Tongue-tied

There is something very powerful about speaking out loud words from a language that has not been used for over two thousand years.

The past week has marked the beginning of my journey into the study of Akkadian. Akkadian is an Ancient Near Eastern language which was spoken primarily by the Assyrians, Babylonians, and of course, the Akkadians. It is written in cuneiform (although, I will not begin to write in cuneiform for a number of chapters). The book I am using to self-study is "A Grammar of Akkadian" by John Huehnergard and I have just finished the first section which focuses on pronunciation and syllable recognition.

Since the Akkadian language has been out of use for millennia, it is impossible to know exactly how it was spoken. However, scholars have been able to make educated guesses about pronunciation by making comparisons with other languages such as Arabic, Amharic, and Hebrew. All three carry some relation to Akkadian.

It is remarkably tricky to get my head around pronunciation. Two words can look very similar but, because of a macron or circumflex, can have completely different meanings. This means careful pronunciation is key.

To give an example: "mutum" means husband, but "mūtum" means death. The only difference is that in "mūtum" the u sound is held longer.


Although I am still a complete beginner, I am loving my introduction to Akkadian. In the next chapter I will begin to study noun declension and independent personal pronouns and I am really excited!