهم يعودو للغه الام آرامية: وهي تتكون من حروف ابجدية. وليس مثل للغه الاكادية التي تتكون من مقاطع وتكتب بلخط المسماري / اما محاول تشابه ف هذا تطور بين للغات واختلاط الشعوب يولد ترابط للكلمات والمطلحات ؛مثل اليوم يوجد بللغه الانجليزية عدد هائل من الكلمات ذات الاصل لاتيني. ف افهم علم للغات وادوية قبل انت تكتب بهذا نظره سطحية.
I recently went to the British museum in London and the cuneiform was the most exciting section for me. Hearing you teach her to read and all of that makes me realize how much of the other ancient languages that I've learned have a lot of similarities. I noticed a correlation between a lot of the native American languages especially north of Mexico fit into the Japanese alphabet pretty much perfectly but to be fair, so does cuneiform. It's not perfect but it's like 90 something percent the same way that you would read Japanese which is a very interesting set of letters like ra or mu or bi
Very good video! I noticed you had less problems with your green screen, wich is good because it was distracting. It would be interesting, when you use a sumerogram, to have the corresponding sumerian pronunciation too!
Great explanation. It is a good skill to explain the basic use of the system without getting bogged down in the form of word making or clay stylus as I've seen
Thank you VERY much for making this video! I wish there was someplace I could learn Sumerian cuneiform. I would PAY to learn. I did find a you tube channel that taught Sumerian numerology. I found that VERY easy to learn. Counting and adding, etc. But the language.. Wow! I need basics. Alphabet first, then compounding. Just like we were in kindergarten again.
Excellent introduction, my only comment would be on your pronunciation, but pronunciation is always the hardest thing to nail down. Perhaps beside semantic nuances. Very good!
Love this channel! Besides reading the tablets, and this being one of the coolest things ever done, the only other practical thing I think this could be used for is writing my olographic will in Akkadian just so the judge has to call an Assyriologist to put my heirs in possession 😂😂
As someone who can speak Hebrew and a bit of Arabic this makes since in how it's constructed. In Hebrew there is the word בית(Bāīt)=house/home, and in Arabic there is بيت(Bēyt)=house/home, Bītum is very similar. but you can tell that's it's from a slightly different regional dialect of Semitic.
Very impressive effort that you've put into this series, much appreciated! May I point out that in 10:50 when you give the cuneiform for bītum, it can never be written bi-it-um (the /t/ ending in /it/ cannot be the consonant for the next syllable) but rather bi-i-tum or bi-tum or bi-it-tum (rarely) or most often, É :)
Thank you so much for pointing this out! For anyone else curious why this is true I’m attaching an excerpt from Huehnergard’s grammar explaining the 3 essential rules of syllabification: “ (A) Every syllable has one, and only one, vowel. (b) With two exceptions, no syllable may begin with a vowel. The exceptions are: the beginning of a word; the second of two succes-sive vowels. (c) No syllable may begin or end with two consonants” -Akkadian Grammar pg 3
Art historian here .. but a modernist! I often teach the 101 survey so i thought i would at learn learn the basics of the cubeiform writing system. I understand Akkadian is painfully difficult. Edit: and just a couple minutes in, I see why it's often said that cuneiform is a messy writing system. The characters do not line up clearly with an individual phoneme?! We might as well be learning English spelling! 🤙
Real bloody thankful the bi/pi an’ the am cune havnae changed all the much throughout them centuries otherwise I wouldnae recognise goo ol’ Hammurapi’s name fer sure 😄 (Reason being that I’m more used tae the older variant)
It seems like in the word bītum, this violates a golden rule of normalization by effectively doubling the vowel. Even though it’s not written as double, it’s doubled in length. Is the normalization for writing or pronunciation or both and is the vowel actually ever doubled? Second question, what in your view are a couple of the most important/controversial existing interpretations of Akkadian, I mean where the incorrect reading would have the most profound impact on our understanding of that history, or even on how people at the time responded? There are similar issues in Sanskrit and a particularly famous one that caused a rift in early Buddhism.
Great questions! The combining of vowels in normalization affects the syllabification of the word where as long vowels only affect the way in which the vowel is pronounced (this does not change the syllable in which the vowel is pronounced). I will talk more about important differences in translations later in the series so please stay tuned.
The first a (ah) in Hammurabi is a short a sound like the u in cut. If it had a macron on it it would be a long a sound. The i in bītum has a macron on it to indicate that it is a long ee sound as the ee in see.
It's Semitic. The root of bitum is BYT, just like in Arabic, Aramaic, and Hebrew. So in Akkadian the middle consonant in the root was just elided into a long vowel. Some root like SPR or KTB (for writing) would probably not have long vowels (I don't know Akkadian).
Our history is subverted. But the pieces are assembling. We have the great deluge from which arose the likes of Sumer with their triangle based writing system We also have the more advanced Atlantean civilization destroyed more recently with their Circle based Runic system (you can see the relationship with cuneiform, draw a circle, divide into 8 wedges, those lines serve as the basis for all the characters (and of course the infamous broken sun wheel symbol found globally, the 'swastika'). ᛚ ᛩ etc But note that these modern fonts are wrong. The true runes had to fit within a circle, outer rune lines were therefor curved. (super impose these two symbols to see what i mean ⨁ and ⨂) This was used by the survivors such as Freya, Fin, Lydia. And of course the Canaanites -> Phoenicians -> Venetians line that rules today.
Thank you for a great introduction! What would you recommend as reference if I wanted to tell the difference between Akkadian and the Babylonian/Assyrian dialects of cuneiform? I'd like to get to the point of at least looking at a script and saying "This is most likely written by the .....". Thanks in advance.
The on catch is that it’s in french, but it is by far the resource and since all you need is the Akkadian transliteration and the sign it won’t be a problem. Hope this helps!
@@learnakkadian Thanks, I'm still waiting for the book to arrive. I do have a small 3x2 tablet and was wondering if you could point in the right direction as to whether it's Akkadian or perhaps a Babylonian/Assyrian dialect? It was label as Sumerian c.a 3000BC but based on my limited knowledge it doesn't seem to be Sumerian.
Hi, which came first cuneiform or written Sumerian? From the context of the video I would take it as Sumerian but I have heard that cuneiform was the first written form of a language.
Great question! Sumerian came before Akkadian but both actually use cuneiform. A useful way to think of this relationship is by thinking of Sumerian as Latin and Akkadian as English. Both use script similar to the modern alphabet but the words and grammar are different. The term cuneiform indicates that the writing is wedge shaped. There are many completely different languages which used the same general wedge shaped script. These languages borrow some cuneiform signs from each other but generally have different grammars, signs, and words.
How do we decipher dead languages to such an extent that we could propose sounds? I can understand studying and finding patterns for grammar, but then where do we find the vacabularly and the sounds? Thats so wild to me. Great video, im subscribing 💐
Akkadian has the whole Semitic family as a sibling, so its consonant and vowel inventory could be reconstructed. Also poetry survives to fine-tune its long and short vowels.
Hello and thank you❤ my best interpretation I think it means is an idea posed by symbals rather than by letters... The first: pi = a ⭕ circle which is the symbol for God, Omicron, all, sun, eternal, universe, and the logos, "the". The second being: am, is, be and equals, image and likeness, seed, seedling. The third: mu, the Cradle of civilization of this era on Earth, Eden, Genesis, seed, seedlings in the plantation. The fourth: Ra, god, Sun God, source, energy, force field, progenitor, Ray. The fifth: bi, two, ka, spirit, soul,.... Meaning I Am a child of God, made and sustained by the Sun, and seedling from the Tree/vine of Ra, a Divine being of Source..... How does that grab you? Am I anywhere close? I've never tried this before so I may have just really embarrassed myself, but not as badly if I didn't try... My question would be how did you decide for the symbols to mean the letters that you've chosen????
So, the macron “i” makes a sound similar to the English word “it” rather than the more drawn out sounding “ee” sound like the “bi” in your transliteration? Making the word bitum sound like “bit-um” rather than “beet-um”?
The macron makes the vowel sound longer so the sounds you have just described would be reversed. Bī gives a bee sound and bi would give a short i sound like pit.
I searched for this phrase for a while and there is no translation that captures what you want. The Babylonians did not have a word for teacher like we do but would have used a word that in English would be closer to master (Mulammidu). Bunna loosely translates to “thank to” but is more of an attributive word.
@@learnakkadian thank you a million. I have been searching myself for possible equivalents (also in Sumerian, Urartian) since it is obvious we would not have those words in exact same senses we have them in today's English. I was thinking that for "thank you" something like this would go: "In the name of God Khaldi". Again thank you for your kind reply
is there any difference between akkadian cuneiform script, and that of other cultures/time periods? i would have assumed, for example, that neoassyrian writings would have a very different dialect (at least, if not an altered alphabet) to that of the akkadians but it seems as if theyre entirely the same, even though the two civilizations have an entire bronze age collapse between them.
There are big differences in language and orthography between the different cultures which used cuneiform. In the case of the Babylonians and Assyrians, both used the Akkadian language although each had their own specific dialect. Additionally, the Assyrians and Babylonian used different sign forms. These sign forms as well as some aspects of grammar changed over time. For example, Old Babylonian cuneiform used completely different signs from Neo-Babylonian cuneiform. Also cuneiform signs sometimes varied based off context with monumental Old Babylonian signs used on royal inscriptions and Hammurabi's Code while personal documents used cursive Old Babylonian signs. Some cultures like the Hittites or Elamites also used cuneiform with completely different sign forms and languages.
@@learnakkadian can you see a more dramatic shift in cuneiform signs/dialects before and after the bronze age collapse? my understanding is that major centres like babylon survived through the period (whilst settlements like hattusa were largely abandoned); and if thats the case, was there some sort of ‘re-evolution’ and/or ‘re-transmission’ of cuneiform scripts. for instance, maybe there was a broader diversity in dialects etc pre-BAC, and then afterwards perhaps only babylonian cuneiform script was produced with other scripts dying out, before they re-evolved in line with the reemergence of major civilizations - like the neo-assyrians, urartu etc. - which are more closely derived from the babylonian script (in this case). i find this area of history (both the overall study of language, as well as early Mesopotamian civilisation and its developments toward literature) really interesting. i would love to be able to read texts like the epic of gilgamesh and the hymn to inana in their original cuneiform, because i understand that actually understanding the language’s intricacies can open up so much more meaning than is offered by a monocular translation. i very much doubt that i will be able to casually learn cuneiform though, i thought it was a much more simple language (especially since some translated texts ive read seemed to indicate that cuneiform scripts didnt even differentiate tense or anything).
To say “learn Akkadian” is not incorrect but misleading for many reasons. One of which Sumerian would be more precise from an origin/chronological conception. Cuneiform by many scholars would be considered “more” Sumerian than Akkadian if based on time
Imagine all this deciphering cuneiform were just wrong from the beginning. And it doesnt sound like that at all. And imagine the look of the akkadian ancestors looking at us like a fool. 😂
