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Title: Beginner's Assyrian by D. G. Lyon ISBN: 0-7818-0677-1 Publisher: Hippocrene Books Pub. Date: September, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.6 (5 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Okay for linguists, but not a good beginner's book
Comment: This is not an especially good beginner's book; a more appropriate title would be "A Linguist's Beginner's Assyrian," as it presumes too much previous knowledge of grammar and of Semitic family languages. It would not be appropriate as a first learning text for most people, in my opinion. However, for someone who's main interest, like mine, is in comparative linguistics and not in learning the language per se, but who wants to learn the something about the language, about the grammar, and how it works and is structures, this book is fine.
The book's approach is straight out of late 19th century language pedagogy in it's use of rote memorization and the inclusion of lengthy passages to translate. And the style reads like it was actually written many years ago, and republished by Hippocrene. I'd like to know more about this, but the publication page only lists the date of the Hippocrene edition.
On the pro side, the book includes an alphabet and phonetic guide, a 45-page discussion of the grammar, a glossary of about 800 words, and 30 pages of smaller print footnotes discussing various aspects of the Romanized phoneticizations for translations. There is a list of 215 ideograms and a list of 360 phonograms. So despite its problems, I did learn quite a bit about Assyrian from this book. The language is based on the typical tri-consonantal root system for Semitic family languages, like Arabic, Aramaic, Ugaritic, and Hebrew (but not Hittite, which is now known to be of Indo-European origin).
To highlight some of the mains points of the grammar that I learned, nouns in Assyrian have two genders, male and female. Nothing is needed to form the male gender, and the female ending involves simply adding a "u" to the end of the word. There are five noun declensions or cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and locative, as in classical Arabic. (In current Arabic there is only the nominative, accusative, and dative, and those are no longer used in the modern spoken Arabic).
I couldn't find a precise breakdown of tenses, moods, or aspects, but the author states that the Assyrian verb has imperfect, permansive, imperative, infinitive, and participial forms. In addition, there are causative and reflexive verbs, and strong and weak verbs. The "permansive," which was new to me, is defined as having an intransitive quality, and denotes continuation of state or being. Examples of permansives are "they dwell," or "sapuh," "it is spread," or " sabtu," "they were left," or "purruku," and "it was situated," or "massura." There are four primary, four secondary, and two tertiary verb stems, the 2nd and 3rd being formed from the primary by adding "ta" and "tan."
Weak and strong verbs don't have the same meaning as in the Germanic family languages, where strong verbs form the past tense by an internal vowel change, as in "speak" and "spoke." A weak verb just means that verbs with stem endings in certain letters lose these letters when adding the conjugational endings.
As far as modifiers go, there are adverbs of manner, time, and place, as in English. Adjectives are similar also. There is only one indeclinable relative pronoun which doesn't change for person, gender, or number. Demonstrative pronouns (this, that) are the same as in English and most languages.
So although not an especially good beginner's book, I was still quite entertained by this book, and I was able to use it to gain at least a basic understanding of a language is probably little changed since about 3800 B.C. The author states that Assyrian is quite similar to Akkadian. (I should mention here that Sumerian is quite different, however, and is in fact not a Semitic language according to linguists). Assyrian finally died out 2500 years ago, about the time Pericles was giving his orations in the Greek senate. And after reading this book, I can see why. :-) However, at 12 bucks, the price is relatively inexpensive.
Note: since I first posted this review, I did a web search and found D.G. Lyon's name in the following reference: "D.G. Lyon, Harvard Excavations at Samaria, 1908-10." So Lyon was active in the early part of the last century, and the book probably dates from that period. So Hippocrene is likely reissuing an old book whose original copyright has expired, which accounts for the dated writing style and learning approach.
Rating: 4
Summary: Not for the linguistic novice.
Comment: The book presupposes some linguistic background. The grammar is a sketch, not exhaustive. But as a source teaching one to read cuneiform, it's great
Rating: 3
Summary: Surprisingly effective coffee table book
Comment: Warning, this book is not very good if you want to actually learn assyrian. It is short and cheap, though, and it gave me an idea about what the morphology of the language. The wonderful thing is that the title is so quirky and eccentric, it is the only book on my coffee table that people actually pick up (no, they don't read it). The only thing better might have been "Teach Yourself Assyrian" or "Assyrian in 30 days".
But no, I still can't decipher the stele at the Met Museum...
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Title: Assyrian Grammar: An Elementary Grammar; With Full Syllabary; And Progressive Reading Book of the Assyrian Language, in the Cuneiform Ty by A. H. Sayce ISBN: 1579109659 Publisher: Wipf & Stock Publishers Pub. Date: May, 2002 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: Cuneiform (Reading the Past, Vol 3) by C. B. F. Walker ISBN: 0520061152 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: August, 1987 List Price(USD): $12.47 |
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Title: Workbook of Cuneiform Signs by D. Snell ISBN: 0890030588 Publisher: Undena Publications Pub. Date: June, 1979 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: A Manual of Akkadian by David Marcus ISBN: 0819106089 Publisher: University Press of America Pub. Date: 18 September, 1978 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others (Oxford World's Classics) by Stephanie Dalley, C. J. Fordyce ISBN: 0192835890 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: September, 1998 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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