I cannot find anywhere that has a phonetic definition of the numbers.
-
2Why would you? Do you pronounce the "MMXVII" year at the end of the movie, or just say "2017"?– T.E.D. ♦Commented Apr 11, 2017 at 20:10
-
3Yes... YOU would as an English speaking person. How did Sumerian's say, "2017"? In Rome they wouldn't say, "two thousand seventeen", they would say, "duo milia septemdecem".– SQLMasonCommented Apr 11, 2017 at 20:16
-
2Well, the question specifically asks how "you" would pronounce it. If you meant to ask how an ancient Sumerian would pronounce it, you should edit your question to ask that question... which is basically unanswerable, because how would anyone possibly know? There aren't any 4,000 year old Iraqis we could ask, and archaeological records do a poor job of preserving sound.– HopelessN00bCommented Apr 11, 2017 at 20:49
-
@HopelessN00b - I started to make the same point, then decided to just put it in an answer when it got large and started to demand links and formatting. It seemed as obvious to me as it looks like it did to you, but perhaps those not steeped in the mechanics of historical linguistics don't know that we can't figure out such things?– T.E.D. ♦Commented Apr 11, 2017 at 21:10
-
1We know how ancient Egyptians' sounded their words via the Coptic peoples. There are other languages which we have at least a good guess at what they sounded like event through they are long dead. The story of Egyptian hieroglyphs is quite entertaining.– SQLMasonCommented Apr 12, 2017 at 4:24
Add a comment
|
2 Answers
Some, though not all, of the Sumerian numbers are known from syllabic spellings. There is an overview here alt link
-
Good find! The reference is to a mathemetician's page, not a linguist, but he does appear to be an expert on the Babylonian number system.– T.E.D. ♦Commented Apr 12, 2017 at 13:25
-
2So, there might be an answer, somewhere? How about elevating this essentially 'link-only answer' to a proper one by quoting from that site you linked to? Commented Aug 23, 2019 at 22:27
-
3
-
The link is now a 404 not found. I would also like to know the sounds of the numbers. Could you possibly supply a newer link?– PedroskiCommented Sep 6, 2022 at 2:37
-
Using wayback machine: here's the link to syllabic rendering of Sumerian basic numbers. Commented Dec 3, 2022 at 23:07
Sumerian has been a dead language for nearly 4,000 years, and had no known linguistic descendants, predecessors, or relatives.
Its printed form was logographic, which means each word was represented by a symbol. So there's no phonological content to be gleaned from their writing either.
So we don't know for sure how any of it was pronounced.
-
I'm not entirely sure this is a subtle enough point to actually merit an answer, but I found I couldn't quite fit a good explanation into a comment.– T.E.D. ♦Commented Apr 11, 2017 at 21:08
-
7This answer is wrong. Sumerian uses a mixture of logographic and syllabic spellings. They also had lexicographic texts where the pronunciation of logograms is indicated syllabically. We know a lot about the pronunciation of Sumerian, but obviously not everything.– fdbCommented Apr 11, 2017 at 22:46