Help with Sumerian

There are usually people in local libraries who can help with foreign languages, but for an ancient language like Sumerian I would visit a library at a prominent university or in a major city. If the two words are relatively simple someone can probably point you in the direction of the translation you need. If they're more complex you may be SOL without the help of the Sumerologist, but so be it. If your words are only in the ballpark, so what? The only people who will laugh at your ignorance are the handful of Sumerologists in the world. I'm certain the editor you submit to won't know the difference.

The University of Pennsylvania is one of two places in the world making huge advances in Sumerian. Currently, they are working on the Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary (PSD) Project. Here is the project's homepage, and here is the actual ePSD (last updated in 2006). On the left side is a frame with a bunch of letters. The x-axis (at the top) is what language you want to use. So to find your English word, go to the E column and match it up to the letter row, click on the plus sign, and look for your word. Once you find the word, click on the Sumerian translation and it will bring up the Sumerian dictionary definition with a picture of the characters. Clicking on the characters will bring up a window making it bigger so you can copy it. It is a language of really complicated characters written on clay tablets in script often no bigger than 3mm high. Keep that in mind when you "read" it.

Just to give you an example, say you wanted to look up how to write "tablet" in Sumerian. You go to the E column, follow it down to the T row, and click the plus. It's the second entry, but there are a dozen options. You want just the generic word for tablet, so you click the first link--"dub"--which says [TABLET] next to it. It brings up the dictionary definition and a picture of the word. You click on that, and it brings up a small window with this in it:



Tada! Now you can write "tablet" in Sumerian.

Do you know the sumerian word for person/one/man/individual/entity? It appears that "du" is a verb, so maybe you could say that your character is the "person who keeps the secret."

Sorry, I wrote out this nice long replay, but it goes lost somehow. Anyway, basically you have to remember that Sumerian and English are different languages, and Sumerian predates English by thousands of years. It is also a language with a small written vocabulary, so many words we have in English equate to phrases in Sumerian. For instance, the word for "king" is actually the phrase GAL+LU, the symbols for BIG and MAN right next to each other. In the context of the sentence, this would be the word "lugal" which means king.

So there is no actual word for secret keeper. Therefore, we can guess that it is probably a phrase as above. So given we use the word "bu" for secret, which is actually bu.u2+bu.u2 and the word "du" for keep or hold, we'd have BU+DU for SECRET+KEEP, or secret keeper: "dubu".

I think that's a pretty reasonable guess, although since there doesn't seem to be any direct evidence of that ever being used, it probably isn't really a phrase they used often if at all. Instead, they probably said "one who keeps the secret" or something along those lines. Something like "bu bi.n.du" would probably be translated as "he kept the secret". "Bu n.du" would probably be "he keeps the secret". It depends on what you're going for.

JustDee said:

lukur [STRANGER] (59x: Old Akkadian, Ur III, Old Babylonian) wr. lu2-kur2 "stranger, foreigner" - seems to be the most "literal" reference I could find.

lu [PERSON] (12429x: ED IIIa, ED IIIb, Ebla, Old Akkadian, Lagash II, Ur III, Early Old Babylonian, Old Babylonian, uncertain, unknown) wr. lu2; mu-lu; mu-lu2; lu10; lu6 "who(m), which; man; (s)he who, that which; of; ruler; person" Akk. amēlu; ša - this seems quite a bit broader

So maybe -

lukur du uras
lukur du kisi
lukur du bu

Loose translation maybe: stranger/foreigner who keeps/kept secrets or even looser, you could get away with "person who keeps/kept secrets". Btw, anyone have a preference on the words for secret? Just curious - I rather like the 1st one - lukur du uras, though in my head, lukur du bu has a nice illiteration to it. *shrugs*

If I'm even close to on track with this loose translation, this would work in the story, because the person or group of people being referred to would not have been Sumerian. I think my whole point in reaching out to an expert would be to find out if any those above phrases actually make sense in terms of linguistics and proper form - or does it simply result in ridiculous gibberish. Or do you all generally think it would be okay to just make these types of assumptions/allow for creative license with these words and just go with it?

(Interesting aside - wonder if "lu-kur" has an etymological link to the modern word "lurker")

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, none of those make any sense in Sumerian. The verbs go at the end, and there are no particles there to mark out what is happening.

I just did a bit of research, and I think it would most likely look something like "ad-hal ba.ak" which would literally mean "vessel of secrets". You could easily use that to describe someone who keeps secrets. "Ad-hal" is the word I can find the most evidence of actually being used to mean secret, as it is in a letter written in Sumerian from Kug-Nanna to a godess:

"lagar3 ad-ḫal an-na zu-a diĝir na-me nu-mu-e-da-sa[sub]2[/sub]"

or: "the minister who knows An's secrets, with whom no god can compare"

I would use that. ad-hal ba.ak. Just for fun, here's how it would look in Sumerian:



(Note that the final symbol is actually "a" but would still be pronounced "ak")

Is it for fiction or non-fiction? If it's fiction, you can just use whatever you want. If you think "dubu" sounds cool, use it. If this is non-fiction, or you want to be as close to reality as possible, I'd say that "ad-hal.ene ba.ak" which you could even just write as Ad-halene Baak or without the hyphen, Adhalene Baak. I think that is probably the closest you're likely to get at this point in time to what they'd actually use. I think a "vessel of secrets" (notice I forgot the plural marker ".ene" in my previous post--oops!) has a nice poetic ring to it, personally.

It's ad-hal ba.ak for a keeper of (a/the) secret, but ad-hal.ene ba.ak for a keeper of secrets. I pmed you, but I'll just post it here again anyway. Ad-hal.ene ba.ak.ene would be the plural--keepers of secrets.

It's a personal hobby. I'm just fascinated by ancient languages. I seem to be particularly interested in languages no one uses anymore. If I ever traveled back in time, I'd be a perfect negotiator between tribes.