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Reading this thread and seeing the author complain about how ambiguous Sumerian is, I find it all the more incredible that we're able to figure out how to trans

by notamy 5y ago

Reading this thread and seeing the author complain about how ambiguous Sumerian is, I find it all the more incredible that we're able to figure out how to translate dead languages like this...

bradrn 5y ago
Generally speaking, translation of dead languages is done via means of bilingual texts. The Rosetta Stone is the most famous of these; for cuneiform, the key was apparently a trilingual Old Persian/Elamite/Akkadian inscription (the ‘Behistun inscription’). In this case, Old Persian is an Indo–European language, and Akkadian is Semitic, so those languages have plenty of modern-day relatives with very similar structures, which helps decipherment. Once cuneiform was deciphered, Sumerian/Akkadian bilingual texts were sufficient to decipher Sumerian: again, the Semitic nature of Akkadian helped a lot here. It also helps that most languages use more or less similar techniques to express certain concepts and relations. The elaborate case system and verbal morphology, though ‘exotic’ for Europeans, aren’t necessarily all that different to those found in languages elsewhere. As for ambiguity… I’m not entirely sure how that particular problem is overcome, but the author mentioned duplicate manuscripts which together can remove some of the ambiguity. Beyond that, we just need to infer the missing pieces from the fact that languages are usually self-consistent to a large extent. (Disclaimer: I know very little about this area, though I do enjoy reading about linguistics!)
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > Once cuneiform was deciphered, Sumerian/Akkadian bilingual texts were sufficient to decipher Sumerian This isn't quite right; we didn't just find bilingual texts. We found curricular texts that were intended to train Akkadian speakers to be literate in Sumerian, which is obviously much better.
  - bradrn 5y ago
    Huh, I had no idea! As I said, I’m not an expert.
wl 5y ago
Sumerian was a dead prestige language used by scribes in ancient Mesopotamia. As such, there are parallel word lists and other such texts written in Akkadian (which is fairly well understood by modern scholars) meant for scribes learning the language.
- nerdponx 5y ago
  It's wild to consider that, thousands of years ago, there were already languages that were considered old and dead.
josefx 5y ago
Here[1] is a video covering how cuneiform (the writing system) was deciphered, most of it was solved after they found an inscription in three different languages. [1] https://youtu.be/PfYYraMgiBA?t=1542 https://youtu.be/PfYYraMgiBA?t=1542

by notamy 5y ago

Reading this thread and seeing the author complain about how ambiguous Sumerian is, I find it all the more incredible that we're able to figure out how to translate dead languages like this...

bradrn 5y ago

Generally speaking, translation of dead languages is done via means of bilingual texts. The Rosetta Stone is the most famous of these; for cuneiform, the key was apparently a trilingual Old Persian/Elamite/Akkadian inscription (the ‘Behistun inscription’). In this case, Old Persian is an Indo–European language, and Akkadian is Semitic, so those languages have plenty of modern-day relatives with very similar structures, which helps decipherment. Once cuneiform was deciphered, Sumerian/Akkadian bilingual texts were sufficient to decipher Sumerian: again, the Semitic nature of Akkadian helped a lot here. It also helps that most languages use more or less similar techniques to express certain concepts and relations. The elaborate case system and verbal morphology, though ‘exotic’ for Europeans, aren’t necessarily all that different to those found in languages elsewhere. As for ambiguity… I’m not entirely sure how that particular problem is overcome, but the author mentioned duplicate manuscripts which together can remove some of the ambiguity. Beyond that, we just need to infer the missing pieces from the fact that languages are usually self-consistent to a large extent. (Disclaimer: I know very little about this area, though I do enjoy reading about linguistics!)

thaumasiotes 5y ago
> Once cuneiform was deciphered, Sumerian/Akkadian bilingual texts were sufficient to decipher Sumerian This isn't quite right; we didn't just find bilingual texts. We found curricular texts that were intended to train Akkadian speakers to be literate in Sumerian, which is obviously much better.
- bradrn 5y ago
  Huh, I had no idea! As I said, I’m not an expert.

wl 5y ago

Sumerian was a dead prestige language used by scribes in ancient Mesopotamia. As such, there are parallel word lists and other such texts written in Akkadian (which is fairly well understood by modern scholars) meant for scribes learning the language.

nerdponx 5y ago
It's wild to consider that, thousands of years ago, there were already languages that were considered old and dead.

josefx 5y ago

Here[1] is a video covering how cuneiform (the writing system) was deciphered, most of it was solved after they found an inscription in three different languages. [1] https://youtu.be/PfYYraMgiBA?t=1542 https://youtu.be/PfYYraMgiBA?t=1542