Halloran again

[adante]

I came across Sumerian Lexicon by John A Halloran from scribd.com which is a basic guide to learning Sumerian. It doesn't have the cuneiform shapes, but gives the pronounciation of words and a bit of a run down on how to put it all together.

What does everyone think?
d.scribd.com/docs/1yzppnh23b20g19xokbm.pdf

[amarsin]

Halloran's site is good and useful to an extent. That is, he has a nice glossary that's easy to use. However, you should be more cautious about other aspects. For instance, he often tries to suggest that certain words are based on or formed from smaller ones. So take this entry:

nud, nu₂: to lie down; to lie together with (with -da-); to lay down (with -ni-); to sleep; to kill (nu, 'not', + ed₂, 'to go out')

So he wants to say that the word meaning to 'lie down' comes from combining 'not' + 'to go out' or nu+ed>nud. But this is just idle speculation and based on nothing, and one could easily concoct a half dozen other possible origins for such a word. And all of this begs the question: why does the word nud have to be formed from smaller words?

[us4-he2-gal2]

Thank you for the qualifying words Lance, very nice - Lance's opinions on this subject were the first that helped give me more additional perspective on Holloran.

Adante: I have renamed this thread to "Halloran again" as we cover him elsewhere, and I've removed the named "Learning cuneiform" as well, cuneiform is not actually relevant to what we are discussing here. I personally recommend the Electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary (ePSD) for the sort of information Halloran deals with:

psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd/nepsd-frame.html

And as for learning cuneiform, if you give a read over our "Cuneiform Diaries" section, I think you'll be in pretty good shape - or better shape its free!

enenuru.proboards52.com/index.cgi?board=selfdiscombobulationetc&action=display&thread=119

cheers.

[adante]

Thank you, both for your comments. I very much want to learn at least some basic cuneiform, but I also want to do it right. Shall be spending more time at epsd and the dairies board

[madness]

Site and book link, if anyone was wondering:

www.sumerian.org/
www.sumerian.org/sumerian.pdf

--

A review of his book appears in the latest issue of the Journal of Near Eastern Studies.

John Alan Halloran, Sumerian Lexicon: A Dictionary Guide to the Ancient Sumerian Language
Review by Nicole Brisch
JNES Vol. 68, No. 2 (2009)

[ninurta2008]

His work in general is good, but his "proto-sumerian" seems to be an attempt to push and prove his or whoever's theory that languages emerged suddenly out of nowhere. An idea that isn't just bizarre, but doesn't even seem plausable. All humans have language, and as a result, those languages would've been descended from other languages, its imperative, all the way back to the first sounds that prior species used to communicate.