Gladius Hispaniensis Posted October 21, 2007 Report Share Posted October 21, 2007 Ave I am curious to know - was there a fundamental difference between the languages spoken in Assyria and Babylonia? I imagine that being Semitic languages they probably had similarities but I wonder if they were two dialects of a common tongue or two different languages altogether, as in Hebrew and Arabic for example. Thanks in advance for any information. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ASCLEPIADES Posted October 21, 2007 Report Share Posted October 21, 2007 (edited) AveI am curious to know - was there a fundamental difference between the languages spoken in Assyria and Babylonia? I imagine that being Semitic languages they probably had similarities but I wonder if they were two dialects of a common tongue or two different languages altogether, as in Hebrew and Arabic for example. Thanks in advance for any information. Salve, GH From Introductory Assyrian Grammar By Samuel Alfred Browne Mercer: "Assyrian belongs to the northern group of Semytic languages, and is closely related to the Hebrew. Its differences from Babylonian are only dialectical." Sequitur Today, both dialects are included in the Akkadian (or Assyro-Babylonian) language, code ISO 639-3: akk. Here is an Akkadian language introductory webpage. I hope that stuff might be useful. Valete. Edited October 21, 2007 by ASCLEPIADES Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gladius Hispaniensis Posted October 21, 2007 Author Report Share Posted October 21, 2007 Salve Asclepiades I just clicked on the link you provided and went through the sign list on chapter 3 of the article. I found to my astonishment that there are actually 28 Assyro-Babylonian words in that list that have very similar equivalents in Arabic, which is a language that I understand. Some are actually identical. So the similarity with Hebrew is understandable, as Arabic and Hebrew are sister-languages. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ASCLEPIADES Posted October 21, 2007 Report Share Posted October 21, 2007 Salve AsclepiadesI just clicked on the link you provided and went through the sign list on chapter 3 of the article. I found to my astonishment that there are actually 28 Assyro-Babylonian words in that list that have very similar equivalents in Arabic, which is a language that I understand. Some are actually identical. So the similarity with Hebrew is understandable, as Arabic and Hebrew are sister-languages. Well, I cannot understand arabic, but if you can indeed, maybe the following link might be useful for you. Sequitur. Valete. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rameses the Great Posted October 31, 2007 Report Share Posted October 31, 2007 I can help with Arabic but to note, the Semitic language began in Ethiopia so I'm not sure if the Middle East would've had specific Semitic language groups considering before then it would've been part of the greater Afro-Asiatic language family. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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