Re: Origin of the Sumerian language

On Tue, 17 Jun 2003 23:26:18 +0000, Gerry <waluk@...> wrote:

>They shouldn't be. The reason they were included in this blurb was
>simply as a way to show that a person could change from one religious
>faith and in turn embrace two others. In traditional linguistics
>studies, it is usually assumed that one person speaks only one
>language.

I don't think that's assumed at all.

>> The Sumerians were, as far as we know, the first people to device a
>writing
>> system for their language. It was emphatically *not* an alphabet.
>> Sumerian writing is logographic, as is well known.
>
>Yes, the earliest writing in Mesopotamia was a picture writing
>invented by the Sumerians who wrote on clay tablets using long reeds.
>The script the Sumerians invented and handed down to the Semitic
>peoples who conquered Mesopotamia in later centuries, is called
>cuneiform, which is derived from two Latin words: cuneus , which
>means "wedge," and forma , which means "shape." This picture
>language, similar to but more abstract than Egyptian hieroglyphics,
>eventually developed into a syllabic alphabet

There you go again. There's no such thing as a "syllabic alphabet".

There are logographic/logosyllabic, syllabic and alphabetic writing systems
(the latter can be subdivided, using Peter Daniels' terminology, into
abjads [consonantal alphabets such as Phoenician], abugidas [where the
characters denote consonants with a designated inherent vowel, and other
vowels are denoted by diacritics on the basic consonant symbols: e.g.
Ethiopic, Indic] and alphabets proper [with both vowels and consonants:
e.g. Greek]). The only thing that might be called a "syllabic alphabet"
(or an "alphabetic syllabary") is a mixed system such as Iberian writing,
which consists of alphabetic symbols for vowels and sonorants/fricatives,
and syllabic signs for stop+vowel combinations (TA, TE, TI, TO, TU etc.).


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...