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Post by hjernespiser on Jul 5, 2011 22:16:49 GMT 3
I thought I'd start a thread devoted to Sumerian since the topic comes up every once in awhile. From John L. Hayes A Manual of Sumerian Grammar and Texts (2000 Undena Publications) Difficulties in the study of Sumerian
Sumerian is not as well understood as is Akkadian. Although there has been considerable linguistic progress in the last three decades, enough still remains unsure that scholars often have widely divergent views about Sumerian. Some of the reasons for these difficulties are summarized here; they will be discussed in more detail in the course of this Manual.
- Sumerian is not genetically related to any other known language, living or dead. By contrast, it was discovered early-on that Akkadian was a Semitic language. This genetic relationship aided early scholars in their reconstruction of Akkadian grammar and vocabulary. But in the case of Sumerian, there was no such help available.
- The writing system of Sumerian only imperfectly mirrors the spoken language; it does not indicate all the grammatical features which are known to have existed (or are assumed to have existed) in the spoken language. This schematic nature of the script makes it very difficult to reconstruct the morphology.
- With no comparative evidence and no native speakers to turn to, it is very difficult to determine what minor variations in morphology or syntax are meant to convey. Occasionally forms or sentences are found which differ only slightly from those occurring in other texts, but there is no simple way to find out what these differences signify.
It has been remarked by Igor Diakonoff, "It is a joke well known among Assyriologists that there are as many Sumerian languages as there are Sumerologists" (1976:99). Similarly, as recently as 1987 Thorkild Jacobsen said: Knowledge of Sumerian is still in a rudimentary, experimental stage where scholars differ on essential points, so that translations, even by highly competent scholars, may diverge so much that no one would ever guess that they rendered the same text... Scholars have no yet been able to agree on basic grammar and its restraints (1987a:xv).
On the other hand, it is important not to minimize the extent of our knowledge of Sumerian, or, as has occasionally happened, to ignore basic facts about Sumerian grammar when translating Sumerian texts. The texts presented in this volume, for example, would be basically understood in the same way by any Sumerologist, even though there might be differences in detail. Jacobsen's point is, however, particularly valid for literary texts, which are often couched in difficult poetic language; translations of such texts can show a rather disheartening amount of disagreement.
In certain ways, it is actually easier to study Sumerian than it is to study, for example, Akkadian. This is because Sumerian does not have a great deal of morphology; there are not a large number of grammatical forms to learn. There is nothing like the weak-verb systems of Akkadian or Hebrew, which require a great deal of sheer memorization. Rather, many students find the difficulties to be more conceptual in nature: the language works in ways different than English, or other languages which students are likely to have been exposed to. It is occasionally difficult to understand some of these principles and even more difficult to observe these principles in action.
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Post by hjernespiser on Jul 5, 2011 22:53:17 GMT 3
From Hayes: Linguistic affiliation Sumerian is a language isolate, with no genetic connection to any known language, living or dead. Numerous attempts have been made by both amateur and professional linguists to link Sumerian with many different languages, but none of these have produced convincing results. Such attempts have usually been based on surface-level resemblances with languages which are typologically similar to Sumerian. A. Leo Oppenheim has pointed out: The fact that Sumerian is a complicated though very well understood language which cannot be linked to any other known language has created during the past hundred years a large literature attempting to relate Sumerian to practically all languages between Polynesia and Africa. The authors of such studies unfailingly "prove" that either their own language or a language in which they happen to be interested is related to ancient Sumerian (1971:219) Sir Gerard Clauson has summed this up: "Sumerian...has every appearance of being a 'loner', in spite of numerous attempts to foist relatives upon it, some grotesquely improbable" (1973:38). Geza Komoroczy, in his article "Flat-Earth Sumerology", says that attempts have been made to connect Sumerian with Semitic, Egyptian, Hyksos, Elamite, Kassite, Dravidian, Proto-Indo-European, Hittite, Armenian, Sanskrit, Etruscan, Caucasian, Georgian, Finno-Ugrian, Finnish, Hungarian, Turanian, Uralo-Altaic, Tibetan, Mongolian, Chinese, Japanese, Polynesian, Eastern Islandic, Turkish, Basque, African, Sudanian, Bantu, etc. (1977:133). Oppenheim and Clauson were talking about attempts to link Sumerian with particular individual languages. More recently, scholars interested in the long-range classification of languages have put Sumerian into either the Nostratic "macro-family" or the Eurasiatic macro-family (some of these classification schemes are discussed by Merrit Ruhlen [1991]). However, there is not even a consensus as to which languages fit into either of these macro-families; the concept of "Nostratic" in particular means different things to different people. Given the present state of our knowledge, these attempts can be considered ill-conceived at best.
The possibility that a connection might be found with some other language is slim, because any related languages have probably died off without leaving any written records. The original homeland of the Sumerians is unknown... . They may have been indigenous to Mesopotamia, being one of possibly several groups present there at the dawn of history. They may have come from somewhere else, perhaps arriving in southern Mesopotamia sometime in the millennium before writing was invented; this view is the more traditional one. Indeed, there are hints in their own mythology that they were not indigenous to Mesopotamia. If they did come from somewhere else, they lost all contact with this original homeland. This means that it is not even clear where any possible linguistic relatives might be located. Sumerian undoubtedly did have relatives. But wherever such a homeland might have been (and several possibilities have been suggested), it was probably not in an area where writing appeared very early, and so no records of these languages exist. If any relatives have survived, the science of historical linguistics is not, and perhaps never will be, able to prove connections between languages so far removed from each other in time. In other words, it is highly unlikely that one could even use historical linguistics to prove a relationship between Sumerian and another living or dead language, as many interested in the subject try to do. What vehicle can be used to come up with such proofs? Anyone would free to make up whatever they want without any such vehicle. It would be fantastic if one could go back in time and record spoken Sumerian. It has been suggested several times that the Sumerians came from somewhere on the Indian subcontinent, and are perhaps connected with the ancient civilizations of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa. However, there is as yet no archaeological evidence in India to support this. Attempts to related Sumerian with Dravidian languages have no produced satisfying results.
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Post by benzin on Jul 6, 2011 11:34:06 GMT 3
In his Sumerian Etymological Dictionary and Comparative Grammar, Kálmán Gosztony, professor of Sumerian philology at the Sorbonne, demonstrated that the grammatical structure of the Hungarian language is the closest to that of the Sumerian language: out of the 53 characteristics of Sumerian grammar, there are 51 matching characteristics in the Hungarian language, 29 in the Turkic languages, 24 in the Caucasian languages, 21 in the Uralic languages, 5 in the Semitic languages, and 4 in the Indo-European languages." I found that link I was looking for to you. Dr. Alfred Toth's work who is a scholar at Geneva University linking 607 (!) words between sumerian and hungarian. As I said before in other topic, some is surely mislead like in Fred Hamori's work but I dont think there would be 607 words comparable if there wouldnt be any kind of relation. link : mek.niif.hu/05000/05021/05021.pdf
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Post by hjernespiser on Jul 6, 2011 19:27:48 GMT 3
Thanks. I think I've seen that PDF before. I was wary of the publisher and the Sumerian data presented is not fleshed out as much as I'd like to see (a lack of rigor?). The Sumerian dictionary by Gosztony is not listed in the 17 page bibliography of the John Hayes book, which is disconcerting. Here's the Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary project website. psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd/index.html
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Post by hjernespiser on Jul 6, 2011 22:01:09 GMT 3
ursaĝ [HERO] (750x: ED IIIb, Old Akkadian, Lagash II, Ur III, Old Babylonian) wr. ur-saĝ "hero" Akk. qarrādu "warlike; hero, warrior".
I was reading last night about the ĝ transcription. Sumerologists aren't sure what the actual sound was. It is commonly referred to as a velar nasal. The reason they think it is something like a velar nasal is because it is transliterated as /g/, /n/, or /m/ in other languages (Akkadian, etc.). It is one place where the writing system did not reflect the spoken language. So at best ĝ is an orthographic symbol that represents a best guess that the spoken sound was something like /ŋ/.
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Post by hjernespiser on Jul 6, 2011 22:29:22 GMT 3
en [LORD] (1631x: ED IIIa, ED IIIb, Old Akkadian, Lagash II, Ur III, Old Babylonian) wr. en; u3-mu-un; umun "lord; master; ruler" Akk. bēlu "lord; proprietor".
ur [HE] (190x: Lagash II, Old Babylonian, unknown) wr. ur5; ur "he; that, this same; maid, female slave; one; corresponding (to one another); like (one another)" Akk. amtu; ištēn; mithāru; šû
gibil [NEW] (671x: ED IIIb, Ebla, Old Akkadian, Lagash II, Ur III, Early Old Babylonian, Old Babylonian, unknown) wr. gibil; gibil4 "(to be) new" Akk. edēšu "to be(come) new"
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Post by hjernespiser on Jul 6, 2011 22:41:19 GMT 3
engur [WATERS] (45x: ED IIIb, Ur III, Old Babylonian) wr. engur; im-gu-ra "(cosmic) underground waters" Akk. apsû "(cosmic) underground water"; engurru "subterranean waters".
zur [TAKE CARE OF] (9x: Old Babylonian) wr. zur "to take care of" Akk. kunnû
hili kar [LOVE] (1x: Old Babylonian) wr. hi-li kar "to love, be fond of, attracted to" Akk. menû hili teĝ [LOVE] (6x: Old Babylonian) wr. hi-li teĝ3 "to love, be fond of, attracted to" Akk. menû ki aĝ [LOVE] (666x: ED IIIb, Old Akkadian, Lagash II, Ur III, Old Babylonian) wr. ki aĝ2; kiĝ2; ki-ga-aĝ2; ki-ig-aĝ2; ki-ig-ga-aĝ2 "to love" Akk. râmu ul [SWELL] (74x: Ur III, Old Babylonian) wr. ul "to swell, (to be) distended; to love; attractiveness; pleasure; rejoicing" Akk. habāşu; menû; ulşu (Haha, check out the cuneiform sign for ul. Looks like love!)
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Post by hjernespiser on Jul 7, 2011 10:09:33 GMT 3
Original nature
...the Sumerian writing system was never an exact, phonetic representation of speech; it was not "designed" to reproduce spoken language as such. Rather, to some degree the writing system is a mnemonic device, to jog the memory of the writer and reader. The earliest uses of writing were for administrative texts, of a formulaic nature, whose contents were familiar to the scribes. There was no need to write down what would be obvious to a scribe who was a native speaker of Sumerian, and who was familiar with the material being written. When such scribes read the texts, they knew how to supply the information which was not indicated explicitly in the writing.
Thus, a certain amount of information in the spoken language was not expressed in the writing. The further back in time one goes, the less the Sumerian writing system expresses grammatical elements which we assume were present in the spoken language...
As time passed, Sumerian writing became more and more explicit, that is, the scribes wrote more and more down...
This increase in explicitness is due to several factors: perhaps a natural tendency of writing systems to become more explicit over time, the need to be able to represent vocabulary and personal names of Semitic origin, the fact that Sumerian was gradually dying out and so scribes needed more help in their own understanding of texts, and so on.
To sum up, a fundamental feature of the Sumerian writing system is the fact that it does not fully represent the spoken language.
Internal principles
The script used for writing Sumerian in a combination of logographic and syllabic signs. A logographic sign (or "logogram") stands for a particular word... The external shape of many of these signs is clearly pictographic in origin...
A sign can have more than one logographic value. Thus the one sign 𒀭 (Unicode U+1202D) can represent diĝir, "god", or it can represent an, "sky". In general, it is only the context which determinds the meaning of the sign.
A syllabic sign (or "syllabogram") reproduces a sequence of sounds. For example, the sign 𒂵 (Unicode U+120B5) represents the syllable /ga/. This particular syllable can form a component of several different morphemes or words: it may be part of the cohortative prefix on verbs, or part of the ending of a genitive phrase on nouns, and so on...
Syllabic signs can represent several different sequences of consonants and vowels. Some syllabic signs stand for a single vowel (V), such as a and i. More common are signs standing for the sequence consonant-vowel (CV), such as ba and mu, or vowel-consonant (VC), such as ab and in. A few signs stand for the sequence consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC), such as tuk and gal.
Particularly when writing grammatical morphemes, Sumerian prefers not to use CVC signs. Instead, the script uses a convention that represents the sequence CVC by two signs, CV-VC. For example, the segment /nir/ is commonly written as ni-ir. A writing such as ni-ir does not imply a long vowel. This practice is purely an orthographic convention which helps to reduce the potentially large number of CVC signs which would otherwise be necessary to handle all such cases.
Many signs have more than one syllabic value. Many signs have both logographic and syllabic values, sometimes more than one of each. The syllabic value of most signs derives, in fact, from a logographic value....
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Post by benzin on Jul 7, 2011 13:56:31 GMT 3
And this is pretty much the same with the szekler runic script with the syllables and the not always exact meanings, and its the same with the old egyptian denotic writing. Lets see the characters of the old egyptian demotic writing side by side with the szekler (not the hierogliph !, egyptians used 3 different writing system) you will see that even Szekler script is undoubtedly relates with turkic scripts there are more characters matching with the old egyptian denotic writing. sajatutad.hu/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/egypt-magyar-iras.pngOn the 1st and 3rd row you see the characters of the old egyptian denotic writing, the 2nd and 4th row is the szekler writing. Exact matches for 36 characters. The problem with all these, that many hungarian thinks these things as proofs of a sumerian, old egyptian origin, but there is only relation in words and writings, that doesnt proof nothing, only interesting how these things came to the hungarian language and into the szekler writing, if we would by origin a finno ugrian tribe originally from the upper volga river. My theory is that our homeland was in the northern caucasus and from there ancient hungarians divide up, some went north to the volga and some went west to the carpathians.
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Jul 7, 2011 15:48:48 GMT 3
The more Hungarians and Turks claim that their languages are the closest to Sumerian, the more I believe that Hungarians and Turks have nothing to do with the Sumerians.
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Post by benzin on Jul 7, 2011 18:09:59 GMT 3
I understand that. I thought the same about this too, until I didnt take the time to get deeper into this topic. Millions of people think history is some kind of belief, if they strongly believe we are related to this or that who has a civilized and developed past, we are the relatives of that. I think there are words in both turkic and hungarian from sumerian origin, simply because of geography. Sumerians were the most developed of their age, they must effected the tribes lived north from them, those tribes had effected the ones lived around them and so on. The words of religion in hungarian and most parts of our ancient gramatical system can related with those nations of that region. This question is a fact and it should be 'cleared' from believes and propaganda and should be revised because the official theory of hungarian etnogenesis doesnt give an answer where and how words of religion could come to our language from that region. I think you may accept that too, words for religion are not simple loanwords like a word for an animal or any tool, its not really researched yet how these words came to the hungarian language.
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Post by hjernespiser on Jul 7, 2011 19:32:11 GMT 3
Continued... The syllabic value of most signs derives, in fact, from a logographic value. For example, the sign 𒀭 (Unicode U+1202D) in its meaning as "sky" was pronounced /an/. The use of this phonetic value was then generalized, so that it came to stand for the syllable /an/ in other contexts.
To repeat, the Sumerian writing system is both logographic and syllabic. In general, lexical morphemes are written logographically, and grammatical morphemes are written syllabically, but this is not always the case. Japanese uses Chinese characters for lexical morphemes and hiragana for grammatical morphemes. As will be seen later, the fact that the Sumerian verbal root is basically unchanging in form (unlike, say, the situation in the Semitic languages, where the root takes on different vowels according to its grammatical function) means that a logographic system actually fits the Sumerian language rather well.
Lexical and grammatical morphemes tend to be written in only one way. For example, there are several cuneiform signs with the pronunciation /e/. However, the word for "house", pronounced /e/, was almost always written with the e2-sign and not with any of the other /e/-signs (for the simple reason that the e2-sign was originally a pictograph of part of a house). At any given time and place in Sumer, the number of signs used as syllabograms was also limited. Similarly, in Akkadian there are some nineteen different signs representing the sequence /ša/. But this figure is misleading, because it spans the entire history of Akkadian; at any one time and place, only one or two of these values was in use.
The writing system is to some extent morphographemic. Certain grammatical morphemes exist in a longer and a shorter form; the writing system often uses the longer form while the morphology requires the shorter form. For example, the case marker for the dative case was pronounced /ra/ after consonants and /r/ after vowels. Occasionally, however, -ra is written after vowels, even though presumably pronounced /r/.
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Post by hjernespiser on Jul 8, 2011 0:49:55 GMT 3
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Post by hjernespiser on Jul 8, 2011 3:10:24 GMT 3
Not bad. Free Sumerian grammar pedagogical text: home.comcast.net/~foxvog/Grammar.pdf And it's from my neck of the woods (UC Berkeley). The chapter on the Sumerian writing system is good.
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Post by benzin on Jul 8, 2011 14:25:10 GMT 3
Very useful link thank you. From your link, a few words wich is very interesting for me. Dumutur : the small child. Dömötör (male name in hungarian, also a name of a greek god demetrios, both are possibly related with this sumerian word)
Ambar : swamp (Ember means human in hungarian and this word for human doesnt exist in other language. What is interesting in it that the word magyar etimologically relates to our word for swamp mocsar, strange) Also note that the character change from a to e in hungarian is frequent, and it happened until the mediavel age.
Sabar : bronze (Constantine byzantine emperor mentions the hungarians older name was sabartoi asphaloi, sabars as many other scythian tribes were very famous of their bronze working, it might need some research too)
digir : godess (can relate to tegir, teker, tengir. Quite possible)
inen among the words created from the word for mouth is also interesting as ínyem means my lips where the character y is to soften the n. I would be curious if its common in sumerian writing in this form inen, because its suffixed, so can be a mismatch too. What do we know about personal suffixes in sumerian, did they exist ?
Other words :
Urmah : lion, also in the form Urmaz a finno ugrian name.
In many name for describing different type of iron like silver and gold kú-babbar and kú-sig. Kú in here I think relates with the hungarian word for stone Kõ and these names are referring to white stone and yellow stone instead of white and yellow metal, but has to look after in what other circumstances they used the word Kú to describe metals.
The suffixes : -ni dumuni (his-her son) see in most hungarian family names ending : Romhá-nyi, Domo-nyi (y is again to soften the n, probably slavic influence in hungarian. There is pretty much name ending in hungarian wich ends with i, nyi and it usually means from sw. But I found that at a lot cases there is no such geographical name. For example : Jenei family name is I suppose are the bashkir tribal name Jeney with an exact match. Some scholars I was talking about it with says Im probably right in this.
reduplication : dumu dumu (alll the sons) same in old hungarian, double writing a word means absolutive term. Same in hebrew. Only used in ancient hungarian.
other suffixes : in sw : -ba (exact match, ház-ba, in the house, to the house) his-her : ané (öné in hungarian) their : ané-né (I told about the absolutive term above)
Nana and Benye : plural suffixes in sumerian also can found in several geographical names in hungary with unknown origin.
Also interesting :
-Ne-me (this one here) -Eme (this one here in hungarian)
There is many other.. I hope one day some serious linguist will make a more deeper research, comparing sumerian with hungarian.
I checked a genetic map of hungary, is there any relation possible from genetics for any part of the hungarian population. The answer is yes, lets see.
L : 0.5% (Originally an indush valley population) this is not much, J2A : 8% (this is more interesting, This group has a common ancestor around 12000 BP in the Fertile Crescent, it was the main Neolithic group of the Middle East together with R1b*. This group is very diverse in Hungary, we have found the following subgroups so far: J2a* (M410*), J2a4* (L26*), J2a4a (M47), J2a4b (M67) J2a4d (M319) and J2a4h (L24).
8 % is very much. We consider ourselves finnougrian because of a 3.5% genetic relation. I dont say again we would be sumerians, but got affacted by that region thats for sure.
G2a (P15) : 8% - Caucasian / kaukázusi This group has a common ancestor around 7000 BC, and it arrived into Europe with the first Neolithic farmers (one G2a3 sample was found in a German Neolithic grave from 5000)
Again 8% from a population we dont consider as relatives and are closer to mesopotamia than the finnougrians.
Q : Altaic : 3% (Again something we dont take care of, as it is almost the same ammount as base finno ugrian gens)
E1b1b1a3 (V22) Sudanese / szudáni (this is a brother clade of the Illyrian V13 type) If anyone can tell me how this got into hungarian genetics let me know.. all E1b1 gens are 8% of the population.
Conclusion : some relation worths to be researched a bit deeper. But I think this research should be focused on the caucasus, I dont see other geographical place where all these effections could happen simply because of the huge distances.
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