#conversational sumerian

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Lesson 3: Possessives & Family Vocabulary is up!

And there’s a review sheet and worksheet for lessons 2 & 3 available on my website! (Don’t worry, an answer key is included.)

This will be the last main lesson for a few weeks, until I get the chance to film some more. Enjoy!

[sumerianlanguage]

The Mini-Lesson: Lu & Occupation Vocabulary is now up! Enjoy! The next main lesson, on possessive pronouns & family vocabulary, is coming next Monday.

[sumerianlanguage]

Conversational Sumerian Lesson 2: Pronouns, To Be & Simple Sentences

Lesson 2 is up! This one covers singular pronouns and forms of the verb me “to be”, some occupation vocabulary and simple sentence construction.

And thanks so much for the support the previous videos have gotten! It’s been out of this world.

[sumerianlanguage]

#APNY2015: Day 1

All this month, I'll be attempting to participate in #APNY2015 in Sumerian. I might not be on time every day, but my goal is to complete all the (relevant) days by the end of February. You can find out more about #APNY2015 here.

Intermediate: What are a few of your New Year’s Eve traditions?

Ngae u dusangune akitia guKureak gunden, tushdusangash erenden, enedi ene ingaenden. Me "nee libirdimmameam" enden.

Approximate translation: "On New Year's, my friends and I ate Korean food, went to my friend's house, and played games. We said, 'this is our new tradition!'"

[sumerianlanguage]

So for a recent post over on my personal blog I created a tongue-twister in Sumerian and I wanted to show it to you (and break it down below). The twister is:

Ngae ngarima ngarngar-ngarngarngarnga-ngarzangarra ngar

Which means

"I deposited the account summary of my hospitality, encrusted with regulations, in a meadow."

Vocabulary/grammar explanation below the cut

I'll go in order; we start with a couple of small words that are pretty easy

ngae is the pronoun "I"

ngarim means "meadow", so in the locative case (indicated by -a) ngarima means "in a meadow"

Now for that gigantic middle word ngarngar-ngarngarngarnga-ngarzangarra. The main pieces are:

ngarngar is a noun meaning "an account summary" or "the sum total" (like in math)

ngarngarngar (yes you read that right) is one of my favorite Sumerian words, meaning "hospitality" or "careful preparation"

the little -nga piece in the middle is actually a contraction of -ngu, which means "my", and the genitive case -a(k), which relates the two previous elements together like English would use the preposition "of". When these two pieces come together they merge into -nga

ngarza means "customs" or "rites" as well as "rules and regulations" that are imposed by religious institutions, the gods, royalty, a court, or administrators in general

-ngarra is a connective form that means "encrusted with", so [A]-[B]-ngarra means "A encrusted with B" (I'm using it slightly metaphorically here to say "encrusted with rules"; it's normally used for more physical encrustations, as with diamonds or rust)

So to put all these pieces together you get [account summary]-[hospitality]-[my-of]-[rules]-[encrusted with], or "the account summary of my hospitality, encrusted with rules." This word (yes, in Sumerian it is all one word) is the direct object of the sentence, and thus comes directly before the last word in the sentence, the verb:

ngar is a really versatile verb with a whole slew of meanings, but it basically means "to put, set down" and therefore "to deposit, accumulate, establish, or organize". Here, it's in the transitive past with a first person subject ("I") and so appears as the root form ngarwithout any prefixes or suffixes

And that's how you get a tongue twister in Sumerian!

If you're wondering how to pronounce all that, the main thing to note is that the ngsequence appearing over and over is pronounced like the ng in singer (/ŋ/ for you linguists out there). The r you can pronounce pretty much however you want, as linguists don't agree on how the /r/ sound was pronounced in Sumerian.

[sumerianlanguage]

Conversational Sumerian Lesson 1: Greetings & Introductions

In this lesson, we'll learn some basic greetings, how to tell your name, and how to ask the name of someone else in Sumerian.

(P.S. This is my first lesson, and my first edited video. Plus I have iMovie so go easy on me!)