I uploaded an archive of the original Not A Linguist Blog here.
Introduction to Akkadian - Lesson 2
This entry is taken from my old blog and was originally written in 2009.
This is a continuation of “Introduction to Akkadian”.
abum (אבום): father; Hebrew - av (אב)
achum (אחום): brother; Hebrew - ach (אח)
ashatum (אשתום): wife; Hebrew - isha (אישה)
Note that in the construct form the Hebrew is ishath (אישת).
awatum (אוותום): word
banium (בניום): builder, maker; Hebrew - livnoth (לבנות): to build
beltum (בעלתום): lady, mistress; Hebrew - ba3ala (בעלה)
I am assuming that there is an Ayin missing between the "b" and the "l" in the Akkadian. Cuneiform could not represent pharyngeal consonants and/or those consonants might not have been used in Akkadian.
belum (בעלום): lord, master, owner; Hebrew - ba3al (בעל)
bishum (בישום): possession
darium (דריום): everlasting
dinum (דינום): judgment, legal case; Hebrew - din (דין)
ekallum (אקלום): palace
The book notes that this as a loan fom Sumerian "egal".
eli (עלי): on, upon; Hebrew - 3al (על)
elishu (עלישו): on it; Hebrew - 3alo (עלו)
eqlum (עקלום): field
I am going with Ayin here because the book notes that the original root was Het Quf Lamed (חקל). Ayin and Het are both pharyngeal consonants that Cuneiform apparently didn't represent correctly.
erreshum (ערשום): tenant farmer
(Again the root is given with a Het.)
ertsetum (ארצתום): earth; Hebrew - erets (ארץ)
The Akkadian form of the word is feminine with a final Taw.
eshemtum (עשמתום): bone
chulqum (חולקום): lost object
idum (אידום or עידום): arm, side
inum (עינום): eye; Hebrew - 3ayin (עין)
itti (איתי): with; Hebrew iti (איתי) = with me
ittishu (איתישו): with him; Hebrew - ito (איתו)
kalum (כלום): totality, entirety; Hebrew - kol (כול)
kanukkum (כנוכום): cylinder seal
Must have been the rage back then...
libbum (ליבום): heart, centre, middle; Hebrew - lev (לב)
Marduk (מרדוך): Marduk, one of the local gods
In the Hebrew Bible he is known as Merodakh (מרדך).
marum (מרום): son
matum (מתום): land
misharum (מישרום): justice
nidintum (נידינתום): gift
qatum (קתום): hand
qistum (קישתום): present, gift
re'utum (perhaps ראותום): shepherdship
ruba'um (רובאום): prince, noble
shechrum (שחרום): small
tsibtum (ציבתום): construct, interest (on capital)
shirum (שירום): exalted
I want to say that this is the same root as Hebrew "sarah" (שרה): "princess".
shaknum (שכנום): governor
shalshum (שלשום): one third; Hebrew - shlishi (שלישי)
shalushtum (שלושתום): one third (feminine)
shama'u (שמאו): sky, heavens; Hebrew - shamayim (שמים)
sharratum (שרתום): queen; Hebrew - sarah (שרה): princess
Note again that a He (ה) suffix denoted a Taw (ת) in the root. sharratum and sarah share the same root Sin/Shin Resh Taw (שרת) which is again a female version of the root Sin/Shin Resh (שר).
sharrutum (שרותום): kingship
shiprum (שיפרום): work
shabtum (שבתום): seat, dwelling
shulmum (שולמום): wholeness, health; Hebrew - shalam (שלם): complete
shumum (שומום): name, offspring; Hebrew - shem (שם)
shuqurum (שוקורום): very costly, previous
tuppum (טופום): clay tablet
Now I notice that emphatic t is marked with a dot in the book.
u (ו): and; Hebrew - w (ו)
zerum (זרום): seed
zittum (זיתום): share of property
Introduction to Akkadian
This entry is taken from my old blog and was originally written in 2009.
Read a blog entry introducing the Akkadian/Assyrian language here.
I am currently reading "Introduction to Akkadian", fourth edition, by Richard Caplice. I have another book about the language but it assumes that the reader learns Cuneiform quickly and I am not going to do that.
What I noticed immediately was how many words are very similar to (if not in many cases simply the same as) Hebrew words. The grammar is similar too. But let's look at the words first.
The book presents some vocabulary in each chapter and in the first chapter explains that words in the "status rectus", the word state in which nouns are declined, usually have suffixes for cases including "-um" (ום) for the nominative.
The words are given in Latin letters and occasionally in the text in Cuneiform but I transliterate them into Hebrew for easier reading. (I am assuming Alef for "a" or "e" vowel at end of words as in Aramaic.)
I will also write words with and without matres lectionis (vowel letters) so as to demonstrate both pronunciation and relationship to Hebrew words which have different vowels.
Unfortunately the difference between Alef and Ayin is not represented in the Latin script, so I will assume Alef unless Ayin makes obvious sense. A similar problem exists for Taw and Tet.
Other Latin transliteration I use:
ts for Tsadi (emphatic s)
ch for Het (voiceless pharyngeal fricative)
3 for Ayin (voiced pharyngeal fricative)
ana (אנא): to
arnum (ארנום): sin, crime, punishment
ashrum (אשרום): place
ashum (אשום): because of, concerning, because
awilum (אווילום): man
bitum (ביתום): house; Hebrew - bayit (בית)
bitatum (ביתתום): houses; Hebrew - batim (בתים)
dannum (דנום), danatum (דנתום): strong, powerful (male and female)
erretum (ארתום): curse, malediction
ezzum (אזום or עזום): angry
gitmalum (גיתמלום): perfect, noble
ilum (איל or אל): god; Hebrew - el (אל)
ilu (אילו or אלו) or ilanu (אילנו or אלנו): gods; Hebrew - elim (אלים): gods.
ina (אינא): in, among, from within, with (instrumental)
ishatum (אישתום or אשתום): fire
(A feminine version of Hebrew esh (אש): fire.)
ishtu (אישתו or אשתו): from
kabtum (כבתום): heavy, honoured, important (person)
kadrum (כדרום): wild, fierce
kima (כימא or כמא): as, like, as, that, when; Hebrew - kamo (כמו): like.
machrum (מחרום): front
(This is perhaps related to macher (מחר): tomorrow.)
martsum (מרצום): sick, difficult, painful
nishu (נישו or נשו): people; Hebrew - anashim (אנשים)
pushqum (פושקום): difficulty
rabum (רבום): great; Hebrew - rav (רב)
(The word "rabbi" derives hence.)
rimum (רימום): wild bull
safum (ספום): scattered
shanum (שנום): second, other; Hebrew - shini (שני)
sharum (שרום): king
(This is certainly related to Hebrew sarah (שרה): princess.)
tamcharum (תמחרום or טמרחום): battle
ummum (אומום or אמום): mother; Hebrew - ima (אמא): mother.
wardum (ורדום): slave, servant
washtum (ושתום or ושטום): difficult, hard, fierce
zikarum (זכרום): male, man; Hebrew - zekher (זכר): male.
(Continuation: Lesson 2)
The Assyrian Language
This entry is taken from my old blog and was originally written in 2009.
I have bought two books about an East-Semitic language, the language of Assyria, Akkad, and Babylon. It died out about 2800 years ago and was essentially replaced first by Aramaic and 2000 years later by Arabic, presumably in part because those languages could be written more easily.
Assyrian was written in Sumerian Cuneiform, a syllabary (meaning that its characters or, rather, pictures, represent a syllable each) and picture system (some pictures stood for complete words) originally intended for an unrelated language which didn’t share with Semitic languages the consonants or, obviously, the meaning of the words.
Sumerian lacked some sounds of Assyrian, most notably the Ayin*. I understand the script uses the symbols for Het** plus vowels for Ayin plus vowels. Apparently the vowels were not as much of a problem (assuming that Assyrian is as regular as Hebrew and other Semitic languages).
*Ayin is a voiced pharyngeal fricative (roughly the fricative of a very hard “q”) or a voiced velar fricative (Dutch “g”) following a vowel.
**Het is a voiceless pharyngeal fricative (a very low in the nech pronounced sound similar to “ch” as in “loch” but more like a deep “h”) or a voiceless velar fricative (“kh” or “ch”) only in Arabic.
From what I understand so far, many words are very similar to or based on the same roots as Hebrew words I know. A common word ending appears to be the third root consonant followed by an “u” vowel.
Assyrian used to be spoken in what is now northern Iraq around, for example, the city of Arbil, which in Assyrian means “four god(s)” (“arba ilu”).
The only word I knew from Assyrian apart from the city name was the first person singular pronoun which has survived into Biblical Hebrew, giving credence to the Biblical claim that the ancestors of the Israelites came from Assyria.
Hebrew and Phoenician (aka the local languages of Canaan) for “I”: ani
אני
Word used in Exodus in the Ten Commandments: anoki
אנכי
Assyrian/Akkadian word for “I”: anaku (which I cannot spell here in Cuneiform)
אנכו
This is also quite different from Arabic for “I”: ana
آنا
Or in Hebrew script:
אנא
So far I have read the first few chapters of the grammar book.
The later chapters assume that one learned the Cuneiform script.
Other blog entries on the Assyrian language
- The Assyrian language (this entry)
- Introduction to Akkadian
- Introduction to Akkadian - Lesson 2
To Be Now or To Be Here
For a while I have wondered why the root for the copula (in English the verb "to be" but not used in the same way in all other languages) is different in Arabic and Hebrew.
In Hebrew the root is hayah (היה = /hayah/ = "he was"), in Arabic it's ka'an (كان = /ka'ana/ = "he was").
You can transliterate Arabic into Hebrew into Latin using this program for Mac OS X.
Similar (to the Hebrew root) words in Hebrew include words like הוא = /hu/ = "he" and היא = /hi/ = "she" and other words that describe identity. Those same words exist in Arabic too (although there they are spelt without the final Alef) and I think they derive from an identity root consisting of the consonants He and Yud.
In Aramaic the root is haway (הוי = /haway/ = "he was"). I am sure that root is related to the Hebrew root. (Find an Aramaic root dictionary here.)
He, Yud and Waw have a tendency to replace each other depending on a word stem. He can become Yud[1], Yud can become Waw[2]. My guess is that that is what happened in words deriving from the identity root hayah.
Similar (to the Arabic root) words in Hebrew include the word itself, כאן = /ka'an/, which means "here" and "now" in Hebrew and Aramaic. But in Aramaic there is also a similar-sounding word כען = /ka3an/ (the 3 is an Ayin, a voiced pharyngeal fricative) which also means "now". Whether it derives from כאן or whether the Aramaic and Hebrew כאן = "now" derives from the root with the Ayin I do not know.
Still wondering which of the two was the original copula, I tried to find an East-Semitic (Akkadian) word for "to be" but found none (not in 10 minutes of googling anyway). I did find the Amharic (Aethiopian) word though on this Amharic language Web site.
I can't read Amharic script. Luckily Wikipedia has an article on the Amharic script.
The word given for "to be" is transliterated as /naw/ which corresponds to the result when comparing with Wikipedia's table. Apparently Amharic is read from left to right. How odd.
How does one determine the root of a word in Amharic? Is it not the third person perfect as in other Semitic languages? Where does the /n/ come from?
Tracking the /n/ on the Semitic Consonants table does not give any useful results. The Amharic /n/ corresponds to /n/ in all other Semitic languages. And Arabic /k/ corresponds to /k/ in all other Semitic languages too. Those are not interesting consonants.
Hebrew /h/ is slightly more interesting because of its ability to transform into other consonants but it also corresponds to /h/ in all other Semitic languages except Akkadian where there exist no pharyngeal or glottal consonants at all[3].
So all Amharic did for me was add a third root to the question of why there are two distinct roots. And all three roots seem utterly unrelated to each other (but two of them seem related to other words with related meaning).
I am not arriving at any conclusions here. It's easy to assume that maybe the two roots hayah (Hebrew/Aramaic) and ka'an (Arabic) simply meant to different things which ultimately both became copulas. Maybe the hayah root is about existence as such while the ka'an root is about existence at a specific place and time. Hence from the hayah root derive words describing people and from the ka'an root derive words describing, well, "here" and "now".
But how does the completely different Amharic root fit into this? Is it a third word or a replacement for one of two other roots?
And it doesn't help that the only Tamazight (language of the Berber nation, related to Semitic languages) dictionary I could find mentions two words for "to be", both with completely different roots.
Actually, that does help. Those two words have different meanings similar to the ones I concluded must exist above.
Tamazight /g/ = "to be" in a descriptive sense and Tamazight /ili/ = "to be" in a location sense might correspond to hayah and ka'an in an existence sense and a location/time sense. The roots don't correspond, but the idea of having two different concepts for those does.
But Tamazight is really too many thousands of years removed from the Semitic languages.
Why oh why does that word have to have a different root in every single language?
Not A Linguist Out
Footnotes
[1] He becoming Yud: קנה = /kanah/ = "he bought" -> קניתי = /kaniti/ = "I bought"
[2] Yud becoming Waw: ישב = /yashav/ = "he sat" -> הושיב = /hoshiv/ = "he seated"
[3] Sumerian had a huge influence on Akkadian. Maybe Sumerian didn't have glottal stops or pharyngeal fricatives?