Akkadian is one of the oldest written languages of all time [The Hebrew University of Jerusalem]. It was first a language that was only spoken, but the neighboring civilization of Sumeria invented a writing form. When Akkadia took over Sumeria, they adopted and changed the written language to form a cuneiform text.
Here's a little snippet of how Akkadian came to be:
"While the cuneiform writing system was created and used at first only by the Sumerian, it did not take long before neighboring groups adopted it for their own use. By about 2500 BCE, the Akkadian, a Semitic-speaking people that dwelled north of the Sumerians, starting using cuneiform to write their own language. " [Ancient Scripts]
Unlike the Akkadian speech, the Sumerian language was crushed into oblivion. Akkadia was made the Lingua Franca (or the language of diplomacy)
Above is the Akkadian alphabet. It looks pretty complicated. It had about 800 signs overall and that caused there to be multiple ways to spell the same words or sequence of sounds.
I'm very glad that as language has evolved, it has become simpler to write so that we may preserve our speech. It would have been difficult for us to do that if we had to write everything on clay tablets. You wouldn't want to write anything down because it took too long! I think that the Book of Mormon wrote in this kind of way (please correct if I am wrong). It took a long time to write anything so what was written must have been pretty important.
Emily, I think you are right about the Book of Mormon being written on brass plates and taking a long time to etch each plate. I agree that it is all important. For more on the Book of Mormon visit here . Also, as I read this I thought of our class discussion on how language and it is devolving. Do you have anything to add about why you think that is?
ReplyDeleteSorry the right link is one.
ReplyDeleteThis post makes me interested in the sorts of things that were chosen to be written down. Because like you mentioned with the Book of Mormon, what was written was hard to write, so there must have been some importance to it. The difficulty of writing in that time really show what must have been valued to Akkadia at that time.
ReplyDeleteThat's very true. It must have been very valuable to spend so much time and effort on it. Do you know how often it was used? Like, did they have "books" of any sort?
ReplyDeleteI liked what group one mentioned today about only the upper class having the education to write. The things recorded must have been influenced by the only demographic able to do so. This also reminds me of how the act of writing something out alters what is being written. For example, with the Book of Mormon there was so much to write yet it was so hard to do so that we know that the things that were written down must have been important.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like that is one thing about written knowledge that has changed over time. Because writing was not very accessible, only things of great important were recorded; but today, the literacy rate is so high (in our country) that totally inane things are written about all the time-just look at some of the novels you can buy. How can we make sure that what we write is of value? Or should we even worry about it?
ReplyDeleteThat's a good question Kimberly. I think we should care about what's written down, but even more than that I think we need to be discerning. Since we cannot really control what's written down these days we cannot just accept everything as true.
ReplyDeleteAlso we don't need to spend our time reading everything, only those ideas that are important for us to know. Partly because some of it has no bearing on how we live, and partly because if we ever need to know it, it is written down!
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