« Let Freedom Real Estate Ring!
Main
Not in My Family »

July 5, 2007

Akkadian Is So Easy

One of the blogs I look at via my RSS feed everyday is Language Log. If you're not familiar with Language Log, it is certainly worth an extended visit. Yesterday, Bill Poser reported on a couple of remarks by Matthew Stolper, of the Chicago Oriental Institute, to the students in one of his Akkadian classes.

It takes only a couple of years to learn all the Akkadian you need to pass a comprehensive exam. It takes much longer to get a degree in French Lit, so obviously Akkadian is easier than French.

Those scribes had pretty short life spans, so it must not take too long to get good at Akkadian.

Reading a newspaper in English is 100 times more complex than reading a cuneiform tablet.

Poser's source for these remarks was a comment left on The Mad Latinist's journal by Tiye, a student in Stolper's class. Both Tiye's journal and The Mad Lartinist are also well worth your time.

By the way, Stolper also thinks,

For a modern student, to learn the Old Persian script is a work of scarcely an hour. For a literate ancient speaker of the language, for whom the ambiguities left by the orthographic rules were not an obstacle, it would have been a work of minutes.

The truth is, I haven't tried to learn the Old Persian script, but I have looked at it. I think it would take me somewhat longer than an hour to learn it. And Poser also thinks more than an hour would be required for "a modern student" to learn the script.

Posted by Duane Smith at July 5, 2007 2:48 PM | Read more on Akkadian |

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.telecomtally.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2171

Comments

I'd be inclined to rewrite the last sentence of your first paragraph:
"...remarks by Matthew Stolper, of the Chicago Oriental Institute, to the students in one of his Akkadian classes."
as
"...remarks attributed to Matthew Stolper, of the Chicago Oriental Institute, by students in one of his Akkadian classes."

Posted by: Chuck Jones at July 6, 2007 1:18 AM

Chuck,

Your suggested rewrite does improve accuracy. And while the purported remarks about Akkadian may be inflated or apocryphal, its hard to blame student attribution to his remarks about learning the Old Persian script.

Posted by: Duane at July 6, 2007 7:07 AM

Sorry, comments are closed for this post.
Send me an email if it is important.

Tags: