My "source" is the doctorate in Comparative Semitic Linguistics that I did at Harvard, and the fact that Akkadian speakers actually did shift to Aramaic in OTL, but since you asked, here's a list of a hundred of the most common lexemes in Akkadian and some other related Semitic languages, from which you can derive your own conclusions.Akkadian too similar to other Semitic languages? Do you have a source for that? Because AFAIK Akkadian absorbed so much vocabulary from Sumerian to make it pretty distinct from the other Semitic languages. Anyway, Arabic is almost completely irrelevant to Akkadian's survival because it only really showed up in Mesopotamia in the 7th century. Akkadian was largely replaced by Aramaic about a thousand years before that, and was finally wiped out by Greek and Persian by the 1st century.
My "source" is the doctorate in Comparative Semitic Linguistics that I did at Harvard, and the fact that Akkadian speakers actually did shift to Aramaic in OTL, but since you asked, here's a list of a hundred of the most common lexemes in Akkadian and some other related Semitic languages, from which you can derive your own conclusions.
For the record, Arabic did not "only really show up in Mesopotamia in the 7th century." Ignoring the Nabataeans for the moment, there was already an Arab dynasty in Characene in Hellenistic times, and of course Sennacherib famously talks about campaigns against the Arabs. Read Franz Altheim's magisterial six-volume Die Araber in der alten Welt (de Gruyter: Berlin, 1964–69).
It's more than that. The Assyrians couldn't possibly relocate nearly enough people to tip the balance.Okay sorry, I'll defer to your knowledge on this. Although I am pretty sure that the shift to Aramaic was largely due to the Assyrian's relocation of conquered peoples, or am I wrong?
If you want one of these languages to survive through liturgical use (as Aramaic has done IOTL), as has already been suggested, then unless you butterfly-away Islam & the Caliphate that had better be liturgical use in a monotheistic religion because otherwise the Muslims won't tolerate the religion's continued existence within any areas that they control.
Well, you said that the last recorded use IOTL was as late as the 1st century AD so their adoption for liturgical use could [theoretically] be after the origin of Buddhism and maybe even more-or-less contemporaneous with Christianity... and if that religion never becomes massively widespread early on then arguably whether it butterlies away Islam depends on whether you're going by the "many worlds" school of TL-writing or the "counter-factual" one.I think any POD early enough to give Akkadian or Sumerian a chance at long-term survival would probably butterfly away Christianity and Islam. Maybe Buddhism too.
Well, you said that the last recorded use IOTL was as late as the 1st century AD so their adoption for liturgical use could [theoretically] be after the origin of Buddhism and maybe even more-or-less contemporaneous with Christianity... and if that religion never becomes massively widespread early on then arguably whether it butterlies away Islam depends on whether you're going by the "many worlds" school of TL-writing or the "counter-factual" one.
I thought Aramaic was written with an abjad, not an alphabet. Or am I missing something?Have Akkadian speakers develop an alphabetic system first (so that Akkadian gets the technological edge that Aramaic has, which means that Aramaic is less desirable as an administrative language than it was in OTL).
I opted not to use Daniels' term abjad as it is only useful when distinguishing scripts like Arabic and Hebrew from scripts like Greek and Latin. When comparing Aramaic and cuneiform, "alphabet" does the job quite handily (especially considering that alfa and beta are both good Aramaic words) and has the benefit of clarity and comprehensibility.I thought Aramaic was written with an abjad, not an alphabet. Or am I missing something?
There are actually Seleucid period glosses, Akkadian in Greek script, on some of the tablets from Nuzi IIRC, but obviously that's too late. The Ugaritic script might be a candidate if it ever took off.If the speakers of Akkadian actually developed an alphabet similar to the Greek one, it would certainly give their language an edge.
I think its value was largely technical; Akkadian had served the same purpose, as an international language of diplomacy, administration, and commerce, for a millennium or more, but Aramaic was superior for two reasons:Aramaic had a much better wide spread value then Akkadian or Sumerian. The only real guarantee would be if it managed a high success rate of conversion of everyone who invaded the region. This worked for a time when concerning the Iranians for example.
Makes sense. There was something I had missed, then. I guess it just shows I am too young to remember the time when these terms weren't in common use.I opted not to use Daniels' term abjad as it is only useful when distinguishing scripts like Arabic and Hebrew from scripts like Greek and Latin. When comparing Aramaic and cuneiform, "alphabet" does the job quite handily (especially considering that alfa and beta are both good Aramaic words) and has the benefit of clarity and comprehensibility.
Interesting. I didn't know that.There are actually Seleucid period glosses, Akkadian in Greek script, on some of the tablets from Nuzi IIRC, but obviously that's too late. The Ugaritic script might be a candidate if it ever took off.
I think its value was largely technical; Akkadian had served the same purpose, as an international language of diplomacy, administration, and commerce, for a millennium or more, but Aramaic was superior for two reasons:
Remove the technical advantage represented by the script, and the Achaemenids really have no reason to adopt Aramaic; in fact, on the basis of prestige alone, Akkadian would probably hobble along in its role as lingua franca, despite the fact that most of its speakers had moved on, just as Latin did in Europe.
- Akkadian was on its way out (as its speakers were shifting to Aramaic);
- It is easier to train a scribe to write in Aramaic, due to the facility of the script and its grammar (at least compared to Akkadian).
The most interesting result, from my perspective, would be to see SWEurope united under a kind of republic of letters by means of the cuneiform script (as "the cuneiform world"), just as East Asia was for a time united by the Chinese script, and for much the same reason: you can theoretically adapt the cuneiform script to represent new languages, such as Aramaic and Arabic, and they will be more or less comprehensible to anyone who reads the script. Already, most Semitic languages are no more distant from one another, linguistically speaking, than the Chinese dialects (with languages like Persian serving as an analogue to, say, Japanese or Vietnamese). Consequently, you could have another millennium or more of people speaking these languages but writing in "Akkadian" (just as they did for the previous millennium, writing what is often called Peripheral Akkadian or as my mentor Huehnergard sometimes jokingly called it, "bad Akkadian").
I don't know that a term like "abjad" has ever been in common use, outside of the cabal of script wonks! When I was in grad school, the term "abjad" only referred to the practice of using the Arabic alphabet to write numbers, Roman-style (hence, alif=1, baa=2, and so forth).Makes sense. There was something I had missed, then. I guess it just shows I am too young to remember the time when these terms weren't in common use.
Yeah, they're called the Graeco-Babyloniaca. Here's a presentation about them. There are some articles available as well, but they're all unfortunately behind paywalls and I don't have access to them... yet.Interesting. I didn't know that.
That's actually the first I have heard about this. I'll have to look into and see what comes out of it. A reduced syllabary would be a necessary first step towards a more systematic writing system, but the main problem is that the cuneiform script just isn't very good for representing a Semitic language like Akkadian, particularly all the sibilants and affricates, the so-called "emphatic" series of consonants, and (in the Old Akkadian period, albeit later disappearing from the language) the so-called "gutturals."Hmm, a very, very early PoD comes to mind actually. I came across a mention that in the Old Akkadian (or the Old Assyrian period; I would need to check which it was) there was a Cuneiform variant in used that was reduced to a syllabary of around 112 signs and another fifty logograms. It is also my impression that the Old Akkadian sign forms are generally easier to handle than later forms, at least as far as being more legible and consistent visually. If that variant became dominant, and if they used the Old Akkadian sign forms, it would probably dramatically reduce the difficulty of learning cuneiform and make it easier to adapt other languages. How to do this is trickier; might squelching the neo-Sumerian dyansts (either Lagash or Ur III?) or finding a way for them to rely more heavily on Akkadian(tricky, granted) somehow work?
So I've found it in the Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture's article on literacy by Veldhuis; it mentions a reduced syllabary used by the Old Assyrian merchant colonies that is apparently smaller than that. The exact citation given is Dominique Charpin's essay "Lire et écrire en Mésopotamie: Un affaire de spécialistes?". I misremembered the exact number, however; Veldhuis cites the 112 number as what Charpin argues was the number of signs needed to be literate in Akkadian(presumably Sumerian is a whole other matter). In either case, I feel more and more like the problem here really stems from the fact that so much scribal education was built around Sumerian(tying the script to being able to work with Sumerian in problematic ways) and trying to transmit Sumerian knowledge as well and for that matter the enormous incentive on the part of master scribes to retain a lot of complexity in the system that can really only be transmitted in very specific social circumstances that are relatively disruptable.That's actually the first I have heard about this. I'll have to look into and see what comes out of it. A reduced syllabary would be a necessary first step towards a more systematic writing system, but the main problem is that the cuneiform script just isn't very good for representing a Semitic language like Akkadian, particularly all the sibilants and affricates, the so-called "emphatic" series of consonants, and (in the Old Akkadian period, albeit later disappearing from the language) the so-called "gutturals."
Oddly enough, I own (and have read, cover to cover) the book that grew out of Charpin's research on that topic, or at least its English translation: Reading and Writing in Babylonia. He writes on p. 54, "For a long time, the prevailing image was of a world where writing was the monopoly of a small number of specialists, the professional scribes. A few exceptions were conceded--a few sovereigns and a few merchants. That is still the view of some very good Assyriologists, such as P. A. Beaulieu (2007, 473)." I mention this because it confirms that Charpin's views are by no means universally held (and because I'm rather pleased with the kudos he is giving to Paul-Alain Beaulieu, who taught me Akkadian).So I've found it in the Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture's article on literacy by Veldhuis; it mentions a reduced syllabary used by the Old Assyrian merchant colonies that is apparently smaller than that. The exact citation given is Dominique Charpin's essay "Lire et écrire en Mésopotamie: Un affaire de spécialistes?".