Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION The Language's Relatives and Development What about Assyrian? A note on Sumerian Pronunciation About the exercises THE CUNEIFORM SCRIPT, TRANSLITERATION AND NORMALIZATION Phonetic writing Sumerographic writing and phonetic complements Determinatives The cuneiform script: how it evolved Transliteration Which sign is being used to write a syllable? Normalization SOME GENERAL FEATURES OF THE LANGUAGE Roots and patterns Position of the verb within the sentence Articles Pronouns as subjects of verbs Sound changes Syllables and division into syllables ('syllabification') Sound change 1: vowel elision Sound change 2: vowel contraction Sound change 3: assimilation of consonants OVERVIEW OF NOUNS AND ADJECTIVES Case Gender Number Words functioning as nouns NOUNS AND ADJECTIVES, SINGULAR The second millennium BC The first millennium BC NOUNS AND ADJECTIVES, PLURAL The second millennium BC Masculine nouns: Masculine adjectives: Feminine nouns and adjectives: The first millennium BC HOW TO SAY 'OF': THE 'CONSTRUCT STATE' Origin of 'construct' forms Formation of the 'construct state' in the singular Formation of the 'construct state' in the plural Use of the singular and plural construct forms ADVERBS AND LOCATIVES OVERVIEW OF VERBS The four verb systems The sub-systems: tn and t 'Weak' verbs Verbs with 'a' and verbs with 'e' Tenses Pronouns and gender Summary THE PRESENT Forming the present for non-weak verbs s Forming the present for weak verbs THE PRETERITE THE PERFECT THE STATIVE VERBAL FORMS FOR ALL PERSONS HOW TO EXPRESS WISHES AND COMMANDS SUBORDINATE CLAUSES VERBS AND THE DIRECTION OF MOTION PRONOUNS THE DUAL A FEW TRICKS OF THE TRADE Sandhi spellings Puns Unorthodox syllable divisions Special sign readings Alphabetic influence Rebus writings Scribal errors resulting from copying Scribal errors resulting from dictation The structure of poetic lines Structural parallelism FURTHER READING APPENDIX: GLOSSED CUNEIFORM READINGS GLOSSARY

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All you need to read and understand Babylonian.

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All you need to read and understand Babylonian.

About the Author

Martin Worthington is a Research Fellow in Assyriology at St John's College, Cambridge. He specialises in Babylonian and Assyrian grammar, literature and medicine.

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"as you move through the book you become more and more excited about learning this language" - Amazon reviewer"as you move through the book you become more and more excited about learning this language" - Amazon reviewer