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Sumerian Language
Sumerian ) was the language of ancient Sumer. It is one of the List of languages by first written account, oldest attested languages, dating back to at least 2900 BC. It is a local language isolate that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia, in the area that is modern-day Iraq, Iraq. Akkadian language, Akkadian, a Semitic languages, Semitic language, gradually replaced Sumerian as the primary spoken language in the area (the exact date is debated), but Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred language, sacred, ceremonial, literary language, literary, and scientific language in Akkadian-speaking Mesopotamian states, such as Assyria and Babylonia, until the 1st century AD. Thereafter, it seems to have fallen into obscurity until the 19th century, when Assyriologists began Decipherment, deciphering the cuneiform inscriptions and excavated tablets that had been left by its speakers. In spite of its extinction, Sumerian exerted a significant influence on the languages of the area. The C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sumer
Sumer () is the earliest known civilization, located in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (now south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. Like nearby Elam, it is one of the Cradle of civilization, cradles of civilization, along with ancient Egypt, Egypt, the Indus Valley Civilisation, Indus Valley, the Erligang culture of the Yellow River valley, Caral-Supe civilization, Caral-Supe, and Mesoamerica. Living along the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Sumerian farmers grew an abundance of grain and other crops, a surplus of which enabled them to form urban settlements. The world's earliest known texts come from the Sumerian cities of Uruk and Jemdet Nasr, and date to between , following a period of proto-writing . Name The term "Sumer" () comes from the Akkadian Empire, Akkadian name for the "Sumerians", the ancient non-Semitic languages, Semitic-speaking inhabitan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Literary Language
Literary language is the Register (sociolinguistics), register of a language used when writing in a formal, academic writing, academic, or particularly polite tone; when speaking or writing in such a tone, it can also be known as formal language. It may be the Standard language, standardized variety of a language. It can sometimes differ noticeably from the various spoken language, spoken Variety (linguistics), lects, but the difference between literary and non-literary forms is greater in some languages than in others. If there is a strong divergence between a written form and the spoken vernacular, the language is said to exhibit diglossia. The understanding of the term differs from one linguistic tradition to another and is dependent on the terminological conventions adopted. Literary English For much of its history, there has been a distinction in the English language between an elevated literary language (written) and a colloquialism, colloquial or vernacular language (sp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Persian
Old Persian is one of two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of the Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native speakers as (Iranian).''cf.'' , p. 2. Old Persian is close to both Avestan and Vedic Sanskrit, and all three languages are highly inflected. Old Persian appears primarily in the inscriptions, clay tablets and seals of the Achaemenid era ( to 300 BCE). Examples of Old Persian have been found in what is now Iran, Romania ( Gherla), Armenia, Bahrain, Iraq, Turkey and Egypt, with the most important attestation by far being the contents of the Behistun Inscription (dated to 522 BCE). In 2007, research into the vast Persepolis Administrative Archives at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago unearthed Old Persian tablets, which suggest Old Persian was a written language in use for practical recording and not only for royal display. Orig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Persian Cuneiform
Old Persian cuneiform is a semi-alphabetic cuneiform, cuneiform script that was the primary script for Old Persian. Texts written in this cuneiform have been found in Iran (Persepolis, Susa, Hamadan, Kharg Island), Armenia, Romania (Gherla), Turkey (Van Fortress), and Darius the Great's Suez Inscriptions, along the Suez Canal.Kent, R. G.: "Old Persian: Grammar Texts Lexicon", page 6. American Oriental Society, 1950. They were mostly inscriptions from the time period of Darius I, such as the DNa inscription, as well as his son, Xerxes I. Later kings down to Artaxerxes III used more recent forms of the language classified as "pre-Middle Persian". History Old Persian cuneiform was inspired by the Sumerian language, Sumero-Akkadian language, Akkadian Cuneiform script, cuneiform. At the beginning of the reign of Darius I in 521 BC, the Persian people, Persians did not yet have their own writing system. The administrative language of the Persian Empire was Elamite language, Elamite; in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Urartian Language
Urartian or Vannic is an extinct Hurro-Urartian language which was spoken by the inhabitants of the ancient kingdom of Urartu (''Biaini'' or ''Biainili'' in Urartian), which was centered on the region around Lake Van and had its capital, Tushpa, near the site of the modern town of Van in the Armenian highlands, now in the Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey. Its past prevalence is unknown. While some believe it was probably dominant around Lake Van and in the areas along the upper Zab valley, others believe it was spoken by a relatively small population who comprised a ruling class. First attested in the 9th century BCE, Urartian ceased to be written after the fall of the Urartian state in 585 BCE and presumably became extinct due to the fall of Urartu. It must have had long contact with, and been gradually totally replaced by, an early form of Armenian, although it is only in the 5th century CE that the first written examples of Armenian appear. Classification Urartian is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luwian Language
Luwian (), sometimes known as Luvian or Luish, is an ancient language, or group of languages, within the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. The ethnonym Luwian comes from ''Luwiya'' (also spelled ''Luwia'' or ''Luvia'') – the name of the region in which the Luwians lived. Luwiya is attested, for example, in the Hittite laws. The two varieties of Luwian are known after the scripts in which they were written: Cuneiform Luwian (''CLuwian'') and Hieroglyphic Luwian (''HLuwian''). There is no consensus as to whether these were a single language or two closely related languages. Classification Several other Anatolian languages – particularly Carian, Lycian, and Milyan (also known as Lycian B or Lycian II) – are now usually identified as related to Luwian – and as mutually connected more closely than other constituents of the Anatolian branch.Anna Bauer, 2014, ''Morphosyntax of the Noun Phrase in Hieroglyphic Luwian'', Leiden, Brill NV, pp. 9–10. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hurrian Language
Hurrian is an extinct Hurro-Urartian language spoken by the Hurrians (Khurrites), a people who entered northern Mesopotamia around 2300 BC and had mostly vanished by 1000 BC. Hurrian was the language of the Mitanni kingdom in northern Mesopotamia and was likely spoken at least initially in Hurrian settlements in modern-day Syria. Classification Hurrian is closely related to Urartian, the language of the ancient kingdom of Urartu. Together they constitute the Hurro-Urartian language family. The external connections of the Hurro-Urartian languages are disputed. There exist various proposals for a genetic relationship to other language families (e.g. the Northeast Caucasian languages, Indo-European languages, or Kartvelian languages that are spoken in Georgia). It has also been speculated that it is related to " Sino-Caucasian". However, none of these proposals are generally accepted. History The earliest Hurrian text fragments consist of lists of names and places from the e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hittite Language
Hittite (, or ), also known as Nesite (Nešite/Neshite, Nessite), is an extinct Indo-European language that was spoken by the Hittites, a people of Bronze Age Anatolia who created an empire centred on Hattusa, as well as parts of the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia. The language, now long extinct, is attested in cuneiform, in records dating from the 17th ( Anitta text) to the 13th centuries BC, with isolated Hittite loanwords and numerous personal names appearing in an Old Assyrian context from as early as the 20th century BC, making it the earliest attested use of the Indo-European languages. By the Late Bronze Age, Hittite had started losing ground to its close relative Luwian. It appears that Luwian was the most widely spoken language in the Hittite capital of Hattusa during the 13th century BC. After the collapse of the Hittite New Kingdom during the more general Late Bronze Age collapse, Luwian emerged in the early Iron Age as the main language ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eblaite Language
Eblaite (, also known as Eblan ISO 639-3), or Palaeosyrian, is an extinct East Semitic language used during the 3rd millennium BC in Northern Syria. It was named after the ancient city of Ebla, in modern western Syria. Variants of the language were also spoken in Mari, Syria, Mari and Tell Brak, Nagar. According to Cyrus Gordon, Cyrus H. Gordon, although scribes might have spoken it sometimes, Eblaite was probably not spoken much, being rather a written lingua franca with East and West Semitic features. The language was discovered through cuneiform tablets found in Ebla. Discovery The 1964 discovery at the Ebla, Tell Mardikh site in Northern Syria of an ancient city from the second half of the third millennium BC completely altered archaeological knowledge of the time, as it indicated the existence of a contemporary urban culture during the Early Dynastic Period (Mesopotamia), Early Dynastic Period of Mesopotamia, within a geographic zone where, at the time, previous excavat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elamite Language
Elamite, also known as Hatamtite and formerly as Scythic, Median, Amardian, Anshanian and Susian, is an extinct language that was spoken by the ancient Elamites. It was recorded in what is now southwestern Iran from 2600 BC to 330 BC. Elamite is generally thought to have no demonstrable relatives and is usually considered a language isolate. The lack of established relatives makes its interpretation difficult. A sizeable number of Elamite lexemes are known from the Achaemenid royal inscriptions – trilingual inscriptions of the Achaemenid Empire, in which Elamite was written using Elamite cuneiform (circa 5th century BC), which is fully deciphered. An important dictionary of the Elamite language, the ''Elamisches Wörterbuch'' was published in 1987 by W. Hinz and H. Koch. The Linear Elamite script however, one of the scripts used to write the Elamite language circa 2000 BC, has remained elusive until recently. in Writing system The following scripts are known or assumed to h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cuneiform
Cuneiform is a Logogram, logo-Syllabary, syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform scripts are marked by and named for the characteristic wedge-shaped impressions (Latin: ) which form their Grapheme, signs. Cuneiform is the History of writing#Inventions of writing, earliest known writing system and was originally developed to write the Sumerian language of southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). Over the course of its history, cuneiform was adapted to write a number of languages in addition to Sumerian. Akkadian language, Akkadian texts are attested from the 24th century BC onward and make up the bulk of the cuneiform record. Akkadian cuneiform was itself adapted to write the Hittite language in the early second millennium BC. The other languages with significant cuneiform Text corpus, corpora are Eblaite language, Eblaite, Elamit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Decipherment
In philology and linguistics, decipherment is the discovery of the meaning of the symbols found in extinct languages and/or alphabets. Decipherment is possible with respect to languages and scripts. One can also study or try to decipher how spoken languages that no longer exist were once pronounced, or how living languages used to be pronounced in prior eras. Notable examples of decipherment include the decipherment of ancient Egyptian scripts and the decipherment of cuneiform. A notable decipherment in recent years is that of the Linear Elamite script. Today, at least a dozen languages remain undeciphered. Historically speaking, decipherments do not come suddenly through single individuals who "crack" ancient scripts. Instead, they emerge from the incremental progress brought about by a broader community of researchers. Decipherment should not be confused with cryptanalysis, which aims to decipher special written codes or ciphers used in intentionally concealed secret commun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
