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The language was called "Scythic" by some, and, confusingly, "Akkadian" by others. In 1869, Oppert proposed the name "Sumerian", based on the known title "King of Sumer and Akkad", reasoning that if Akkad signified the Semitic portion of the kingdom, Sumer might describe the non-Semitic annex.
Although the first known text by native speakers dates to 1885, the first record of the language is a list of words recorded in 1793 by Alexander MacKenzie. 1885: Motu: grammar by W.G. Lawes: 1886: Guugu Yimidhirr: notes by Johann Flierl, Wilhelm Poland and Georg Schwarz, culminating in Walter Roth's The Structure of the Koko Yimidir Language ...
The Sumerian language is generally regarded as a language isolate in linguistics, because it belongs to no known language family. Akkadian, by contrast, belongs to the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. There have been many failed attempts to connect Sumerian to other language families. It is an agglutinative language.
Sumer was the region's earliest known civilization and ended with the downfall of the Third Dynasty of Ur around 2004 BCE. It was followed by a transitional period of Amorite states before the rise of Babylonia in the 18th century BCE. The oldest known settlement in southern Mesopotamia is Tell el-'Oueili.
The Akkadian Empire, established by Sargon of Akkad, introduced the Akkadian language (the "language of Akkad") as a written language, adapting Sumerian cuneiform orthography for the purpose. During the Middle Bronze Age (Old Assyrian and Old Babylonian period), the language virtually displaced Sumerian, which is assumed to have been extinct as ...
Cuneiform is the earliest known writing system [6] [7] 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.
There is a longstanding debate in the academic community regarding when the Sumerian people arrived in Mesopotamia. Partly spurred by linguistic arguments and evidence, overall it is generally clear that a number of fundamental changes occurred in Mesopotamia—such as the use of the plano-convex brick—at the same time the first definitive ...
This is a list of ancestor languages of modern and ancient languages, detailed for each modern language or its phylogenetic ancestor disappeared. For each language, the list is generally limited to the four or five immediate predecessors.