Sumer is the name given to the people of Sumerians. In H. Crawford (Ed.
18.Harran meaning "road". And here the flow of my thoughts leads me to warmly recommend to fellow readers the linguistics discipline as expounded by Anna Wierzbicka and her colleagues.
Here we have created a list of popular Sumerian names that we still use. I much prefer to speak about linguistic and cultural mediation because it is not only about language (or even semiotics) but about human relationships. Thornton, C. P. (2013). Maybe he didnt think it necessary to mention Akkadian even by number? It is also interesting to know that all language is an unbroken chain of transmission and although it has evolved, there are still visible links and borrowing of words that go all the way back to the ancient era. Sumerian mythology was also very rich and the little information we have of them have helped us gather many names.
This is certainly true of the scribal caste and keep in mind that everyone else would have been illiterate and the kingly elite. 72.Ereshkigal - meaning "lady of the great earth". Thirdly, I can conduct a conversation with a man from the black mountains. London: Routledge.
The sentence immediately before the quote posted here is: When I like a torrent with the roar of a great storm, in the capture of a citadel in Elam , I can understand what their spokesman answers. Depending on what the damaged parts of the tablet said, this seems to mean the second of his five languages isnt Akkadian, but Elamite. Ki is also used as a determinative indicating something is the name of a place, but instead of being put before the place name (as is usual for determinatives), it's put after the place name (Lagash-KI, for example, to talk about the city of Lagash). This is a short excerpt, with Sumerian words in roman font and Akkadian words in italic (quoted from (Crisostomo, 2020, p. 410): unigin 10 guru belu gana gu kugbabbar gana aat ekiim zimanaak (Total: 10 workers, lord of the fields, recipients of the payment of the field of Ekim and Zimanak.). 81.Ninhursag - meaning "lady of the mountain". From lino cutting to surfing to childrens mental health, their hobbies and interests range far and wide. Kidadl is supported by you, the reader. The Sumerian Empire under King Shulgi (2094 to 2046 BCE) (Image Credit: Wikipedia), It is a clich to state that everyone who reads this sentence is an heir of the Sumerians, regardless of what your genetic background may be. Ubil-Eshtar, brother of the king, Kalki, scribe, is your servant (Image credit: British Museum). %PDF-1.2
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I find it surprised when there were still a great influence of one language to another during the earliest period of invention of writing. ), A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages (pp. 0000003999 00000 n
In R. Hasselbach-Andee (Ed. As a result, scribes not only needed to learn the art of writing, but they also needed to be formally trained in the Sumerian language. The Sumerians clearly had no such qualms about keeping written languages neatly separate. When I provide justice in the legal cases of Sumer, I give answers in all five languages. About his hiding place, the slave girl of Urnigin said: He lives in Makan-apir. The need of our production and life promotes diversity in writing. It is fascinating to learn that the reason for the invention of writing was to keep records. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. 68.Dumuzi - Dumu, meaning "child" and zid, meaning "loyal". Zhong, Yurou. 76.Ki - meaning "earth". The grammar of Sumeria had nouns that were gender-neutral. On the other hand, language is not that limited as what I assumed, it is more about using loanwords, mixing with the other(s) to create a new writing system. 94.Hirin meaning "shoots of spike plants". Nissa, Nisi meaning "green vegetables". ), A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages (pp. Mesopotamia, Meluhha, and those in between. 0000009594 00000 n
Our Sumerian history highlights that multilingualism may be more ideal for expressing complex ideas between languages and cultures. It looks like this: I bet you forgot you had this friended. ), The Sumerian World (pp. 0000006225 00000 n
Popko, M. (2008). Developing knowledge on why the writing system was invented, who invented writing and how it was invented was fascinating. It is a relatively rare word that refers specifically to interpreters working in the Middle East and with the Arabic, Turkish, and Persian languages. 131. Hi Ingrid, this was a fascinating read along with the other blog post on who invented writing. Hi Ingrid, thanks for sharing a clear picture of the first inventors of writing the Sumerians of Mesopotamia and three specific forms of evidence proving that the Sumerians were multilingual. 
However, my perspective has changed after reading this post. Madala meaning "a thick bundle of reeds used to build a raft". It is fascinating to trace back the long history of the invention of human beings writing system, albeit there is no final result of who is the one exactly put the first stroke on a clay tablet or animal bone piece. Sumerians are the ones who first invented writing. The Sumerian multilingualism impressed me since I have never imaged multilingual texts in ancient times and they have amazing language abilities to speaking multiple languages which is similar to the modern world although the purposes could be different. Ninurta was a god of agriculture and hunting. Over the same period, people who knew how to write established themselves as a small and powerful elite of scribes (Taylor, 2013). There are doubtlessly many reasons but among the most prominent must be (a) that the steppe nomads from the north (Mongols, Manchu) who succeeded in conquering China were less literate and needed to turn to Chinese bureaucrats and their knowledge to keep the empire going; and (b) that China was never (fully) colonized by a European power. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, Takaski, Covid-safe travel between care and compliance, The interpreting profession in Ancient Egypt, the Latin alphabet in which this text is written is a distant descendant, scribes controlled the Sumerian bureaucracy and administration, the interpreting relief in the Tomb of Horemheb, recently we encountered dragoman as a fancy English word for interpreter, The Latin alphabets take-over of the worlds languages, https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section2/tr24202.htm, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/allahabad/script-used-in-ashokan-pillars-is-dhammlipi-not-brahmi-says-scholor/articleshow/52433957.cms, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The appearance of writing systems was great. But then again that irony suggests an evolution that we can see in the search for universals of language over the past several hundreds of years. In addition to administrative texts, some of the earliest surviving texts are surprise, surprise bilingual word lists (Michalowski, 2020). This shows that as long as people have communication with one another the exchange of language will also happen. It is not an easy domain of knowledge, but it is outstandingly exciting. 0000003439 00000 n
In R. Hasselbach-Andee (Ed. The status of interpreters seems to have been similar to that of scribes, as is evident from another famous seal, the seal of the interpreter Shu-ilishu. This weeks articles and lecture highlighted the ingenuity of our ancestors and how language was invented by a collective of people, to fulfil practical needs like keeping accurate records for trade, bureaucracy and religion. Personally, I found it quite interesting to note how multilingual societies and societies with individuals able to communicate in more than one language appeared to be more like the norm rather than the exception also in ancient times. Now remember that recently we encountered dragoman as a fancy English word for interpreter? Yes, I certainly agree that stimulus diffusion from Mesopotamia to Egypt may be why the hieroglyphs were developed; theyre definitely not descended from cuneiform in any narrower sense than that, though (there is no correspondence in shapes, meanings or sounds). 
So, mixing languages must have felt right and sufficiently weighty for such an important title deed. 0000013807 00000 n
For completeness sake, I should add that there are also fragments of monolingual word lists among the earliest surviving records. 0000001214 00000 n
The processes are very amazing and wonderful. Cuneiform has not left any descendants in current use (or in use within the last 2000 years). Sumerian. Crisostomo, C. J. (2019). London: Routledge. Here we have collected the most popular names used by the people of Sumer: 1.Adamen (Latin origin), meaning "argument, fight".
84.Ninsun - meaning "lady of the wild cow". Of the at least three inventors of writing, evolving from images and pictograms, it is wondrous to know that the Chinese script is the only one that has an unbroken living tradition. Thank you, Ingrid! 0000012067 00000 n Initially, I thought Sumerian was the only language for Sumerians whereas they were multilingual speakers. Kidadl has lots of great baby names articles to inspire you. In the peoples of the Ancient Middle East we see our modern selves like through a very old, cracked, blunted, and dusty mirror. ), A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages (pp. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. 0000001736 00000 n The name Nirgal can mean Nergal, the Babylonian gods of war. Other languages like Bengali, Gujarati, Sindhi, Nepali, Marathi, etc are derived from Hindi (e.g., Mother-Ma, Amma, Mata, Maji).
I am still puzzled on the idea that the ancient Maya used it to establish the divine authority of kings, and the ancient Egyptians used it to gain eternal life (this has sparked my interest and look forward to reading more about it). It is fitting that the word for interpreter in so many modern languages should link us back to ancient Mesopotamia, and remind us that all language is an unbroken chain of transmission from the time when humans first learned to speak some 300,000 years ago. As is to be expected from the above, the Sumerians used two different words for linguistic mediator a Sumerian word (eme-bal) and an Akkadian word (targummanu). Writing serving as a tool to benefit a certain ancient social organization is systematically used along with the appearance of surplus produced by agriculture and trades. Then, as today, teachers seem to have taken it upon themselves to act as language police, as this student complaint shows: The one in charge of Sumerian said: He spoke Akkadian! Then he caned me. (quoted from (Crisostomo, 2020, p. 408). 0000005107 00000 n I am impressed by translation and interpreting aspect written in the blog. Her research expertise is in bilingual education, intercultural communication, language learning, and multilingualism in the context of migration and globalization. Through this intriguing article, I have realized that the concept of official language does not necessarily exist.
The advanced interpretation practice also surprised me since it is so close to nowadays. Agree that monolingualism is the much more unusual condition that requires explanation and only emerges under very specific circumstances . But have you ever stopped to think in which language they were writing? Early alphabetic writing systems are more closely linked to Egyptian hieroglyphs than to cuneiform. 31.Musarra (Arabic origin), meaning "inscription of the king". 0000003718 00000 n (Shulgi, 2000, pp. Shulgi. Without writing, people will not know about the history, which they could learn from. According to Mesopotamian mythology, Sumerians believed in many goddesses and gods. The Rosetta Stone, bearing the same message in three different scripts (Egypt, 196 BCE) is well-known in Europe and its name is now a byword for multilingualism. Ecological imperialism: the biological expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (2nd ed.). This was the name of the Sumerian earth goddess. Do you notice that there is a vague similarity between targummanu and dragoman? Studia Orientalia, 17(8), 3-11. Edin meaning "Garden of eternity". 41.Penzer (English origin), meaning "hearth-tender/leather-worker". Just a little correction: the Latin alphabet is descended not from cuneiform, but from Egyptian hieroglyphs (reinterpreted according to the rebus principle in Semitic languages), and the linked video does not claim its descended from cuneiform. This results in the Akkadian word injected in the written language of Sumerian. 90.Garadin, Karadin meaning "pile of sheaves, shock". It does not, and you can find the full line of known transmission here and here. The idea that writing was invented multiple times by civilization shows that inspiration from other writing systems can take different forms and leads to different outcomes. London: Routledge. However, linguistic mediation was necessary with the speakers of other languages, such as Shulgis third, fourth, and fifth language. Oh, sorry! 71.Enli l- where En, meaning "lord" and lil means "world". The humiliations of the Opium Wars and the turmoils of the 19th and early 20th century did actually put the possibility of script change close, as a supposed means to become modern: New scribes may not necessarily have been proficient in Sumerian. It is very interesting to learn the history of writing, and how almost all languages around the world are the breeds of Sumerian multilanguage.
In my palace no one in conversation switches to another language as quickly as I do. It all started out with pictures, which became ever more abstract and slowly developed into logograms, as I explain here. (2020). As a result, there are many names originating from Sumeria which reflected the inclination towards nature that Sumerians had. 119. 624-643). It is another name for the remover of diseases. 85.Ninurta - Nin means "lord" and urta means "ear of barley". For instance, I speak Hindi which is developed from Sanskrit there are certain similarities in the sound and certain words remain the same. Today's Sumerian word is "nin", which means "lady, mistress, queen". In S. L. Sanders (Ed.
Because these groups were bilingual, there was no need for interpretation between Sumerian and Akkadian. 24.Kirashi (Japanese origin), meaning "emmer wheat used for making beer". First, there are texts that include loanwords from one language into the other or texts that are so heavily mixed that they cannot even be assigned to one language or another. 0000013318 00000 n Jyrknkallio, P. (1952). Ninsun was the divine mother of Gilgamesh. 2.Agarin meaning "a flat area; father, mother, womb". There are many Vietnamese words that actually do not exist in English or hard to find a corresponding word to describe exactly Vietnamese versions in English. 124. Maybe we moderns think too narrowly about translation and interpreting, as limited to language. Hello Ingrid, What are the factors that has lead to this phenomenon. It is an ancient name of a Sumerian queen. Given what we know about the ubiquity of linguistic and cultural contact in the ancient world, as today I am inclined to think that mutual inspiration is much more likely than independent invention. She was Sumerian Goddess of death and the underworld. 93. 128. 3.Amah (Arabic origin), meaning "flood, bursting of a dam". Its quite interesting in contrast that today there are still large numbers of monolinguals in the world when multilingualism has been around for so long. 104.Shesa meaning "roasting barley corns". Majoring in linguistics, I have always been curious about how was it like to communicate when people didnt have so-called official languages. Jenny. Zana meaning 'butterfly'. The Luwian word is likely a borrowing from yet another language, which has been covered by the sands of time (Popko, 2008). By joining Kidadl you agree to Kidadls Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and consent to receiving marketing communications from Kidadl. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. The Sumerian language. 0000008928 00000 n By logging in to LiveJournal using a third-party service you accept LiveJournal's User agreement. Sumerian was the powerful lingua franca of the time, but it may well be that, by the time writing really began to take off, most people had switched over to speaking Akkadian. 80.Ningal - meaning "great lady". A female nymph is known by this name. This was the name of the Sun God. Hasselbach-Andee, R. (2020). The obelisk is basically a title deed to four estates. 120. 0000037961 00000 n 23.Hulla meaning "very happy, joyful". Thanks, Jay! 314-328). It surprises me how multilingualism already existed then and that they even had interpreters and translators. Vlker und Sprachen Altanatoliens (C. Brosch, Trans.). Subscribe for parenting tips, family money advice, baby names and more. At the other end of the social spectrum, speaking multiple languages gave you bragging rights also just like in our own time. Today's Sumerian word is "udu" (pronounced "oo-doo"), which means "sheep". Agree we actually have no way of knowing how he counted his languages; even today, its not unusual for people to exclude their mother tongue(s) from a count of their languages, or a widely used lingua franca that everyone is supposed to know . It should have become obvious by now that the Sumerians operated a bilingual language regime. 343-366). 16.Gitlam meaning "lover, husband, spouse". Retrieved from https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section2/tr24202.htm The status of scribes is evident from cylindrical seals like modern trademarks and signatures. Dragoman arrived in English from Old French drugemen or Medieval Latin dragumanus and, via late Greek dragoumanos, goes back to Old Arabic targumn. The modern Arabic word is tarjumn, and from Arabic it goes all the way back to the Sumerians. This shows a great example of mixing language words in the present century and multilingualism growing rapidly. 130. Kishar meaning "line of the horizon". Harran, ancient Carrhae, was a major city in Upper Mesopotamia whose site is in the modern city Harran, Turkey, 44 kilometers southeast of anlurfa. (2013). It is not entirely clear what the Meluhha language was and who the Meluhhans might have been, but they are assumed to have been located in the Indus valley, where the Sumerians had extensive trade interests (Thornton, 2013). I have never known multilingual Sumerians before, but from what you wrote, I know Sumerians are clever, they could rich their language and what they write, they can even translated and interpreted between language and writings, this is an early manifestation of multilingualism. In modern days, people are advantageous in multimodalities, technology advancement and ubiquitous information, but we have limited abilities in interpretation and translation with a narrow focus on language mastery rather than values of cultures and social relationships. So fascinating! 0000012590 00000 n Sumerian is a language isolate that is not related to any other known language, living or dead (Cunningham, 2013). 105.Shezilzilla meaning "dehusking barley corns". Even back to the very beginning of human beings civilization (as currently known), the existence of multilingualism was evidently proved. Thanks so much for the article, it helped me a lot to love more languages in a very diverse society. 401-420). Our ancestors of that period though had strong memory but needed the power of writing to only record something when moving towards urbanization like how many cattle kept to ploy land. Thank you for your sharing about the invention of writing, I can see that writing is always important from the past to now. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. The Sumerians were multilingual, and language contact is evident in the written record from Day 1.