Some Arabic-Akkadian Lexical Observations

أَكّادي

root: ء-ك-د / nisba adjective, noun / definition: Akkadian

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For the past week, I’ve been intensively studying Akkadian as part of the three-week Ancient Languages of Anatolia program, run by the Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilisations (ANAMED).

And when I say intensively, I mean it: I feel like I’ve studied the equivalent of two years worth of Arabic grammar (verb forms and all!) in addition to getting to grips with the cuneiform writing system as well as how to transcribe, transliterate, and translate texts… in the space of five days.

But as an enthusiastic linguist and unashamed grammar nerd, I honestly couldn’t have found a better way to spend three weeks of my summer!

And we ended this week by deciphering with our instructor a letter in Babylonian from Queen Nefertari of Egypt to Queen Puduhepa of Hatti, and a letter in Assyrian between ancient empires. Super cool.

For those who aren’t familiar with it, Akkadian is an East Semitic language that actually refers to both the Babylonian and Assyrian languages, which are very similar (in writing, at least).

Arabic, on the other hand, falls under the category of West Semitic languages.

As both Akkadian and Arabic are Semitic languages, I shouldn’t have been too surprised about the many lexical and grammatical similarities. But it’s hard for me not to get excited about languages.

I wish I could talk about every cool thing I’ve studied this week (I almost filled a whole notebook with class notes alone!) but, for this post, I’ll just share some of the interesting Arabic-Akkadian vocabulary similarities I discovered.

Here are some common Akkadian words with their Arabic equivalents:

• anāku: أنا, ana (this was apparently the first Akkadian word deciphered)

• atta: أنتَ, anta (the n assimilates to t in Akkadian)

• atti: أنتِ, anti (the same assimilation here)

• lišān: لسان, lisān (in the sense of both “tongue” and “language”)

• mūt: موت, mawt (diphthongs in common Semitic, like ـَو (aw), are replaced in Akkadian with long vowel sounds, like ـُو (ū))

• lā: لا (pronounced the same; lā in Akkadian is used as a negation in dependent clauses (in independent clauses, ul is used) or to form negative commands)

• nūr: نور (pronounced the same)

• bīt (Babylonian), bēt (Assyrian): بيت, bayt (again, we see Akkadian—as an East Semitic language—replace the diphthong: ـَيْ (ay) becomes either ī or ē. We see something similar in some modern Arabic dialects, where بَيت is pronounced like the Assyrian bēt)

• umm: أمّ (pronounced the same)

• ab: أب (pronounced the same)

• aḫ: أخ (pronounced the same; the words ab and aḫ in Akkadian behave similarly to their Arabic equivalents in a construct state (إضافة), as they are part of the five special nouns. The Akkadian word for “mouth”, pû(m)—like with the Arabic فم, fam—also has a special construct state)

• il: إله, ilāh

• ūm: يوم, yawm (the loss of weak root letters, w and y, seems to be quite common in Akkadian—here, the word has lost its first root letter, y, and replaced the diphthong with a long vowel)

• šan: سنة, sanah

• īn: عين, ‘ayn (another case of the diphthong being exchanged—note that, like in Arabic, words for body parts that come in pairs (eye, hand, leg, etc) are grammatically feminine in Akkadian)

• uzn: أذن, uđun (“ear” and “understanding” in Akkadian)

• nār: نهر, nahr (apparently the middle root letter was lost in E. Semitic languages)

• mû (mā’ū originally): ماء, mā’

• libb: لُبّ, lubb (I found this one particularly interesting, I’m not sure why—the Akkadian libb mirrors the definitions of its Arabic counterpart, both in sense of “heart” and “middle”)

• rēš: رأس, ra’s (“head” and “beginning”)

• bāni: بانٍ، باني, bānin, bānī

• kalb: كلب (pronounced the same)

• ašriq: أسرِق, asriq (the Akkadian ašriq means “I stole” (preterite tense) while the Arabic أسرق means “I steal” (present)—we can also compare the emphatic active participle in Akkadian (šarrāq) and Arabic (سَرّاق, sarrāq), both meaning “thief”. Maybe I’ll write about Akkadian vs. Arabic participles in a future post!)

• u: وَ, wa (the Akkadian u meaning “and” was originally wa—we see the same change in modern Arabic dialects where وَ is pronounced as u)

• ū: أو, aw (loss of the diphthong again)

• tikal!: !توكّلْ, tawakkal (okay, so this one may be more coincidental… but maybe not; the Akkadian imperative is derived from the root t-k-l “to trust”, while the Arabic form V imperative is derived from و-ك-ل (w-k-l) which carries the same meaning—the Akkadian also echoes some Arabic dialectical forms of the imperative)

• dār: دار؟ (…and here’s another one where I wonder if I’m thinking too deeply… the Akkadian dār means “eternity” whilst the Arabic dār refers to some sort of residence—but doesn’t “residence” imply some sort of permanence? And is it a coincidence that دار is often found in collocations like دار البقاء? Maybe. A cool Akkadian phrase: ana dāri dūri, “for ever and ever”)

(Edit: the Akkadian dār is actually related to the Arabic دَهْر (dahr)—it’s similar to Akkadian-Arabic pair nār–nahr that we saw above, with the medial h sound omitted and the vowel sound extended to compensate!)

• Miṣri: مصر Miṣr

• man: مَن (pronounced the same; the Akkadian interrogative takes nominal case endings though, so it can appear as mannum, mannam, or mannim—and if those case endings look familiar… well, you’ll have to wait for my post about Akkadian-Arabic grammatical similarities!)

• mīššū (from mīn šū): (with the assimilation of the n with the š, the Akkadian mīn (“what”) šū (“he, it”) becomes the interrogative mīššu meaning “it’s what?”—I just can’t get out of my head that it sounds like the colloquial Arabic مِن شو؟ (min šū) “from what?”, equating the شو with the Akkadian word for “it”, though I know this is probably just a coincidence!)

• eql (originally from the root ḫ-q-l apparently): حقل, ḥaql

• abūb: يَعبوب, ya’būb (the Akkadian means “flood” whilst the Arabic means “torrential rains”, but the latter came to mind as soon as I heard the Akkadian—I’m sure they’re linked)

• sīb: شَيب, šayb

• awīl: related to آل, āl? (the Akkadian awīl means “citizen, man” but my mind was convinced there was an Arabic link there—possibly related to آل (“family, “people”) as they both come from the root ء-و-ل/a-w-l?)

• nišu: ناس, nās (both words are treated grammatically as feminine)

• rīm: similar to ريم (same pronunciation; “wild bull” in Akkadian, “white antelope” in Arabic—could be related?)

• zikar, zikr: ذَكَر, đakar

• šani: ثانٍ، ثاني, thānin, thānī

• enz: عنزة, ‘anzah

• labb: لبوة, labwah

• eṣm: عَظم, ‘aẓm

• kal: كلّ, kull

• šamû (from šamā’ū): سماء, samā‘

• šamaš: شمس, šams

• šum: اسم, ism

• rē’ût: shepherdship (perhaps a bit of an odd one to end this list with, but I couldn’t help noticing the Arabic link when I heard this one in class; the Akkadian suffix –ut forms the abstract noun (like the Arabic ـيّة), what’s left is the equivalent of the Arabic root ر-ع-ي (r-‘-y), which is related to shepherds, tending animals, etc.)

I feel a little rushed wrapping up this post because I have some Akkadian homework to get done tonight (along with the rest of my to-do list) before I start studying a whole new ancient language—Hittite!—tomorrow (which I also have to do the readings for).

But there’ll definitely be more Akkadian-Arabic posts in the future, إن شاء الله! Feel free to leave any questions in the comments below.

!مع السلامة

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