Talk:Sumerian language

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OR? Verification?[edit]

This is Prof. Dr. Osman Nedim Tuna's work: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A3=ind0308&L=language&P=2828626&E=2&B=--------------050000000408020202070501&N=Sumerian-Tuna.pdf&T=application%2Fpdf This may be added to external links section. --78.191.47.19 (talk) 11:09, 5 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Has your list been looked at by some of the linguists that regularly look over Wiki? HammerFilmFan (talk) 16:12, 18 February 2011 (UTC) HammerFilmFan[reply]

Categories[edit]

I would suggest to remove all categories (except for the Category:Sumerian language of course) and write them into the category rather than into the article, so that Category:Sumerian language is a subcategory of all of them, as probably all pages in the Category:Sumerian language could also fall within the scope of the other categories. Opinions? --Thogo (Talk) 18:34, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence of language extinction date[edit]

I would like to know what evidence has been presented to indicate when the languae had died out. A lot of tlk but no dosh is indicated. So by whom and when did this date come up? Enlil Ninlil (talk) 02:44, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. It's not an exact date, it's more like a "the first half of the second millenium BCE" thing (or 1800 BCE +/- 200 years if you like). The land of Sumer has been conquered by Akkadians and Sumerian primary texts ceased to be produced sometime after that. They continued writing Sumerian texts, but these were copies of older texts or religious/ceremonial/liturgic texts, not any every-day stuff like administrative texts or new literature anymore. So it's obvious that there were either no or at least not many native speakers by then. There might have been some folks who still used Sumerian at home, but there is no indication at all that this was the case after the time mentioned. IIRC the latest native-looking Sumerian texts (texts with more or less the full range of vocabulary and grammatical forms and more or less correct grammar) are from the Nippur area from about 1700 BCE or so (don't nail me on that, it's long ago when I learned that stuff ;) ). --Thogo (Talk) 18:53, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

WP:ERA[edit]

While WP:ERA states that one style BC/AD or BCE/CE should not be changed to the other style without consensus, when an article is mixed--half BC/AD and half BCE/CE--it is necessary to standardize on one style. Since there is no evidence here of past consensus-building on this issue, I have standardized the dating in this article on BCE/CE since that is the current academic standard for usage in Near Eastern studies. --Taivo (talk) 14:13, 4 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Since that is the current academic standard for usage in Near Eastern studies"? That is news to me.[1][2][3][4]

As far as I know, "BCE/CE" is a product of political correctness. I doubt any serious scholar would waste time with prancing around with political correctness. Also compare this to this. If I was asked which style was "more common" in literature published during the past 20 years, I would say the AD/BC style, by a ratio of roughly 3:2. This doesn't surprise me in the least, as the attitude of "omg Christian bias" takes place within the culture war in the USA, not within scholarship.

Our best practice is, rather, to revert to the system used by the primary contributor to the original article. Going back to 2008,[5][6] and further[7][8][9], I see that this was clearly AD/BC. I began contributing to this article in 2004, and I have been significantly involved with it. I am by no means the primary contributor, but at least I have a history of being involved in building it. Apart from transient attempts, I can only assume for ideological motivations, the article has used the common AD/BC style for more than six years now.

I have seen lots of attempts to sneak in era changes by first introducing some mixed styles and then later "standardize" in the desired direction (or sneak in a change and then be all for "WP:ERA" when people change it back[10][11]). I am not saying that this is what you intended to do, but it is in effect what you have done. --dab (𒁳) 12:07, 20 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Dbachmann, please practice WP:AGF. Contemporary Near Eastern usage is, indeed, moving toward BCE/CE in most cases. However, when I made my edit back in November, the article was mixed in usage. This was no "ideological motivation" or "attempts to sneak in era changes", it was a standardization based on common usage. Please do not attribute motivations to my action that were not there. This standardization was made nearly 6 weeks ago. --Taivo (talk) 12:36, 20 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Seconded. We should use here what people *nowadays* are more accustomed to, and that's (B)CE. It's just scientific standard meanwhile. We aren't in 2004 any longer. That the article has used that system for six years now, well, that's fine (and sad in that case), but it doesn't necessarily mean that it will be like that forever. If you don't want anyone to update the article, then print it and keep it as it is. But this is a wiki and that means that any sort of modernization is possible at any time by anyone, with or without approval by any author of the previous revisions. --Thogo (Talk) 23:46, 20 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"The attitude of 'OMG Christian bias'", just like the attitude of 'OMG whatever kind of bias' should, in fact, be a legitimate concern for scholarship, because scholarship is traditionally opposed to bias. So is Wikipedia. While BC/AD are more common, the suggestion that "no serious scholar" would ever use BCE and CE is laughable. And the use of the term "political correctness" as a cussword in reference to any attempt at removing symbolic Christian/Western/right-wing/male/white/hetero bias (but, interestingly, never for the reverse) is quite unsuitable for Wikipedia. dab should restrict himself to discussing the application of Wiki policy (in this case, WP:ERA) to the current situation and not lash out at perceived commie hippies. --91.148.159.4 (talk) 20:37, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the moral support, but I doubt that Dbachmann has read any of it or even cares. It was six weeks between the time I standardized the usage of BCE/CE in the article from the mix it was before to his "outrage". He's not a regular here. --Taivo (talk) 21:17, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's important to take positions, no matter who reads them. For the record, I personally use "BC" and "AD" and attach no religious significance to that, but I think Bill O'Reilly-esque rhetoric should be confined to politics pages, not spread into pages about the Sumerian language.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 19:01, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry for changing the calendar namings with [12] to the new way - I didn't realize most of the refs were still using the old Christ/Lord naming. Taivo, when reverting, make sure not to revert things like the addition of references, and cleaning up of the article, along with what you want to get rid of as you did with [13]. For an example of how to selectively change the article, see [14]. Interesting to see that the ETCSL page has "This evidence is spread over more than 3,000 years, the first sources dating to the late fourth millennium BCE and the last to the first century AD. When Sumerian ceased to be spoken is difficult to determine; according to some estimates this took place during the early second millennium BCE.", emphasis mine. -- Jeandré, 2011-08-02t13:03z

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Skipping alot of history[edit]

Alot of history is skipped. There is no mention of the Babylonians being the first to adopt the language in its written form and not its spoken. The Babylonians took what they wanted and changed stuff around. Yes, the written Sumerian was around until the Assyrians and Akkadians took over everything, but the spoken had changed significantly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.217.89.55 (talk) 03:11, 24 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Kramer and misquote[edit]

There is a misquote (false citation) added for the book that states something else completely. The actual quote from Samuel Kramer is here: Kramer, Samuel, Noah 1963. The Sumerians. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [15] pg 306:“In vocabulary, grammer, and syntax, however, Sumerian still stands alone and seems to be unrelated to any other language, living or dead”.. It clearly says that Sumerian is a language isolate yet some users have added the opinion that Samuel Kramer has mentioned it as Turkic! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.255.251.165 (talk) 03:58, 17 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, but it's not just Turkish nationalists...some Hungarian nationalists assert this as well. It's hard to tell which nationalist camp is pushing this one, but they are both wrong. --Taivo (talk) 08:59, 17 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well that one is .[16]..I suggest that a strict criteria should be used on that section and that is the authors actually meet WP:RS and their theory is accepted by the majority of the community. Here is my response to another one of those "word lists": http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AAdministrators%27_noticeboard%2FIncidents&diff=507903391&oldid=507902145 "These are baloney sources which no one in academica takes seriously. For example: the word Saghir is a loanword from Arabic to Persian to Turkish. Or the word "tin" (body..) is actually Persian loanword to Turkish. Sorry but Sumerians are not Turks and no one takes this crap seriously. As you said: "I'd bring you hundreds of articles, but most of them are unpublished on the Internet".. So they do not belong to wikipedia but to your ethnic nationalistic forums. It is always some Turkish or Hungarian author trying to make the false claim. And this is exactly why the above user with his multiple socks below should be watched. By the way here is a fun one (Latvian and Sumerian) [17] (looks 10x longer than your list!). Much longer than your list! How about Basque and Sumerian? [18]. How about Dravidian and Sumerian? [19]? How about Sumerian and Tamil [20]? Oh wait unlike Turkish, Sumerian is a split ergative language (like Kurmanji Kurdish). So maybe it is Kurdish? Unlike Turkish, Sumerian has all three affix, prefix and infix (Turkish has only pre-fix)..wait English/Persian have all three. So maybe it is English? Sumerian has 6 vowels (same ones as Arabic), so maybe it is Arabic> Oh wait I can make a funny comparison too.. Sumerian Pap..Latin Pope mean father[21].. Or Sumerian Abzu and Persian "Ab" mean water[22]. Unfortunately, you are not aware of how modern linguistic works. Please spare wikipedia with this sort of nationalistic nonsense. Also the Kramer book precisely said the opposite of what you guys were inserting. It is a fringe viewpoint and so stop pushing fringe viewpoint. No serious scholar thinks Sumerian were Turks. But unfortunately, Wikipedia does not have a policy in dealing with this sort of nationalistic editing.. Anyhow, falsification of the Kramer was demonstrated. --96.255.251.165 (talk) 22:44, 17 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I removed Ural-Altaic altogether as it seems Uralic and Altaic are considered a separate linguistic family. So can someone seriously watch this page? If I had not checked Kramer, imagine some poor high school student that would have been citing him! Kramer is actually a reputable scholar..so this is actually a disaster in terms of misrepresenting sources.--96.255.251.165 (talk) 22:44, 17 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Suggested languages for Sumerian language[edit]

From Britannica, "The linguistic affinity of Sumerian has not yet been successfully established. Ural-Altaic (which includes Turkish), Dravidian, Brahui, Bantu, and many other groups of languages have been compared with Sumerian, but no theory has gained common acceptance." REF
From the article in Wikipedia: "Sumerian has been the subject of controversial proposals purportedly identifying it as related genetically with a wide variety of agglutinative languages, as well as with some non-agglutinative languages, however it is generally accepted to be a language isolate. As the most ancient written language, it has a peculiar prestige, and such proposals sometimes have a nationalistic background and enjoy virtually no support among linguists because of their unverifiability.[9] Examples of suggested related languages include: ..."
So no matter for the suggested Ural-Altaic over there. So please don't remove it from the article. Thanks. Barayev (talk) 02:17, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Britannica is not a specialized source. Specially Uralic-Altaic is not a single family. Uralic and Altaic are considered two different language families. Even the Britannica (again not a specialized source) alludes to this [23]. My problem is with websites and not academic sources. If there are actual quality academic journals within the last 30 years that mention controversial hypothesis, they should be brought. By noname authors who do not specialize in Sumerian language, and whose only contribution is to make an article about how their own mother-tongue is related to Sumerian should not be placed in the article. I believe user Taivo who is a linguist can handle this article better. --96.255.251.165 (talk) 02:27, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
However, my concern is utmost of making people believe mainstream scholars scuh as Kramer support controversial theories and I have pointed this out already. No one yet has taken responsibility for the false citation. --96.255.251.165 (talk) 02:27, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Removing Ural-Altaic from the article means that it wasn't suggested by linguists. I don't support any theories, and I don't claim Sumerian people were Turkic, Finnish or Hungarian, but I say that Ural-Altaic have its place on the article as a suggested family by linguists for Sumerian language. It doesn't mean Sumerian was an Ural-Altaic language. Thanks. Barayev (talk) 02:30, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Britannica says what you quoted: ""The linguistic affinity of Sumerian has not yet been successfully established. Ural-Altaic (which includes Turkish), Dravidian, Brahui, Bantu, and many other groups of languages have been compared with Sumerian, but no theory has gained common acceptance."". So it cannot be placed for support of Ural-Altaic. It should be in a separate part. Also the family of Ural-Altaic is still controversial from mainstream linguists. --96.255.251.165 (talk) 02:35, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Also the second website does not work (Alfred Toth or whatever) and random websites should not be quoted in such articles.. --96.255.251.165 (talk) 02:36, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You're really kidding! :) You're changing Ural-Altaic to Uralic. So Britannica is also false! In the same way, you can separate Indo from European. :)) Also, you can delete any other language families and Dravidian from the article as Britannica says "many other groups of languages have been compared..." and "no theory has gained common acceptance." You don't understand well what you read, so you need to improve your English a bit. OK, I'll not struggle with you. I can't spend all my time to persuade someone. Barayev (talk) 02:41, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ural-Altaic is not anymore accepted as a single supra-family but separate family branches. It is not like Indo-European. I do not make up the rules, just read the Britannica article on Ural-Altaic. Also wikipedia does not use random websites. Please carefully read WP:RS.

It would not be bad if you just read the first line in Britannica: "Sumerian language, language isolate and the oldest written language in existence". Note it is clear that it is a language isolate. So why quote Britannica only for Uralic, or Altatic, or Ural-Altaic? When it is clear it rejects the Ural-Altaic theory. I think we need to stop all these psuedo-linguistics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.255.251.165 (talk) 02:45, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

First, I don't have to persuade you, and you don't have to persuade me.
Second, You warn me about Wikipedia rules, but you break the 3RR.
Third, you remove a referenced information from the article without a consensus.
Fourth, I'm fed up with you, and not struggle with you. Barayev (talk) 02:50, 18 August 2012 (UTC) [This account is a sock puppet of Tirgil34 and has been blocked indefinitely.][reply]

It is simple:

  • We cannot use Britannica under "Ural-Altaic" (in reality now there is hardly any linguist who supports such a supra family and Uralic and Altaic are seen as different groupings). It has the same relavence as it has to Bantu in Africa (per the quote). Britannica is clear Sumerian is a language isolate.
  • We cannot use websites who are not academic journals. Else I can make a website about Sumerian-/English/Latin/Persian/Italian and start with words such as Pap (father), abzu and etc. So at least if we want to give the fringe viewpoint any weight, let us have some academic journal that has published such theories. Or at least a serious scholar from the last 30 years who has published articles and books on Sumerian languages, and does not have the mainstream viewpoint.
  • As per 3rr..they are not reverts of the same page, but change of Ural-Altaic to Uralic. And furthermore, removal of Britannica to support fringe theory. Britannica calls it language isolate in the first line and rejects all other theories as non-mainstream . --96.255.251.165 (talk) 02:52, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

At least Prof. Kramer (who is probably passed away) was spared. All the watchers of this page for not even double checking about Kramer should really be more vigiliant. --96.255.251.165 (talk) 02:56, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have information about those papers (published on journals). I give a link to the article from the Internet, so that you can check them online. However, you claim that I send fake resources or URLs. You just clamnuate me. Even if I don't gve a link to any article, you'll not accept what I give as reference. You're just prejudiced. So I don't need to discuss with you. Barayev (talk) 03:05, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Okay well.. at least bring the name of the author, journal and publication. Also something about the academic qualification of the author. Your 2nd URL did not work for a while but now it works. Maybe the site was down. However, I do not think Wikipedia can accept random URLs. Anyhow Britannica cannot be added to Uralic or Ural-Altaic, as it is clear it is a language isolate. It can only be added to the beginning of the section showing non of these theories (affinities to modern languages) are accepted. I have asked the user Taivo for his opinion on all of this and hope to get it. He is at least a linguist major. --96.255.251.165 (talk) 03:07, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'll await the result of user Taivo's comment. I am still frustrated by the Kramer issue and it is hard for me to trust attributions without actual details that can be verified. --96.255.251.165 (talk) 03:10, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

My change of Ural-Altaic to Uralic was justified per the title: "Simo Parpola, Sumerian: Uralic Language, 53e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Moscow, July 23, 2007". Of course Uralic and Altaic are considered separate languages. Simo Parpola's theory here again would be controversial. He is Finnish, so he is saying Finnish is Sumerian. It is remarkable, that in the past 30-40 years, all the people claiming Sumerian is related to a language are native speakers of that language. --96.255.251.165 (talk) 03:14, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Barayev, you obviously don't know anything about what you are talking about here. 1) Britannica is not a specialized linguistic source. It's like citing Wikipedia as a scientific source. Neither are scholarly sources. 2) "Ural-Altaic" has been completely rejected by the vast majority of reliable historical linguists, so EB's reference to Ural-Altaic just shows its unreliability in this area. 3) Citing EB only for its "authority" on Ural-Altaic is falsifying the actual statement in EB since the statement in EB is a long laundry list of discredited ideas, not an assertion about Ural-Altaic. --Taivo (talk) 05:12, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
As I recall a recent discussion at WP:RSN about encyclopedias, it was felt that they were rarely a desirable source and that we should stick to more specialist sources, especially for anything contentious. So far as I am concerned, for this article we should stick to sources that unquestionably meet WP:RS and WP:UNDUE, which basically means academic sources. Dougweller (talk) 06:02, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Forgot to add that Barayev asked for an indefinite block and this was granted. Dougweller (talk) 06:07, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hi folks, Samuel Noah Kramer: "The first Sumerian rulers kept up an unusually close, intimate connection with a city-state called ARATTA which was probably located in the Caspian Sea territory. The Sumerian language is an agglutinative tongue, reminiscent to some extent of the Ural-Altaic languages, and this fact may also point to the same general area as Aratta." (Kramer, Samuel Noah: The Sumerians, their History, Culture and Character, University of Chicago Press, p.42-43.) 78.170.99.254 (talk) 06:33, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Aratta is basically known from myth, and if it actually existed, might even have been located within Sumer itself. Anyway, not a good starting place for linguistic arguments.HammerFilmFan (talk) 17:44, 4 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Again nothing about Sumerian being Ural-Altaic. It simply is saying it is agglutinative language (as is Dravidian, Basque, Bantu, Malaysian, Native American languages, and etc.). Kramer is clear: "Kramer, Samuel, Noah 1963. The Sumerians. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [15] pg 306:“In vocabulary, grammer, and syntax, however, Sumerian still stands alone and seems to be unrelated to any other language, living or dead”.. ". So that is a definite statement and Kramer cannot be used to make a false claim that he proposes that Sumerian is in the Ural-Altaic family. Of course the book by Kramer as mentioned by Taivo is getting out-dated,..however this definitive statement by Kramer means that no language family can be used in relationship to Sumerian (while citing Kramer). --96.255.251.165 (talk) 14:33, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Extinct from about 2000-1800 BCE[edit]

The infobox says "Attested from 3350 BCE. Effectively extinct from about 2000-1800 BCE; used as classical language until about 100 AD."

So why did it stop getting used for 200 years from 2000-1800 BCE, and then presumably start being used again until 100 CE? This information seems highly suspicious and probably incorrect. 109.144.174.200 (talk) 17:26, 9 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'll have to check, but I think it became extinct as a spoken language but was still used as a written language. Dougweller (talk) 21:00, 9 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"the oldest writing" (lie)[edit]

"Archaic Sumerian is the earliest stage of inscriptions with linguistic content, beginning with the Jemdet Nasr (Uruk III) period from about the 31st to 30th centuries BC."

Then the Vinča script (pre 5000 BCE) is probably after the Sumerian (3000 BCE)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.210.251.1 (talk) 14:33, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Please read the statement again. Then read Vinča symbols: "The symbols are mostly considered as constituting the oldest excavated example of "proto-writing" in the world; that is, they probably conveyed a message but did not encode language, predating the development of writing proper by more than a millennium." You are calling them a script but that making an assumption. Dougweller (talk) 15:02, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

removed - tagged over 2 yrs ago - restore if citation noted[edit]

Removed: *Hurro-Urartian languages (see Subarian, Alarodian Citation needed | date=June 2012) HammerFilmFan (talk) 18:06, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Delitzsch[edit]

His other two books, the grammar and the shorter work for non-Assyriologists, are both on Internet Archive. 108.18.136.147 (talk) 20:37, 27 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Problems in attempting to relate Sumerian[edit]

Snipped:

Several linguistic problems arise in the attempt to relate Sumerian with known language families. First, the amount of time between the earliest known form of Sumerian and the oldest reconstructable form of the proposed related language is too great to make reliable comparisons. Another problem difficult to overcome is that the phonetic and semantic change to vocabulary that can occur over long periods of time can make a language unrecognizable from its ancestor. Words in two languages that may sound alike today are more likely to be unrelated than related.

It is not clear to me what point this paragraph is this trying to make. While comparison with modern languages is of course likely to run into so many accidental similarities that we could not tell them apart from any possible actual cognates, Sumerian is still e.g. younger than Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Afro-Asiatic, approximately as old as Proto-Uralic, and not enormously older than Proto-Dravidian.

(This is also not a problem that affects Sumerian specifically. We see the same issue just as well with e.g. "family-internal isolates" like Tocharian or Hungarian, whose first attestations or earliest reconstructible forms are also several millennia separated from their last common ancestor with other related languages. Regardless their affinities are quite recoverable by standard methods of historical linguistics.)

The last phrase seems to be trying to point out the existence of false cognates, but a discussion of this really ought to mention something about the regular methods of establishing relationship as well — such as regular sound correspondences in basic lexicon. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 14:18, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Unused reference[edit]

An unused refernce was causing a cite error to dispaly at the end of the reference list. I have commented it out, but left it in place in case a further edit would find it useful. If those editors who know this topic better think it is not of value to the article, they can and should simply remove it. The reference was:

<ref name=Edzard>{{cite book|last=Edzard|first=Dietz Otto|title=Sumerian Grammar|year=2003|publisher=Koninklijke Brill NV|location=Leiden|isbn=1589832523}}</ref>

I came to this issue from a post on the Help desk. DES (talk) 23:27, 10 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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Northern or southern Mesopotamia?[edit]

The first line of the article states "Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer and a language isolate which was spoken in northern Mesopotamia", but if you look at the map in the Sumer article

Map of Sumer

, you'll see that all the Sumerian cities are in the south. Is "northern" just a mistake, or is some important information missing here (like the language first developed in the north, but then shifted southwards)?

You are quite right. Fixed. --Taivo (talk) 20:44, 26 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand why such trivial forms of vandalism in important articles that have many watchers (182 in this case) and are on topics that are relatively prominent among laypeople (and, in this case, notorious for attracting cranks) aren't caught more quickly. Clearly, our watchers aren't very good at watching. This is something that deeply concerns me. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:56, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Some watchers have hundreds of articles that they watch and due to limited time on Wikipedia, we don't always notice changes to articles that are not typically subject to vandalism, especially when the change shows up as a "0" in the size of change parameter on our watchlist. In other words, we're only human :) (Hope that helps.) --Taivo (talk) 16:09, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I do understand that, but a size change "0" is a very bad reason to neglect inspecting a change: a troll could insidiously swap figures, for example. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:24, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Also, with all due respect, a watchlist that includes hundreds of articles is pointless exactly because it is overwhelming. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:29, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
This is hardly the place to be making aspersions against the habits and practices of other Wikipedia editors. Mistakes happen and edits slip under the radar because we are all only human. A large watchlist is hardly uncommon, especially when 90% of the articles are small and have no edits in any 5-year period. 99% of all "0 size" edits are bots making minor, trivial administrative changes, so not inspecting every one is reasonable. Bravo to the anon IP who spotted this one. That's the way Wikipedia is supposed to work--people spotting things that need fixing and either making the fix or notifying other editors that there is a potential problem. Wikipedia will never be a perfect resource--even EB has bogus information--but as long as we work as a group, things won't go off the rails. --Taivo (talk) 19:13, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough, though obviously IPs are not bots – clearly there is usually no need to inspect bot edits, especially "0 size" ones, but IP edits are another matter – I for one never trust IPs, sorry. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:49, 30 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Even more southern than you may think. The southern half of what was once Sumeria is now under water, in the Persian Gulf. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:1D4D:ECEB:719:853D (talk) 09:19, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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drive-by citation-format tagging by SynConlanger[edit]

This should have been taken to the TP back in August 2015. So, here it be (now.) Any valid complaints on this, or does the tag need to go? 98.67.1.124 (talk) 18:14, 15 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oldest language[edit]

Check out Tamil and Sanskrit too properly.... Rktheking (talk) 15:08, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about the Sumerian language, not about Tamil or Sanskrit. Also, this article doesn't say anywhere that Sumerian was/is the oldest language. - Lindert (talk) 16:46, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The oldest language probably dates to some 250,000 years ago - or more. Sumerian is one of the oldest documented languages with which we have a written form.HammerFilmFan (talk) 08:54, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Turkish pseudo-origin[edit]

The Turkish nationalist claim that Sumerian and Turkish are related is certainly notable, even if it is clearly false. --Macrakis (talk) 18:09, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No, it isn't notable.HammerFilmFan (talk) 08:52, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Second that. For some reason Bronze Age cultures attract a lot of present-day nationalistic fervour (and / or prejudice against certain present-day ethnicities), which cannot be but deludedly misguided. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:1D4D:ECEB:719:853D (talk) 09:17, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Can you elaborate on your "clearly false" statement? You should cite your sources that "clearly" reject or stand against Turkic(?) relations, if you're making that sharp statements of course.
First of all, "Turkish" language--which's being spoken in Anatolia, is a sub-branch of Turkic languages(Oghuz). And for sure, Anatolian Turkic language has nothing to do with Sumerian language so I am assumming you referred to Turkic language family when you put the title "Turkish pseudo-origin".
I know that Turkish nationalists can participate in vandalism. However, most scientists agree on that Sumerians came to Mesopotamia from West Asia(quoted from Sumer Wikipedia page), so it wouldn't be absurd for someone to to seek relations with other Asian originated languages. Since Sumerian language is clearly not a Indo-European nor a Semitic language, we are left with a limited pool of languages. And if someone is simply not buying the idea of labeling an aggluginative, Asian language with apparent vocal similarities "an isolate", that someone will eventually will come to conclusion that he/she needs to compare Sumerian with Turkic languages. And there are many articles/books written about that controversial topic. Muazzez İlmiye Çığ, also known as Sumerian Queen in Turkey, is a 107 year old Sumerologist who contributed mountains of researches to Sumerian literature and she released a book named "Sumerians are a Branch of Turks" where she makes scientific statements on Turkic and Sumerian languages.
It's for science world to judge whether they're related or not. But I think that your "even if it is clearly false" statement comes from your nationalistic base, and you're doing the exact same vandalism while trying fight against so called "Turkish nationalists". Fanaticus linguae (talk) 07:04, 7 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The thing is that the 'world of science' has already spoken and practically all (non-Turkish) experts in the field agree that Sumerian is not Turkic. And the hypothesis has had plenty of time to be assessed by now, since it is by no means new - people considered it (and rejected it) early on precisely because of the basic logic of comparing with the best-known and largest agglutinative families in the vicinity, which you mentioned. For sources just read any overview of Sumerian, they all treat the issue of genealogy.
As for the argument that 'since Sumerian language is clearly not a Indo-European nor a Semitic language, we are left with a limited pool of languages' - you'll be amazed at how many languages there are that are neither Indo-European nor Semitic, and there is absolutely no rule that says a language must belong to any attested linguistic family, i.e. have any attested relatives. The logic that an 'agglutinative Asian' with 'apparent vocal similarities' can't be an isolate and must be Turkic is likewise hilarious - do you realise how many languages there are in Asia and how many of them are agglutinative? Some 'vowel similarities' are quite common across languages and the vague hints at such a thing in Sumerian don't resemble the Turkic vowel harmony system at all. But even if Sumerian had a very Turkic-like vowel harmony system, both this and agglutination are typological features, whereas genetic relatedness between languages is established by means of the comparative method, with systematic sound correspondences between words in the core vocabulary, and the application of that method just doesn't support the classification of Sumerian as Turkic. Also, you seem unaware of the fact that the Turkic languages hadn't yet become 'West Asian' even 2000 years after the demise of Sumerian; the earliest appearance and roots of Turkic are very far from the Fertile Crescent, in East Asia, with Mongolia and China as the closest neighbours, and it is a very recent newcomer to South-West Asia.
As for Mrs Çığ, 'known as Sumerian Queen in Turkey', I'm very sorry to hurt your patriotic feelings, but the thing is precisely that she isn't known as a 'queen of Sumerology' among Sumerologists outside of Turkey and neither her name nor her 'mountains of research' are widely known internationally, and her age doesn't change that. Maintaining that Sumerian is an isolate doesn't flatter any particular nation's patriotic ego or serve its nationalist ideology, whereas claiming a Turkic relation clearly does. People's saying things you disagree with is not what WP:vandalism means. The first part of your username may be apt, but not the second one. --87.126.21.225 (talk) 08:53, 30 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

New Article about Sumerian Language removed[edit]

I recently added this article : http://www.wseas.org/multimedia/journals/information/2019/a045109-930.pdf It was removed with my content by Doug Weller under the pretext it was written by a computer scientist and so not reliable. I would like a proper explanation why one cannot add this article as a reference ? It seems to me a serious research paper using the latest techs available to find the origin, root of the Sumerian languages.It strengthen the hypothesis (already made by some scholars) that a Sumerian is a king 'creole' language made of 2 main languages : Dravidian & Uralic.--2A02:C7D:E028:C100:7C7B:926C:BE94:5C56 (talk) 19:26, 11 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but that article is rubbish. About the author being a computer scientist, unfortunately it happens in all academic disciplines that a person with accreditation in one field feels that they can and should branch out into others. And it is a well-known piece of academic folklore that computer scientists are particularly prone to producing pseudo-science in other fields than their own. This has certainly been my experience, and, anecdotically, that of every serious scientists I have ever interacted with. I do not mean to belittle or offend anyone; it is just a sad fact of our times. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:1D4D:ECEB:719:853D (talk) 09:15, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The guys who know all those three languages know that Sumerian is an isolate, and is totally unrelated to Dravidian & Uralic. The closest one is Archaic Chinese which belongs to Sinitic family.--Vitaly.v.ch (talk) 14:49, 4 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Emesal[edit]

The page for emesal redirects here, but there is no mention of “emesal” anywhere in the article. As far as I remember, it’s some way of speaking Sumerian that was reserved to women? There should be more explanation about it… CielProfond (talk) 01:18, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It's briefly discussed in the 'dialects' section. --Spasemunki (talk) 02:29, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oh! Indeed… However, it’s spelled there as “eme-sal” and not “emesal,” which might elude a person doing a search as I did… Should we add nonhyphenated spellings for “emeg̃ir” and “emesal”? CielProfond (talk) 02:00, 2 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Emesal redirects to the Dialects section. I don't know what the standard transliteration is, but you can add it if you think it would help. --Spasemunki (talk) 02:55, 2 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Article is much too long and needs to be shortened. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.238.135.34 (talk) 07:40, 5 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There is a morpheme boundary before -sal, this (well, actually 'šal') meaning 'female,' hence, presumably, the hyphen. Johundhar (talk) 17:20, 6 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

case markers are listed twice[edit]

I don't mind, but it looks as though editors put in bits and pieces without checking what was already there. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:1D4D:ECEB:719:853D (talk) 09:10, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Agree, that's too much redundant detail for an introduction to the following subsections. Fixed. –Austronesier (talk) 10:03, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Unicode[edit]

What's the quickest way to get the Sumerian language letters/glyphs in this article to render for me in Chrome? I'm just seeing white boxes right now. Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:58, 23 July 2021 (UTC) (please use {{reply to|Novem Linguae}} on reply)[reply]

Tagging of non-English text[edit]

@Sartma: Greetings! Regarding this edit, what type of notation is "eme-gir₁₅"? If it's a transliteration, I can tag it {{transl}}. Is there a page on this notation scheme that explains what the subscripts mean? I didn't catch anything skimming the article. Thanks! -- Beland (talk) 08:24, 15 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Beland: Hi! It's the canonical way of transliterating cuneiform signs. The indexes distinguish signs that have been reconstructed as having the same pronunciation. For example: 𒄫 = gir, 𒄈 = gir₂, 𒄊 = gir₃, 𒌋𒀜 = gir₄, 𒁽 = gir₅, 𒁼 = gir₆, 𒂠 = gir₁₅, etc. I don't know whether it's explained on Wikipedia, but it's standard practice. Sartma (talk) 08:53, 15 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So tagged, thanks! -- Beland (talk) 08:56, 15 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No Wiki Article for the Sumerian People?![edit]

I'm having trouble believing that nobody has written a separate Wiki article on the Sumerian people. That is a major missing piece. Just saying... Mpaniello (talk) 14:35, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sumer is the article about Sumerian civilization and its people. It makes little sense for this ancient civilization to separate the people from the culture they have produced. –Austronesier (talk) 15:05, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Huh. But it's OK that there are articles on the Roman People, Greek People, Assyrian people, Israelite people, Lydian people, Persians, Medes, etc, separate from articles on their civilizations? OK then, lol... Mpaniello (talk) 15:24, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You are aware that Assyrian people is about the contemporay Syriac-speaking group, while Babylonians simply redirects to Babylonia? Medes is essentially composed like Sumer, only their respective titles refer to different entities (cultural area vs. people), while Media (region) is a pretty superfluous article.
There is no historical record of a Sumerian people that exists separately from the Sumerian civilization and its city-states. On the other hand, Lydians are mentioned in historical sources as an ethnicity within the Persian empire even after the fall of the Lydian kingdom. So many of these comparisons are apples and oranges. –Austronesier (talk) 18:03, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't what you say be true of Romans as well? And Sumerians appear very much to be their own unique ethnicity, based on the genetic evidence presented in the Wiki article on Sumer. Mpaniello (talk) 18:22, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Archaic Sumerian[edit]

I'm pretty certain that we don't know what the language of Proto-cuneiform tablets was. People guess Sumerian because thats what the first cuneiform writings were in. Since cuneiform starts 2900 BC then it seems like Archaic Sumerian also starts then. If they ever do show proto-cuneiform is Sumerian then it would go back to 3300 BC (Uruk III). I am prepared to be educated if I have this wrong.  :-) Ploversegg (talk) 00:43, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Classification[edit]

@Warrenmck: You have removed Nostratic and Dene-Caucasian because of WP:GEVAL issues. I agree with you that these two should not be put on par with established language families, but we should look at this issue from the Sumerian perspective. The remaining proposals are just as hair-raising as these two macro-families, and most of them even less notable and only have a primary source citation (Austroasiatic, Dravidian; there's Marr, too!).

I will restore as a first measure the proposals for Sumerian in Nostratic and Dene-Caucasian, but with explicit flagging. As a next step, we should scrutinize what mainstream sources about Sumerian say. I won't expect a mainstream source to give credence to any of these proposals, but at least we can prune which of the latter actually gets a mention in secondary expert sources, and throw everything else out (per WP:UNDUE). Austronesier (talk) 14:31, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Austronesier We could simply remove them all, but I figured a more surgical start with removing the pure fringe would be a better start, the relationship of Sumerian to other languages has been probed endlessly over the decades and it’s still very clearly an isolate. A paragraph of the relationship to other languages with inline links, rather than as a list highlighting an ocean of nonsense.
I’ve got a decent background specifically in Assyriology since that’s my primary linguistic focus. I can comfortably do the rewrite on that section, though I’d love a second set of eyes on it afterwards Warrenmck (talk) 19:25, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've updated the Classification section to be inline instead of a list. There's not too much content-wise I think could be worth adding. There's some speculation about the contact with Meluḫḫa and loanwords, which is where some of the speculation of a Dravidian relationship comes in, which possibly could be worth emphasizing a little, though the language of Meluḫḫa isn't for sure Dravidian (at all, to be clear). I need to crack open a few books here to get the citations before adding some of that, but I actually want to go through and cite the Cuneiform section first.
I've (again) excised Nostratic and Dené-Caucasian, not trying to edit war with you at all and if you add it back in I'll leave it there. I think, personally, I'm starting to believe that treating fringe macrofamilies with the WP:ONEWAY treatment may be the best way to avoid either accidentally pumping up their crediblity or unintentionally erasing information of relavence (particualrly since that seems quite pertinent). Basically: reference it, don't mention the macrofamily by name or with a wiki link unless it's directly pertinent. Thoughts? Warrenmck (talk) 21:51, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say its a definite improvement. I might even say a few of those references are dodgy and could be considered for reaping. Like I skimmed "Sumero-Indo-European Language Contacts" and was not impressed. Maybe I should do something similar to this for Linear_A#Theories_regarding_the_language. :-) Ploversegg (talk) 00:27, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"Sumero-Indo-European Language Contacts" is someone’s essay from a class. Was that one of the citations? Heck, time to grab my pruning shears again. Warrenmck (talk) 01:27, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I won't restore Nostratic and Dené-Caucasian for now, because eventually, we should only provide a short exemplary listing (not a bullet point list!) of extant proposals based on secondary quality sources. If we have multiple sources mention Nostratic (at least one does), we can do so too. But only a thorough survey of the literature will tell.
Although this is a moot question, I am a bit unhappy of applying the Lord Voldemort principle to Nostratic and Dené-Caucasian. "Sumerian has been linked to Basque" based on a poor source is at least just as fringe-promoting as to say "the Nostratic hypothesis exists", but the first is good because Basque is a thing, while the latter must be deleted because...shhhh, don't say his name!
It's a bit like having to choose between the following:
  • [insert a paragraph with a graphic description from a De Sade novel here that does not contain a single taboo word]
  • "Fuck!"
And then, we only remove the latter because "fuck" is taboo. ;)
–Austronesier (talk) 11:28, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Austronesier To be absolutely fair to you, I should have been consistent and removed Basque as equally fringe. I don't think it makes sense to give Nostratic/Dené-Caucasian the damnatio memoriae treatment, but I think perhaps it's worth maybe not pointing every single language family or isolate article at those. I don't know, I think it'd need to be handled delicately to not risk being a WP:POV issue in the other direction? This is where I think a more comprehensive macrofamily article could solve a lot of problems, though. Warrenmck (talk) 21:42, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A nice example to follow is Michalowksi (2004) in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World’s Ancient Languages:

Over the years various unsuccessful attempts have been made to link it [Sumerian] with a variety of languages or language families, among them Chinese, Tibetan, Hungarian, Turkish, and Indo-European. These attempts have sometimes been flavored with nationalist fervor. More recently some scholars have tried to include Sumerian within the hypothetical Nostratic proto-language of Eurasia, while others have excluded it from such reconstructions.

–Austronesier (talk) 14:45, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I looked at these proposals at one point and they range from wacky to seriously wacky. I would say at minimum they could be reduced to a couple sentences, removing the "researchers" name and maybe leaving one ref per, instead of the long bulleted list. Might casually kick the worst offenders to the curb in the process.Ploversegg (talk) 14:56, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Some of the secondary sources are also questionable. We shouldn't cite fringe (like Sahala 2009, a term paper from a repository) to establish notability for due mention of fringe. –Austronesier (talk) 15:15, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Dumuzid: Maybe we can add the Turkic fantasies back based on this secondary source:[24] (see p. 459, and "nudge, nudge" about one of its authors)? After all, Michalowksi also gives Turkish a one-word mention in his chapter in Woodard (2004). –Austronesier (talk) 19:53, 18 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No objection if we have some more recent sources, and that paper looks absolutely fascinating. No offense intended to Billposer, and I am of course familiar with this particular claim--though I do feel that to properly contextualize it would take up more space than is really due. Having said that, no worries if consensus is against me (as I would say it is right now!). Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 19:58, 18 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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