#sumerian grammar

[sumerianlanguage]

How can I learn the grammar?

Hi there! The main grammar resources I use are Sumerian Grammar by Edzard (2003) and A Descriptive Grammar of Sumerian by Jagersma (2010). Both (as well as all other published Sumerian grammar resources I know of) are intended for those reading Sumerian texts, not for those speaking the language, though I find Edzard especially to be comparatively approachable.

I do have my own document that I've made, trying to reframe information from Edzard, Jagersma and other sources to be useful for spoken Sumerian. It's not in a releasable state, though I do refer to it often over on my twitch stream. So if you have grammar questions, hop over there if you like! I do Sumerian streams on the second & fourth Fridays of each month.

[sumerianlanguage]

Hi there! Could you help with a translation for "I will face god and walk backwards into hell"? I've always wondered if there was a way to write it in Sumerian. Thanks very much!! (Your blog is AMAZING by the way, I really appreciate reading your posts!)

Hello, and thanks for the kind words! My twitch community helped me out with this meme translation, for which we settled on Ngae dingirshe igi ngaren agabi ganzershe in'gadun.

Igi ngar 𒅆𒃻 is a phrasal verb meaning " to appear before, look at, face" when it has a regular direct object. But putting the direct object (here dingir 𒀭 "deity") in the terminative case intensifies the meaning (Halloran 2006 says "adds intensity to the gaze"), making Ngae dingirshe igi ngaren "I face (intensely) the deity".

"Backwards" required some research, down a rabbit hole of spatial vocabulary and Mesopotamian conceptions of time-space relationships. We settled on simply agabi 𒀀𒂵𒁉, from aga "back" with the -bi adverbial ending.

For "hell", rather than use the generic (and somewhat euphemistic) kur "underworld", I chose ganzer 𒅆𒆳𒍝 "hell, flame, netherworld", here also in the terminative case as ganzershe 𒅆𒆳𒍝𒂠 "into hell".

"To go, walk" is ngen, an extremely irregular verb in Sumerian, in this case in the first-person present-future form (i)dun 𒁺𒌦. The prefix in'ga- is the way to connect two verbs with the same subject, basically meaning "and, and also", attached to the second (or third, etc.) verb in the sequence, so in'gadun 𒅔𒂵𒁺𒌦 "and I walk".

Putting it all together, we get Ngae dingirshe igi ngaren agabi ganzershe in'gadun "I face the deity intensely and walk backwards into hell," written 𒂷𒂊 𒀭𒂠 𒅆𒃻𒂗 𒀀𒂵𒁉 𒅆𒆳𒍝𒂠 𒅔𒂵𒁺𒌦 in cuneiform.

[sumerianlanguage]

Silim!

I’m aware you’ve been asked a similar question in the past, but for the sake of (Sumerian!) grammatical/word-order correctness, I have a polite query:

How does one say, “child (born) of the prince/ss,” or “child (born) of Ereshkigal” in Sumerian (but not cuneiform, just transliterated English letters, plz)?

I figured the word-order would be something like the examples listed below:

Dumu-nun-tud-da, Dumu-nun-tu-da, Dumu-nun-dú-da (dumu ‘(noun) child, son, daughter, descendant’ + nun ‘(noun) prince/ss, noble, master/mistress’ + tud, tu, dú ‘(verb) to be born’ + -da, genitive)

Hi! You've found the right vocabulary, but are just a little off on the grammar.

For just a noun phrase like this, the simplest to do is dumu "child" + [name/noun] + genitive case ending -(a)(k) "of". Plugging in nun "prince", you'd get dumununa "child of the prince". Nun is usually used for a male prince; for "princess" I'd use egir, which is more specific, in dumuegira. "Child of Ereshkigal" would follow the same pattern, dumuEreshkigala. Note also that if the noun ends in a vowel, the final -a of the genitive ending disappears: dumuUtu "child of Utu".

If you want to use tud "be born", the set phrase structure is dumu + [name] + directive case ending -(e) + tud-da. "Child born of the prince" would thus be dumu nune tudda, "child born of the princess" would be dumu egire tudda, and "child born of Ereshkigal" is dumu Ereshkigale tudda. That final -e also disappears after a vowel, so dumu Utu tudda (as it appears in the Hymn to Nanše A line 85).

The interaction of verbs like tud with the different cases in Sumerian can be confusing. I hope that's clear, and let me know if I can clarify in any way!

[sumerianlanguage]

what is the longest attested sequence of =ak that you've seen in Sumerian texts?

Hmm! I did a little searching, and here's what I've got.

"=ak" is one rendering of the Sumerian genitive case ending, roughly corresponding to English "of" or the possessive "apostrophe-S". It links two nouns together, X-Y-(ak) being "X of Y". The -a sound appears only after a consonant, and the -k- element only before a vowel and not at the end of a word, so in some circumstances (end of a word, after a vowel) it disappears entirely: lugal-uru "the king (lugal) of the city (uru)".

You can have multiple nested genitives, in which case the same rules apply: lugal-uru-e-k-a "the king of (-a) the city of (-k-) houses (e)", with the first -k- being the "inner" genitive and the second -a being the "outer" one. Jagersma (2010) lists several examples of this "stacked genitive", like tug-gu-anshe-k-a "the cloth of the neck of the donkey", as well as instances where additional case endings can be added after the genitive(s), like igi-shabra-Enlilakash "before (-sh) the eyes (igi) of (-a-) the administrator (shabra) of (-ak-) Enlil" - the final -akash represents three case endings in a row.

In theory, genitive elements can be stacked as long as you want, just as in English: "the power of the throne of the king of the city of the houses of copper" (or "the copper houses' city's king's throne's power", if you prefer). However, Edzard (2003) makes clear that "Probably for reasons of euphony, no more than two genitive particles were allowed on a string, even if three or more genitive relationships are involved." Jagersma gives an example of mashdaria-dam-shangnga-Ebarbara-k-ak-am "This is (-am) the ceremonial gift of the wife of the administrator of the Ebabbar temple," with three "of"s being covered by the two genitives in -k-ak-. Jagersma doesn't give an example with more than three nouns linked by these two genitives, but in theory you could have as many as you want. So the example at the start of this paragraph would be a-ashte-lugal-uru-e-urud-ak-a, with just the final two "-ak-a" representing all of the genitives - not *a-ashte-lugal-uru-e-urud-ak-ak-ak-ak-a, which would of course be ridiculous (^_~)

So if the question is "longest sequence of genitives", then I can find examples of three, but wouldn't doubt there are longer ones out there, and can construct my own of any length. But if the question is "longest sequence of =ak", the answer is... two. I hope that answers your question!

[sumerianlanguage]

Hello, I love your blog. Sorry about the previous ask, I hadn't yet seen one of your "no tattoo questions" posts!

Would you be so kind as to translate "Lion of Inanna" and/or "Lion of Ishtar"?

My impression is that the former would be rendered in Sumerian something like "Urgula Inanna.ak" 𒌨𒄖𒆷𒀭𒈹𒀝 but I have little confidence in this translation. I have no idea about "Lion of Ishtar" in Akkadian other than thinking "lābim" would be the genitive form for "Lion"

Hello, and thanks for the kind words!

Urgula 𒌨𒄖𒆷 is a word for lion, but the more common term is urmah 𒌨𒈤; both literally mean "great dog". You've got the basic structure but because the genitive ending -(a)(k) generally disappears after a vowel (see the various recent posts on this case), the form would just be urmah-Inanna 𒌨𒈤𒀭𒈹 or urgula-Inanna 𒌨𒄖𒆷𒀭𒈹, though with a full sentence of context it might appear differently - feel free to send one along if you have one.

As for Akkadian, my grammar isn't strong enough to be able to give you a translation or cuneiform. But I can tell you that in this phrase, the genitive case would be applied to Ishtar (genitive corresponds to the object of the "of" preposition in English), and so lion would probably appear as its base form lābu (again, depending on the context within a sentence). I hope that's helpful!

[sumerianlanguage]

Hello! I was wondering if you had any advice for writing a song in Sumerian? I have been writing lyrics for a bit and I have always been interested in ancient languages so I wanted to know how I should get started. I have some ideas swirling around in my mind as the music I have been writing is very soulful.

Hello! What an interesting question - I haven't done any songwriting in Sumerian myself, but I have practiced by translating modern songs into Sumerian, which I think gives a little insight. On my twitch stream we once translated Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen - a song that is not written for easy translation, it turns out! But it taught me many things about the interaction between Sumerian phonology/grammar and lyrical composition.

One thing I've learned is that sentences in Sumerian often use fewer words but more syllables to convey the same information. "I'd trade my soul for a wish" is seven syllables, but it's nearly impossible to convey the same meaning in Sumerian in less than nine: Zinga ashta shu gabalan. So if you write music with a strict syllable plan, prepare to convey less information per line; or to convey the same amount of info, prepare to sing "faster" (i.e. cram more syllables into a line).

Another important issue is that Sumerian sentences always end with a verb. This makes rhyming a different experience than in English - rather than having two "impact nouns" rhyme at the end of the sentence, common in many music genres, you instead have to rhyme the verbs, and often the verb conjugations. (Here's a post about how this functions in Sumerian poetry - I've linked the in-tumblr version since the on-blog version seems to be rendering out of order, and will also reblog it after this post.) Creative liberty with concept structuring can help: "You took your time with the call / I took no time with the fall" is most easily translated by making call and fall function as verbs: Ullabi gu numaden / Annga ullabi shuben "You didn't call me quickly / But I fell quickly", still a slant rhyme but helped by the fact that the first and second person conjugations ("you called", "I fell") often look identical.

Note that we can't rhyme ullabi "quickly" with the second ullabi since they're adverbs and can't end the sentence or clause. Though in my translation of the chorus, I use namga "perhaps" as almost a final exclamation in order to pull it out of the sentence and slant-rhyme with annga "however": Uda muraten / tumidim, annga / shidngu murabban / gu hemaden, namga "I met you today / a wild act, however / I give my number to you. / Call out to me, perhaps!" (Another really useful word in translating pop music is gana "let's go!" or "yeah!", which is an interjection and thus can stand separate from any clause like this.)

And one final tip: Keep your sentences simple! This is both because of the verb-final structure - Sumerian sentences don't "trail off" in the same way they do in English - and because English loves to use helping verbs, weird time-clauses, etc. that you rarely find in Sumerian. One long, languid English sentence is often best matched by several shorter, choppier Sumerian sentences. It's really hard to convey the combo of time-sequence and counterfactual in the phrase "before you came into my life, I missed you so bad", unless you're willing to spend a whole verse of the song to do so, so I ended up just simplifying it to Zae namtila ekur / Ngae namurashen "You entered my life / I wished for you a lot".

I hope that's helpful! Do check out my Sumerian music tag for more, including examples of actual ancient Sumerian lyrics (not to say "Call Me Maybe" isn't timeless and eternal in its own right). And let me know if you have further questions or any translation I can help with!

[sumerianlanguage]

How would you show superlatives in sumerian (i.e best, greatest, tastiest, warmest, etc.)? Would there be a suffix to add onto the root word to show that it's the "best/most" of something?

Hello! This answer is, as with many things in Sumerian, more complicated than you might expect. The first part of the answer is that the Sumerians did this kind of superlative structure very rarely, especially in contrast to constructions of equality, which they used really often.

In fact, there's a whole case ending, called the equative, that is used just to compare two things as similar or equal - the case ending is -gin, and is best translated as "like, as, similar to." A simple sentence structure is "X Y-gin [verb]", where the verb has an adjectival meaning (like gal "to be big"). So, Ur egin gal "The dog (ur) is big (gal) like a house (e)", i.e. "The dog is as big as a house".

A rarer structure is comparison, corresponding to "more [adjective]" or "[adjective]-er" in English. Sumerian, like some other world languages, has a specific verb used for this, dirig "to exceed". So rather than saying "X is bigger than Y", you'd say "X exceeds Y as to its bigness" - "[X] + [nominalized adjectival verb with possessive suffix] + [Y in the locative or dative case] + dirig [conjugated transitively]". (Note that Y is in the locative case if it's an object and the dative if it's a person.) So, Ur namgalabi ea ibdirige "The dog (ur) exceeds (ibdirige) a house (e with locative case -a) as to its (-abi) bigness (namgal)," i.e. "The dog is bigger than a house."

And finally, superlatives, the "best, most, -est" structure. There is, in fact, no literal way to convey a superlative in Sumerian, and so the easiest way to translate this is to reframe it away from the superlative: "My dog is the biggest!" would be more naturally expressed as "My dog is bigger than those dogs!" (Urngu namgalabi ururbia ibdirige) or just "My dog is big!" (Urngu gal).

There is a structure that can be translated as a superlative, which is "X + [past participle of adjectival verb] + [possessive ending]": Ur galabi "the dog, its having been big...", which can be interpreted as "the biggest dog". But it's used very rarely and can be ambiguous in translation (Ur galabi tur "The dog, having (formerly) been big, shrank" doesn't imply the dog was the biggest at any point).

These structures can be super unintuitive for English speakers, so if you have a specific example to translate, let me know!

[sumerianlanguage]

Would there be a way to say "the" in sumerian? Like if you wanted to say "the person" or "the river", how would you do that?

There isn't! Sumerian doesn't have articles, the words like "the, a, an" in English. Instead, lu means "person" or "the person" or "a person", with the difference understood from context, and same with ida "river, the river, a river". Many languages around the world are like this, among them Russian, Korean and Classical Latin. (If you're into the linguistics behind this, check out this WALS chapter on frequency of articles across languages!)

But of course it's always more complicated. In rare instances, there is a colloquial Sumerian construction that I'd translate as "the" in an emphatic sense. You can add -bi "its" to a noun to mean something like "this one, the one I'm referring to, the one". So ida "the river", idabi "the river, you know, that river". But I caution against overusing it, as it most often appears in certain set phrases like ubia "at that time, at the time we're talking about". I hope that's helpful!