Ok, as enki showed up in our board and asked about a book to learn Akkadian and Sumerian, I thought maybe some more people could be interested in studying the original sources, so here's what I recommended to him:
As I went to university studying Assyriology and Egyptology (which is but long ago now...) we studied by the book "Introduction to Akkadian" by Richard Caplice. It's a great book, big recommendation, because I found the access to he book really very very easy... learning Akkadian and Sumerian at the same time, and making really fast progress, so after a few weeks you are already able to read the first original source texts.
Caplice uses the cuneiform signs written from around 1000-600 BCE, called neo-assyrian form. By learning these, you are not automatically able to read every cuneiform text ever written, because as you obviously know, the cuneiform writing underwent countless changes throughout the centuries. But it enables you to read a large amount of original sources.
Every single chapter or lesson closes with a summary of the new vocabulary and a list of the newly learned signs. Thus very easy to find back certain things lateron.
I'm a bit out of all this now (has been almost 5 years back now, and I did not have any time to continue my studies, so... honestly, I forgot the most things again, because I simply never used them after university...)
But if there should be any questions, concerning this book or general access to the language and writing system, I will try to answer the as good as I can. Remember, I am not a pro!
Re: Learning the language...
Oh, to give the full book details:
"Introduction to Akkadian" by Richard Caplice,
Studio Pohl: Series Major 9 (Dissertationis scientificae de rebus orientis antiqui)
Rome, Biblical Institute Press 1980.
I guess you won't be able to get it in a local bookshop, but you can try to get hold of it via a university.
Re: Learning the language...
On a whim, I dug through some of the random books I have gathered in forays to the rare/specialty book shop here, and was totally knock-down astonished to find that I already have a copy of precisely the same book, same edition, same everything you mentioned.
My copy is a nice blue paperbound job...
It is sitting here staring at me as if to say: You eeeediot!
Oh well, I can get started a little earlier than I counted on!
Great great great that the book is still available!
Yeah, it does look like a photocopied bunch of papers (which it probably is... )
I already thought of scanning the whole thing and including it in the site (after trying to contact the publishing house, of course)...
So it's still around and the gods lend you a helping hand, as well!
I found the book pretty easy to learn with, especially for autodidacts, too...
All the success in the world for you then!
Re: Learning the language...
Gateways2Bab board, heads Up! I guess the gods listened and Frank and Marcus are "on their contacts" Only High Magick can explain HOW both of them have the same hard-to-get book in their shelves ... right now!
This one I havenīt got on me... "as yet" may the Universe be whispering
From the Depths and To the Heights to share in all spheres
Re: Learning the language...
Greetings from the Sumerian capital of Nippur! Sumerian has absolutely nothing to do with Akkadian, except that the Semites appropriated the brilliant Sumerian invention of writing for their own purposes. My mentor has used Caplice as a textbook in the past, but when I learned Akkadian, no good book was available. Some are using John Huehnergard's book. The standard work on Sumerian grammar appears to be the book by Marie Louise Thomsen, The Sumerian Language, which I think is just coming back into print through Eisenbrauns.
Silim!
Edited by: Frank at: 5/7/01 12:40:47 am
Re: Learning the language...
I'll start my study next September, using J. Huehnergard, Blacks' Concise Dictionary and Labat's handbook on cunieform. I'm living outside the US and I found it quite easy to find the books I needed on the internet, in fact a lot cheaper than buying them in the local academic book stores.
If anyone is interested I'll post some links to some great stores with catalogs in english containing some afwul interesting stuff.
Well, this is the forum section on interesting books...
simply post the links here (start a new topic in "Latest books on ANE"), there'll be enough people interested! (inluding me )
Re: Learning the language...
Yes! Yes! Yes!
Thank you, Kansuke!
Please post titles and where you got them?
As you have seen, I'm working on a cuneiform drill program... and already thinking of enhancements like a Akkadian to Sumerian sign xref/dictionary and simple sentence checker... and on and on... Maybe this could be the first modern Sumerian\Akkadian word processor
But V1.0 first!
I need all the practical references I can get... and I'm sure others would appreciate as well
Huehnergard's books is on the 'required reading' list and my teacher dr. Vanstiphout assured me that it was great for self-study.
Caplice's book ( a new edition just came out btw) is IMHO too compact for self study and requires some understanding of the basics of semitic languages and some knowledge of linguistics as well. The pronounciation part also could do with some brushing up, but now i'm using the 1988 edition and the new one might be better (just ordered it in Leiden or Leyden as you overthere call it). I'll try and post some urls soon.
I also know of some university project concerning html coding of cuneiform and there already are some word processors capable of producing cuneiform as well.
cuniform letter
Might somebody be able to help me identify a cunieform sign or letter? I have aquired a very tiny seal that's supposed to be Neo-Babylonian. It has a single sign/letter on it, and I'm curious what it might be. I do not have a scanner, but I would happily mail a postcard from sunny Florida with the sign on it to any address that you cared to allow me to use to send it to you.
Re: cuniform letter
Hello Rick and be most welcome to our board The official words of welcome are 'Welcome welcome and happy be in our blessed society!"
hmmm... we have lots of people quite knowledgeable in cuneiform here. Perhaps you could send a message to Dubsar? Dubsar is in the US and he is our Sumerologist. I also think the world, the stars and the universe of him, since we have been cyberfriends for more than 3 years now... Dubsar has also the best website on Nippur, which was the sacred capital of Mesopotamia for many many centuries... as you may know well ...
Please let us know of the meaning of the cuneiform sign as soon as you find out about it. I have just started to learn Akkadian, being more of a mythographer myself.
Great to have you here and delighted you jumped into the board and started posting!!!
Love, light and laughter,
Lishtar
From the Depths and To the Heights to share in all spheres
Caplice & Huehnergard
Hello,
I've been trying to study from the Caplice's book that is on this site - but my high school vocabulary just doesn't make it. I do can study words and cuneiform signs, but I simply don't understand the rest of the book. The fact hit me when I saw chapter two's name, and realized I didn't understand a word of it.
So is there a linguistical dictionary or anything of the like available that could make me understand it?
About John Huehnergard: He seems to have two books out, the grammar of akkadian and the key to the grammar of akkadian... So are these books easier to understand? I would really like to find the *most elementary* book on akkadian available.
If anyone could help me, I'd be most grateful.
I'm most interested in both sumerian and akkadian; I've found several comprehensible introducts to the latter (including Caplice mentioned above) but I cannot seem to find anything similar for the former. I've had a look at Marie-Louise Thomsen's "The Sumerian Language", but found it anything but "an introduction"; rather a study of the grammar for acomplished achamdemic linguists - not a book from which it is possible to learn the language from first principles. It also contains virtually nothing on sumerian use of cuneiform.
Does anyone know of a caplice-like counterpart for sumerian, or at least a slightly more approachable book on the language for which a masters in linguistics isn't prerequistite?!
Out of interest - it is advisable to learn akkadian before sumerian? From what (little!) I understand from Thomsen's book, the latters seems very much more complicated and involved - or is this simply a false impression gianed from reading a simple book on one and a very involved book on the other?
Only High Magick can explain HOW both of them have the same hard-to-get book in their shelves ... right now!
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