Emegir and Emesal

[ummia-inim-gina]

I have been trying read into the differences between the Emegir and Emesal dialects of Sumerian (It seems that most of the Sumerian vocabulary I have picked up falls under Emegir) While searching google I came across this article found at Theology.edu:



The Nature of the Sumerian Language

Sumerian apparently was divided into two dialects known as Emegir and Emesal; the language as a whole, they referred to as Emeku, meaning, "the people’s language".
Emesal was "the women’s language" while Emegir was "the men’s language". We think men and women have trouble communicating now! How about if we spoke mutually intelligible dialects?
Sumerian is not alone among languages in dividing the language used by men and women or between upper and lower classes. For instance, in modern Japanese, there is a whole class of pronouns which are reserved for use by the emperor.
What are the differences between Emegir and Emesal?

1. Phonological: Emesal is more conservative, perhaps representing an earlier stage of the language. For example:

En - lord (Emegir)
Umun - lord (Emesal)
En is possibly derived from Umun, as follows (in the development of the language over a long period): Umun > Emen > En. There is not always this sort of relationship between the two dialects, however.

2. Lexically

Dug - good (Emegir)
Zeb - good (Emesal)
Nin - queen (Emegir)
Gashan - queen (Emesal)
Written Sumerian was not an attempt to reproduce speech. It was not originally designed to render the spoken language in permanent form. Instead, it was intended as a mnemonic device -- a method for jogging the memory.
So, for instance, if the scribe wanted to remember to say "He built the temple." he would merely write "Build Temple".
As a result, it makes it very difficult to understand Sumerian, particularly the oldest texts. The later texts, written as Sumerian became a dead language are much easier to read because the language was written less as a mnemonic device and more as a reproduction of speech.
Another problem with the early texts is that the signs were not always written in the proper, but rather in whatever order was prettiest or best fit the space available. Once again this practice changed as the language died.
Sumerian is an ergative, agglutinative language. English, by way of contrast, is a nominative-accusative language. That is, English uses a nominative case for the subject of a transitive verb or intransitive verb and an accusative case for the direct object.
Sumerian is an ergative language. That is,

1. The subject of a transitive verb is put in the ergative case.

2. The subject of an intransitive verb and the direct object of a transitive verb both get put into the absolute case.

Example:

Lugal.e e.0 munandu
The king a house he builds
Lugal.0 i.gin
The king does good
Isolating Language

Analytic

Example: Chinese

Each morpheme is expressed by a separate word.
Inflecting Language

Combination

Verbs contain within themselves number, gender, and person.
Example: Hebrew, Akkadian, Latin

eqtol - "I will kill"
yiqtol - "he will kill"
tiqtol - "you (m.s.) will kill"
Agglutinative

Fusion

Examples: Sumerian, Turkish

Separate morphemes are combined in one word.
namtilanishe -- "For his long life"









I'm wondering if their interpretation of "the men’s language" and "the women’s language" is correct? This just seems bizarre and impractical to me. Their Japanese example isn't very comparable because it is believable that royalty could use a different dialect then commoners because of the separation of interaction between the two classes. A son using different speech then the mother who raised him seems a little harder to believe to me.

[us4-he2-gal2]

Ummia:


I generally do not tackle questions about language very often as I am unschooled and (as I often say) I leave Sumerian language for my..uh final conquest if you will ;] However its good to ask this question and to clear things up on it if possible as the below sentences are very misleading in my opinion:



"Sumerian apparently was divided into two dialects known as Emegir and Emesal; the language as a whole, they referred to as Emeku, meaning, "the people’s language". Emesal was "the women’s language" while Emegir was "the men’s language"."



A quick scan through my books, shows that scholars even when speaking on emesal seem hesitant to commit an exact definition of its use - even Edzard in his book "Sumerian Grammar" does not give me an explanation I can just type here! So I will just give some info and comments.
Well, first of all as a spoken dialect there is probably good reason why most people don't make statements like that fellow above - when it comes down to it theres no sure way of defining how much this dialect was a spoken one, we just don't know what was spoken outloud and to what extent. The written evidence is what informs of the existence of emesal at all - but that evidence does not go so far as to suggest men spoke one dialect and women another!
Emesal DOES appear in literature and myths as the dialect certain goddesses spoke sometimes - for example Inanna's speech is known for this characteristic in her hymns I believe. It is for this reason, and that the word emesal itself translates to something like women's speech (roughly) that this is sometimes called the "womens language" - but this in itself says nothing to the idea that the average women spoke it. There is probably little or no texts in emegir or emesal that suggest an common Sumerian womens speech one way or another for the reason that commoners speech had no place in cuneiform record outside of a few personnal letters and such.
In addition it must remembered that the tendency to employ emesal in a goddesses speech was only ONE use of the dialect - perhaps not even the main use. Emesal functioned as a cultic and hymnal dialect especially we see it used in the lamentations which were performed by the male cult functionary known as the Gala. Here is a bit from a note I took on this from my facebook group (I enjoy the academic discussion of Sumerian subjects)


Under heading Gala, Balag and the Exorcistic Drum

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Emesal and the Gala:


At the library today I came across HUCA 2 "Sumerian Hymnology: The Eršemma" by M. Cohen (1981) which is a 215 pg. exploration of this genre. These were songs were always addressed to a god, consisting of a single literary unit, and were always written in emesal. As Cohen explains emesal occurs 'in most lamentations, in songs with the rubric eršemma, several incantation hymns, a few proverbs and in several other texts particularly those involving the goddess Innana."

Cohen's work is very interesting here as he finds the Gala to be of considerable relevance. Emesal is known to be the province of the Gala priest by a variety of textual indications as is explained on pg. 4:
- its stated in a colophon of a catalogue of emesal compositions from the library of Assurbanipal
- Ritual texts from late Uruk cite emesal texts as part of the Gala's liturgy
- A 2nd mill. Mari ritual instructs the Gala to recite an emesal composition
- Cohen adds that the Gala are frequently mentioned in emesal compositions and are known to have played the balag, which accompanied emesal lamentations.

So while the author explains that little is for certain about this priest's activity in the third and second millennium, "if we choose to extrapolate from the Emesal texts themselves and from information provided by First Millennium B.C.E. ritual instructions and calendars, we may suggest the following minimum schedule of religious activities for the gala-priest in the Second Millennium B.C.E:

1) the recitation of compositions at funerals.
2) the recitation of incantation-hymns to keep away evil-demons on such occasions as the onset of a journey or the dedication of buildings and objects.
3) the recitation of lamentations and possibly eršemmas during the razing of dilapidated buildings in order to assuage the gods at seeing their holy shrines being torn down. This may have extended to the renovation of sacred objects.
4) the recitation of specific lamentations and eršemmas on a cyclical basis on certain days of each month as a constant vigil to prevent the anger of the gods over acts unknowingly committed by the city or king."

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So, I think emesal rendered "womens dialect" is possible only after a very cursory look at the textual evidence, and I don't think that interpretation is any longer current with scholarship - to take that and extrapolate that it was what women spoke while men spoke emegir seems to be as you suspect Ummia, very erronous.

[creyente]

a friend of mine is japanese, and he says there are different ways to speak japanese depending on your age, gender, social position, relation to the listener, etc... he says that lots of men learned with female teachers and when they had to talk they would usually get confused and "speak like a woman" he only lived in japan for few years, but that is something he remember about it... on the other hand, the posibility of differences in speech from different genders does not means it was like that in ancient sumer... i think it could be something related to respect... like... in spanish, we use 2 ways of speaking, one that we call "tutuear" wich means "to call you tu" and tu is a way of saying you, and the other is "tratar de usted" wich means "to treat as usted" been usted a respectfull way of saying you... in this case, when we use this respectfull way, we usually speak in third person about the person we are talking to... when we use the first one, we speak directly about them.

it does not means that calling someone tu is to be disrespectfull, it means that you are treating him as a friend, the other way "usted" is to speak with a famous person, a teacher, a doctor, a boss, etc... or even a stranger, depending on the situation...

could it be that the difference was because of another thing related to context? like... if it was about speaking from the heart vs from the brain, like... you would not say "im going to buy eggs" in emesal but you could sing "still got the blues" in emesal? are we even sure there was any difference in pronunciation? could it be like the difference between hiragana and katakana? this are just possibilities, someone with more knowledge would have better chances of knowing the answer to this... and i doubt experts didnt think about it, but i dont see any damage in trying to find our own theories until there is an answear.