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Battle of Killiecrankie

The Battle of Killiecrankie, also known as the Battle of Rinrory, took place on 27 July 1689 during the 1689 Scottish Jacobite rising. An outnumbered Jacobite force under Sir Ewen Cameron of Lochiel and John Graham, Viscount Dundee, defeated a government army commanded by General Hugh Mackay.

James VII went into exile in December 1688 after being deposed by the Glorious Revolution in Scotland. In March 1689, he began the Williamite War in Ireland, with a simultaneous revolt led by Dundee, previously military commander in Scotland.

Hampered by lack of men and resources, Dundee gambled on a decisive battle which he hoped would attract wider support. Although Killiecrankie was an unexpected and stunning victory, his army suffered heavy casualties and he was killed in the final minutes. It did little to change the overall strategic position, and the Jacobites were unable to take advantage of their success.

Background

Despite his personal Catholicism, in February 1685 James II & VII succeeded his brother Charles II with widespread support from the Protestant majorities in both England and Scotland. Memories of the 1638-to-1651 Wars of the Three Kingdoms meant many feared the consequences of bypassing the 'natural heir', and refused to support either the Monmouth Rebellion or Argyll's Rising in June 1685.

By 1680, over 95% of Scots belonged to the Church of Scotland, or "kirk". Catholics numbered less than 2% of the population and even other Protestant sects were barred. The 1681 Scottish Test Act required holders of public office to be members of the kirk; James' attempts to repeal it undermined his own supporters, while rewarding the dissident Presbyterians who backed Argyll.

In June 1688, two events turned dissent into a crisis, the first being the birth of James Francis Edward on 10 June. This created the prospect of a Catholic dynasty, rather than James being succeeded by his Protestant daughter Mary, and her husband William of Orange. The second was the prosecution of the Seven Bishops, which seemed to extend official policy beyond mere tolerance for Catholicism to an assault on the established church. Their acquittal on 30 June destroyed James' political authority in both Scotland and England.

In 1685, many feared a return to civil war if James were bypassed; by 1688, anti-Catholic riots made it seem only his removal could prevent one. William landed in Brixham on 5 November with 14,000 men; as he advanced, James' army deserted, and he went into exile on 23 December. The Parliament of England offered the English throne to William and Mary in February 1689.

On 14 March, a Convention met in Edinburgh to agree a settlement for Scotland. The Convention was dominated by supporters of the new administration, with 'Jacobites' restricted to those linked to James by religion or personal ties. However, the number of activists on either side was tiny, the vast majority being unenthusiastic about either option. On 12 March, James landed in Ireland, and the Convention offered the Scottish throne to William and Mary on 11 April. On the following day, Dundee raised the Royal Standard on Dundee Law.

Initial military actions
William's military commander in Scotland was General Hugh Mackay, head of the veteran Dutch Scots Brigade. His force of 3,500 included the Brigade regiments of Mackay, Balfour and Ramsay, the English Hastings Regiment and two newly raised Scots units. When Ewen Cameron of Lochiel learned of William's landing, he began recruiting men to fight for James; but the short-term nature of clan warfare meant they needed to be put to use as soon as possible.

In April, Dundee joined him at Glenroy and on 18 May, took his force of around 1,800 Highlanders and attempted to bring Mackay to battle. He failed to do so and returned in June, after which most of the clansmen went home, leaving him with less than 200 men. On 27 June, Dundee wrote to the Earl of Melfort asking for reinforcements; the loss of Kintyre after the Battle of Loup Hill made resupply from Ireland extremely difficult, and the letter details alternative landing spots. As time went on, his position weakened due to continued defections – the surrender of Edinburgh Castle on 14 June being especially discouraging.

His requests for additional resources were denied, partly due to an internal dispute with the Catholic 'Non-Compounders', who dominated James's court in Ireland and urged him to refuse any concessions to regain his throne. Dundee and other Scottish Jacobites were mostly Protestant 'Compounders', for whom concessions were essential, and thus viewed with suspicion. The only reinforcements sent to Scotland were 300 Irish soldiers under the Catholic Alexander Cannon, who landed near Duart Castle on 21 July.

A 'Jacobite' garrison under Patrick Stewart of Ballechin occupied Blair Castle, a strategic point controlling access to the Lowlands and seat of John Murray, 1st Marquess of Atholl. This illustrates how many families balanced both sides; claiming ill-health, Atholl went to England, leaving his eldest son, John Murray, to 'besiege' his ancestral home. Stewart himself was a trusted family retainer and one of Atholl's key lieutenants in the suppression of Argyll's Rising in 1685.

In late July, Jacobite reinforcements arrived at Blair; Murray withdrew and Mackay moved north to support him, with somewhere between 3,600 and 5,100 troops. Seeing a chance to intercept, Dundee set out with his available forces, ordering the clans to follow "with all haste." Lochiel's sons were sent to raise additional levies; he and 240 Camerons plus Cannon's Irish contingent reached Blair on 26 July.

Battle
On the morning of 27 July, Dundee learned Mackay's forces were entering the Pass of Killiecrankie, a track nearly 3 km long with the River Garry on the left and steep hills on either side. Sir Alexander McLean and 400 men were sent to skirmish with the advance guard, while Dundee assembled the rest of his troops on the lower slopes of Creag Eallich, north of the pass. As they advanced into the pass, the government army had the Jacobites on the high ground above and the river behind, while the narrow track made advance or retreat equally hazardous. Mackay halted, moved off the track and deployed his troops facing uphill in a long line, only three men deep, to maximise firepower.

Mackay's force included Balfour, Ramsay and Mackay's regiments of the Scots Brigade, along with the newly raised regiments of Kenmure and Leven, part of Hastings' regiment, and 100 cavalry. As the most experienced, the Scots Brigade under Balfour and Lauder was placed on the left, which provided the best field of fire.

The Jacobites formed into columns and were in position by late afternoon but Dundee waited until sunset, just after 8:00pm to begin his attack. Balfour's front line fired three volleys, killing nearly 600 Highlanders but their fire was partly masked by a shallow terrace on the hillside, while the regiments to their right apparently fled without firing a shot. Following their usual tactics, the Highlanders fired a single volley at 50 metres, dropped their muskets, and using axes and swords crashed into Mackay's centre.

Killiecrankie is the first major action in which British troops are known to have employed the plug bayonet. Once 'plugged' into the musket barrel, further reloading or firing was no longer possible, so fixing them was delayed until the last possible moment. Inexperience in their use and the speed of the Highland charge left the government troops defenceless and many fled, abandoning Balfour, who was killed along with James Mackay, Hugh's younger brother.

Aftermath
Mackay managed to reform Hastings and Leven's regiments from the centre and right; some 800 men made it back to Stirling with relative ease, while others straggled in over the next few days. The Highlanders halted their pursuit to loot the baggage train, and their own casualties were enormous, with between 600 and 800 wounded or killed, the vast majority on the government left. Dundee was fatally wounded towards the end of the battle, and died shortly afterwards; a letter sent under his name to James reporting the victory is generally thought to be a forgery, although it provides a useful summary of the action.

Based on muster rolls before and after the battle, government losses were around 2,000 killed, wounded or missing, although some of the "missing" may well have deserted. As colonels were paid for the number of men in their regiment, there was an obvious temptation to over-report pre-battle figures, but it is possible they suffered losses of up to 50%.

Alexander Cannon took over as leader, and while not as talented a commander as Dundee, he faced the same problems; without siege equipment, he could not capture a port, making resupply almost impossible, while lack of cavalry made them vulnerable in the open. In addition, his most reliable unit, the Camrons, suffered particularly heavy casualties, while many other Highlanders went home with their loot. These factors meant time was on Mackay's side, so long as he avoided another ambush.

After an assault on Dunkeld in August was repulsed with heavy losses, Cannon ended the campaign. Mackay spent the winter reducing Jacobite strongholds and constructing a new base at Fort William, while harsh weather conditions led to severe food shortages. When Thomas Buchan replaced Cannon in February 1690, he could only mobilise some 800 men; he was taken by surprise at Cromdale in May and his forces scattered. Mackay pursued him into Aberdeenshire and in November 1690 relinquished command to Livingstone.

In 2004, a fragment of a hand grenade was found, providing evidence of their first use in Britain 30 years earlier than that previously recorded at Glen Shiel in 1719. A detailed survey carried out in 2015 confirmed the location and intensity of the close-quarter fighting, along with the discovery of large numbers of pistol and musket balls.

title: Battle of Killiecrankie


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Tariqa

A tariqa (طريقة) is a religious order of Sufism, or specifically a concept for the mystical teaching and spiritual practices of such an order with the aim of seeking, which translates as "ultimate truth".

A tariqa has a (guide) who plays the role of leader or spiritual director. The members or followers of a tariqa are known as (singular ), meaning "desirous", viz. "desiring the knowledge of God and loving God" (also called a ). Tariqa is also believed to be the same as Tzadik of Judaism meaning the "rightly guided one".

The metaphor of "way, path" is to be understood in connection of the term sharia which also has the meaning of "path", more specifically "well-trodden path; path to the waterhole". The "path" metaphor of tariqa is that of a further path, taken by the mystic, which continues from the "well-trodden path" or exoteric of sharia towards the esoteric . A fourth "station" following the succession of shariah, ' and ' is called. This is the "unseen center" of , and the ultimate aim of the mystic, corresponding to the unio mystica in Western mysticism. , an Arabic word that refers to mysticism and Islamic esotericism, is known in the West as Sufism.

Orders of Sufism

The most popular tariqa in the West is the Mevlevi Order, named after Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi. In the same time the Bektashi Order was also founded, named after the Haji Bektash Veli. Five large tariqas in South Asia are: the Naqshbandi Order, named after Baha-ud-Din Naqshband Bukhari; the Qadiri Order, named after Abdul Qadir Jilani; the Chishti Order, named after Khawaja Mawdood Chisti while Khawaja Moinuddin Chishti is the most famous sheikh; the Suhrawardi Order, named after Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi ; the Burhaniyya becoming popular within the people of Pakistan & India. Large tariqats in Africa include Muridiyya, Burhaniyya and Tijaniyya. Others can be offshoots of a tariqa. For example, the Qalandariyya has roots in Malamatiyya and Wafa'i (a combination of Yasawiyya-Sunni and Batiniyya-Shia) of orders are offshoots of the Suhrawardi order. The Ashrafia after the 13th century illustrious Sufi saint Ashraf Jahangir Semnani is the sub branch of Chishti spiritual lineage. The Maizbhandari Tariqa or Maizbhandari Sufi order is a liberated Sufism order established in the Bangladesh in the 19th century by the Gausul Azam Shah Sufi Syed Ahmadullah Maizbhandari (1826 AD − 1906 AD), 27th descendant of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad. Warsi Tariqa was founded by Waris Ali Shah.

Membership in a particular Sufi order is not exclusive, unlike the Christian monastic orders which are demarcated by firm lines of authority and sacrament. Sufis often are members of various Sufi orders. The non-exclusiveness of Sufi orders has consequences for the social extension of Sufism. They cannot be regarded as indulging in a zero sum competition which a purely political analysis might have suggested. Rather, their joint effect is to impart to Sufism a cumulant body of tradition, rather than individual and isolated experiences.

In most cases the sheikh nominates his khalifa or "successor" during his lifetime, who will take over the order. In rare cases, if the sheikh dies without naming a khalifa, the students of the tariqa elect another spiritual leader by vote. In some orders it is recommended to take a Khalif from the same order as the murshid. In some groups it is customary for the khalifa to be the son of the sheikh, although in other groups the khalīfa and the sheikh are not normally relatives. In yet other orders a successor may be identified through the spiritual dreams of its members.

Tariqas have silsilas (سلسلة; "chain, lineage of sheikhs"). All orders claim a silsila that leads back to Muhammad through Ali, except the Naqshbandi silsila, which traces its roots to Abu Bakr, the first Caliph of Sunni Islam.

Every Murid, on entering the tariqa, gets his awrad, or daily recitations, authorized by his murshid (usually to be recited before or after the pre-dawn prayer, after the afternoon prayer and after the evening prayer). Usually these recitations are extensive and time-consuming (for example the awrad may consist of reciting a certain formula 99, 500 or even 1000 times). One must also be in a state of ritual purity (as one is for the obligatory prayers to perform them while facing Mecca). The recitations change as a student (murid) moves from a mere initiate to other Sufi degrees (usually requiring additional initiations). The Initiation ceremony is routine and consists of reading chapter 1 of the Quran followed by a single phrase prayer. Criteria have to be met to be promoted in rank: the common way is to repeat a single phrase prayer 82,000 times or more as in the case of Burhaniyya, a number that grows with each achieved rank. Murids who experience unusual interaction during meditation: hear voices like "would you like to see a prophet?" or see visions who might even communicate with the Murid are held dear in the "Haḍra", the weekly group-chanting of prayers in attempt of reaching spirits as they are likely to experience something unusual and pass it on. This Murid is promoted faster than others. The least common way is to cause a miracle to happen with criteria similar to that of Catholic Sainthood.

Being mostly followers of the spiritual traditions of Islam loosely referred to as Sufism, these groups were sometimes distinct from the Ulma or officially mandated scholars, and often acted as informal missionaries of Islam. They provided accepted avenues for emotional expressions of faith, and the Tariqas spread to all corners of the Muslim world, and often exercised a degree of political influence inordinate to their size (take for example the influence that the sheikhs of the Safavid had over the armies of Tamerlane, or the missionary work of Ali-Shir Nava'i in Turkistan among the Mongol and Tatar people).

History
The tariqas were particularly influential in the spread of Islam in the sub-Sahara during the 9th to 14th centuries, where they spread south along trade routes between North Africa and the sub-Saharan kingdoms of Ghana and Mali. On the West African coast they set up Zawiyas on the shores of the river Niger and even established independent kingdoms such as al-Murabitun or Almoravids. The Al Hakika Mizaan Mizaani Sufi order deals with heavy internalization and meditations, their spiritual practice is called Al Qudra Mizaan [(United States)]. The Sanusi order was also highly involved in missionary work in Africa during the 19th century, spreading both Islam and a high level of literacy into Africa as far south as Lake Chad and beyond by setting up a network of zawiyas where Islam was taught.

Much of Central Asia and southern Russia was won over to Islam through the missionary work of the Tarīqahs, and the majority of Indonesia's population, where a Muslim army never set foot, was converted to Islam by the perseverance of both Muslim traders and Sufi missionaries. Sufism in India played a similarly crucial role in the diffusion of Islam at the élite and popular levels; its music, art, and poetry flourished in a highly sophisticated Persianate society.

Tariqas were brought to China in the 17th century by Ma Laichi and other Chinese Sufis who had studied in Mecca and Yemen, and had also been influenced by spiritual descendants of the Kashgarian Sufi master Afaq Khoja. On the Chinese soil the institutions became known as menhuan, and are typically headquartered near the tombs (gongbei) of their founders.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Tariqa


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On Numbers and Games

On Numbers and Games is a mathematics book by John Horton Conway first published in 1976. The book is written by a pre-eminent mathematician, and is directed at other mathematicians. The material is, however, developed in a playful and unpretentious manner and many chapters are accessible to non-mathematicians. Martin Gardner discussed the book at length, particularly Conway's construction of surreal numbers, in his Mathematical Games column in Scientific American in September 1976.

The book is roughly divided into two sections: the first half (or Zeroth Part), on numbers, the second half (or First Part), on games. In the Zeroth Part, Conway provides axioms for arithmetic: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and inequality. This allows an axiomatic construction of numbers and ordinal arithmetic, namely, the integers, reals, the countable infinity, and entire towers of infinite ordinals. The object to which these axioms apply takes the form {L|R}, which can be interpreted as a specialized kind of set; a kind of two-sided set. By insisting that L<R, this two-sided set resembles the Dedekind cut. The resulting construction yields a field, now called the surreal numbers. The ordinals are embedded in this field. The construction is rooted in axiomatic set theory, and is closely related to the Zermelo–Fraenkel axioms. In the original book, Conway simply refers to this field as "the numbers". The term "surreal numbers" is adopted later, at the suggestion of Donald Knuth.

In the First Part, Conway notes that, by dropping the constraint that L<R, the axioms still apply and the construction goes through, but the resulting objects can no longer be interpreted as numbers. They can be interpreted as the class of all two-player games. The axioms for greater than and less than are seen to be a natural ordering on games, corresponding to which of the two players may win. The remainder of the book is devoted to exploring a number of different (non-traditional, mathematically inspired) two-player games, such as nim, hackenbush, and the map-coloring games col and snort. The development includes their scoring, a review of the Sprague–Grundy theorem, and the inter-relationships to numbers, including their relationship to infinitesimals.

The book was first published by Academic Press in 1976, ISBN 0-12-186350-6, and a second edition was released by A K Peters in 2001 (ISBN 1-56881-127-6).

Zeroth Part ... On Numbers
In the Zeroth Part, Chapter 0, Conway introduces a specialized form of set notation, having the form {L|R}, where L and R are again of this form, built recursively, terminating in {|}, which is to be read as an analog of the empty set. Given this object, axiomatic definitions for addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and inequality may be given. As long as one insists that L<R (with this holding vacuously true when L or R are the empty set), then the resulting class of objects can be interpreted as numbers, the surreal numbers. The {L|R} notation then resembles the Dedekind cut.

The ordinal $$\omega$$ is built by transfinite induction. As with conventional ordinals, $$\omega+1$$ can be defined. Thanks to the axiomatic definition of subtraction, $$\omega-1$$ can also be coherently defined: it is strictly less than $$\omega$$, and obeys the "obvious" equality $$(\omega-1)+1=\omega.$$ Yet, it is still larger than any natural number.

The construction enables an entire zoo of peculiar numbers, the surreals, which form a field. Examples include $$\omega/2$$, $$1/\omega$$, $$\sqrt{\omega}=\omega^{1/2}$$, $$\omega^{1/\omega}$$ and similar.

First Part ... and Games
In the First Part, Conway abandons the constraint that L<R, and then interprets the form {L|R} as a two-player game: a position in a contest between two players, Left and Right. Each player has a set of games called options to choose from in turn. Games are written {L|R} where L is the set of Left's options and R is the set of Right's options. At the start there are no games at all, so the empty set (i.e., the set with no members) is the only set of options we can provide to the players. This defines the game {|}, which is called 0. We consider a player who must play a turn but has no options to have lost the game. Given this game 0 there are now two possible sets of options, the empty set and the set whose only element is zero. The game {0|} is called 1, and the game {|0} is called -1. The game {0|0} is called * (star), and is the first game we find that is not a number.

All numbers are positive, negative, or zero, and we say that a game is positive if Left has a winning strategy, negative if Right has a winning strategy, or zero if the second player has a winning strategy. Games that are not numbers have a fourth possibility: they may be fuzzy, meaning that the first player has a winning strategy. * is a fuzzy game.

title: On Numbers and Games


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National Garden Scheme

The National Garden Scheme opens privately owned gardens in England, Northern Ireland, Wales, and the Channel Islands on selected dates for charity. It was founded in 1927 with the aim of "opening gardens of quality, character and interest to the public for charity". The scheme has raised over £67 million since it began, and normally opens over 3,500 gardens a year.

Volunteer County Organisers are responsible for vetting gardens to make sure they are of sufficient interest. When the scheme began 609 private gardens were opened and £8,191 was raised. A small number of the original "1927" gardens still participate in the Scheme, while many more have joined. Over 3,700 gardens were due to open in 2020 but the impact of COVID-19 meant that most openings were cancelled. However, new online virtual garden tours were introduced.

To help boost funds after COVID-19, the National Garden Scheme set up an annual fundraising event called The Great British Garden Party, encouraging everyone to enjoy outdoor spaces while raising money for the charity and championed by the charity's President, Dame Mary Berry.

The National Garden Scheme not only opens beautiful gardens for charity – it is passionate about the physical and mental health benefits of gardens too. The Scheme funds projects which promote gardens and gardening as therapy, and in 2017, launched an annual Gardens and Health Week to raise awareness of the topic.

Visitor information is published in a publication called The Garden Visitor's Handbook (formerly the Yellow Book). There is another Yellow Book for the separate Scotland's Gardens scheme.

Charities supported
Originally the admission fees raised money for district nurses, although the creation of the National Health Service in 1948 changed the nature of the support required. In 1980, the National Garden Scheme Charitable Trust was launched as an independent charity with Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother as patron. The current patron is Charles, the former Prince of Wales. The Queen's Nursing Institute is still one of the charities supported, along with Marie Curie, Macmillan Cancer Support, Hospice UK, Parkinson's UK, Carers Trust, Maggie's, Horatio's Garden, Perennial, and others that support gardening as therapy, community gardens and horticultural trainees. The National Garden Scheme runs a Community Gardens Grant programme to support health and well-being in communities around the country.

You can read about the charity's impact in their annual Impact Reports here.

title: National Garden Scheme


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Mind Dynamics

Mind Dynamics was a seminar company, founded by Alexander Everett in Texas in 1968. The company ceased operating in December 1973 after the death of co-owner William Penn Patrick and the resignation of President Robert White, alongside investigations for fraudulent representations and practicing medicine without a license.

Techniques, methodology
Mind Dynamics has been compared to Dale Carnegie, and encounter groups. Mind Dynamics trained businessmen in personal development techniques, but relied on unique activities rather than academic theories. The coursework also utilized techniques that focused on visualization, and meditation.

Techniques drawn from the Unity Church included periods of silence, focusing the mind on positive elements, and distinguishing the "intuitive inner voice."

Some of Mind Dynamics' techniques were compared to self-hypnosis, and mind control. Mind Dynamics has been described as part of the consciousness transformation movement, and has been compared to Scientology, est, Psycho-Cybernetics, and Amway.

Influences
Heelas' The New Age Movement states that Mind Dynamics and Alexander Everett were influenced by Edgar Cayce, Theosophy, and Silva Mind Control, and Curtiss' Depression is a Choice also cites Silva Mind Control and self-talk as the basis for Mind Dynamics. Mind Dynamics has also been described by several authors on religious texts as an offshoot of Silva Mind Control. According to Jose Silva, Alexander Everett was a graduate of Silva Mind Control. Everett also drew on principles from the Unity Church, Egyptology and Rosicrucianism in developing Mind Dynamics.

Leadership Dynamics, Holiday Magic
Other companies which had corporate relationships with Mind Dynamics included Leadership Dynamics and Holiday Magic, both of which were founded by William Penn Patrick, co-owner and Board Member for Mind Dynamics. Holiday Magic later folded, amidst investigations by authorities and accusations of being a multi-level marketing pyramid scheme. Every employee in management positions at Holiday Magic was required to participate in the coursework.

Investigated for fraud, practicing medicine without a license
In December 1972, Mind Dynamics was investigated for practicing medicine without a license, and fraudulent representation of the potential benefits of participating in their coursework. The company was also investigated by the state of California for making fraudulent claims. A lawsuit brought forth by the State of California in 1973 requested that Mind Dynamics be barred from what California referred to as its unlawful practice of medicine. William Penn Patrick was named as a party with Mind Dynamics in the lawsuit.

Mind Dynamics ceased operating in 1973, after being investigated and charged with fraud and practicing medicine without a license. According to an article in Forbes, as of 1974, the State of California was still seeking to enjoin the company from making fraudulent claims, and practicing medicine without a license.

Later groups
Neal Vahle's The Unity Movement lists nine personal growth organizations which grew out of Mind Dynamics, including: est and The Forum, Landmark Education, Lifespring, Lifestream, LifeResults, LifeSuccess, Context Training / Context International, PSI Seminars, Personal Dynamics in Switzerland, Life Dynamics in Japan and Hong Kong, Alpha Seminars in Australia, Hoffman Quadrinity Process, Dimensional Mind Approach, Pathwork, and Actualizations. Vahle goes on to describe similar techniques used by these groups which were incorporated from Mind Dynamics' practices. Berger's Agit-Pop also gives examples of EST, Lifespring and Actualizations as groups that grew out of Mind Dynamics and helped form the human potential movement. The organizations cited above were founded by prior instructors from Mind Dynamics who had been trained by Alexander Everett, including Stewart Emery (who founded Actualizations), Randy Revell (who developed Context Training), James Quinn (who organized Lifestream/LifeResults/LifeSuccess), and Thomas Wilhite (who founded PSI Seminars).

Werner Erhard, subsequently associated with est (1971-1984),  WE&A (1981-1991) and Landmark Education (founded 1991, known as Landmark Worldwide since 2013) taught in the Mind Dynamics organization, providing a link between Mind Dynamics and several subsequent Large-group awareness trainings (LGATs).

Former MDI President Robert White founded Lifespring and ARC International which delivered the Life Dynamics seminars in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Sydney.

title: Mind Dynamics


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Nicomedia

Nicomedia (Νικομήδεια, Nikomedeia; modern İzmit) was an ancient Greek city located in what is now Turkey. In 286, Nicomedia became the eastern and most senior capital city of the Roman Empire (chosen by the emperor Diocletian who ruled in the east), a status which the city maintained during the Tetrarchy system (293–324).

The Tetrarchy ended with the Battle of Chrysopolis (Üsküdar) in 324, when Constantine defeated Licinius and became the sole emperor. In 330 Constantine chose for himself the nearby Byzantium (which was renamed Constantinople, modern Istanbul) as the new capital of the Roman Empire.

The city was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire with the victory of Sultan Orhan Gazi against the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines managed to retake it in the aftermath of the Battle of Ankara, but it fell definitively to the Ottomans in 1419.

History
It was founded in 712–11 BC as a Megarian colony and was originally known as Astacus (Ἀστακός, 'lobster'). After being destroyed by Lysimachus, it was rebuilt by Nicomedes I of Bithynia in 264 BC under the name of Nicomedia, and has ever since been one of the most important cities in northwestern Asia Minor. The great military commander Hannibal Barca came to Nicomedia in his final years and committed suicide in nearby Libyssa (Diliskelesi, Gebze). The historian Arrian was born there.

Nicomedia was the metropolis and capital of the Roman province of Bithynia under the Roman Empire. It is referenced repeatedly in Pliny the Younger's Epistles to Trajan during his tenure as governor of Bithynia. Pliny, in his letters, mentions several public buildings of the city such as a senate-house, an aqueduct, a forum, a temple of Cybele, and others, and speaks of a great fire, during which the place suffered much. Diocletian made it the eastern capital city of the Roman Empire in 286 when he introduced the Tetrarchy system.

Persecutions of 303
Nicomedia was at the center of the Diocletianic Persecution of Christians which occurred under Diocletian and his Caesar Galerius. On 23 February 303 AD, the pagan festival of the Terminalia, Diocletian ordered that the newly built church at Nicomedia be razed, its scriptures burnt, and its precious stones seized. The next day he issued his "First Edict Against the Christians," which ordered similar measures to be taken at churches across the Empire.

The destruction of the Nicomedia church incited panic in the city, and at the end of the month a fire destroyed part of Diocletian's palace, followed 16 days later by another fire. Although an investigation was made into the cause of the fires, no party was officially charged, but Galerius placed the blame on the Christians. He oversaw the execution of two palace eunuchs, who he claimed conspired with the Christians to start the fire, followed by six more executions through the end of April 303. Soon after Galerius declared Nicomedia to be unsafe and ostentatiously departed the city for Rome, followed soon after by Diocletian.

Later Empire

Nicomedia remained as the eastern (and most senior) capital of the Roman Empire until co-emperor Licinius was defeated by Constantine the Great at the Battle of Chrysopolis (Üsküdar) in 324. Constantine mainly resided in Nicomedia as his interim capital city for the next six years, until in 330 he declared the nearby Byzantium (which was renamed Constantinople) the new capital. Constantine died in a royal villa in the vicinity of Nicomedia in 337. Owing to its position at the convergence of the Asiatic roads leading to the new capital, Nicomedia retained its importance even after the foundation of Constantinople.

A major earthquake, however, on 24 August 358, caused extensive devastation to Nicomedia, and was followed by a fire which completed the catastrophe. Nicomedia was rebuilt, but on a smaller scale. In the sixth century under Emperor Justinian I the city was extended with new public buildings. Situated on the roads leading to the capital, the city remained a major military center, playing an important role in the Byzantine campaigns against the Caliphate. From inscriptions we learn that in the later period of the empire Nicomedia enjoyed the honour of a Roman colony.

In 451, the local bishopric was promoted to a Metropolitan see under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The metropolis of Nicomedia was ranked 7th in the Notitiae Episcopatuum among the metropolises of the patriarchate. In the eighth century the Emperor Constantine V established his court there for a time, when plague broke out in Constantinople and drove him from his capital in 746–47. From the 840s on, Nicomedia was the capital of the thema of the Optimatoi. By that time, most of the old, seawards city had been abandoned and is described by the Persian geographer Ibn Khurdadhbih as lying in ruins, with settlement restricted to the hilltop citadel. In the 1080s, the city served as the main military base for Alexios I Komnenos in his campaigns against the Seljuk Turks, and the First and Second Crusades both encamped there.

The city was briefly held by the Latin Empire following the fall of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade in 1204: in late 1206 the seneschal Thierry de Loos made it his base, converting the church of Saint Sophia into a fortress; however, the Crusader stronghold was subjected to constant raids by the Emperor of Nicaea Theodore I Laskaris, during which de Loos was captured by Nicaean soldiers; by the summer of 1207 Emperor Henry of Flanders agreed to evacuate Nicomedia in exchange for de Loos and other prisoners Emperor Theodore held. The city remained in Byzantine control for over a century after that, but following the Byzantine defeat at the Battle of Bapheus in 1302, it was threatened by the rising Ottoman beylik. The city was twice sieged and blockaded by the Ottomans (in 1304 and 1330) before finally succumbing in 1337.

The city remained in Ottoman hands until the Battle of Ankara and subsequent Ottoman Interregnum weakened them enough for the neighbouring states to demand the return of their conquered lands from the warring Ottoman princes in exchange for their support against the other princes. In this way the Byzantines secured considerable territorial concessions including Nicomedia and other lands on the east side of the Bosphorus. However, this last period of Byzantine rule was rather short-lived, as Nicomedia was definitively taken by the Ottomans around 1419.

Infrastructure
During the Empire, Nicomedia was a cosmopolitan and commercially prosperous city which received all the amenities appropriate for a major Roman city. Nicomedia was well known for having a bountiful water supply from two to three aqueducts, one of which was built in Hellenistic times. Pliny the Younger complains in his Epistulae to Trajan, written in 110 AD, that the Nicomedians wasted 3,318,000 sesterces on an unfinished aqueduct which twice ran into engineering troubles. Trajan instructs him to take steps to complete the aqueduct, and to investigate possible official corruption behind the large waste of money. Under Trajan, there was also a large Roman garrison. Other public amenities included a theatre, a colonnaded street typical of Hellenistic cities and a forum.

The major religious shrine was a temple of Demeter, which stood in a sacred precinct on a hill above the harbor. The city adopted official cults of Rome avidly, there were temples dedicated to the Emperor Commodus, a sacred precinct of the city dedicated to Augustus, and a temple of Roma dedicated during the late-Republic.

The city was sacked in AD 253 by the Goths, but when Diocletian made the city his capital in 283 AD he undertook grand restorations and built an enormous palace, an armory, mint, and new shipyards.

Notable natives and residents

 * Diocletian (c. 244 – 311), Roman emperor from 284 to 305
 * Arrian (c. 86/89 – c. after 146/160), Greek historian, civil servant, military commander and philosopher of the Roman period
 * Saint George (d. 303), martyr
 * Barbara of Nicomedia (3rd century), martyr
 * Pantaleon of Nicomedia (d.305), martyr
 * Adrian of Nicomedia (d. 306), martyr
 * Anthimus of Nicomedia (d. 303 or 311-12), bishop, martyr
 * Juliana of Nicomedia (d. 304), martyr
 * Theopemptus of Nicomedia (d. 303), bishop, Hieromartyr
 * Theophylact of Nicomedia (d. 845), bishop, recognized as a Saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church
 * Michael Psellos (1017 or 1078 – c. 1078 or 1096) Greek writer, philosopher, politician, and historian
 * Maximus Planudes (c. 1260 – c. 1305) Greek scholar, anthologist, translator and grammarian
 * Aaron ben Elijah (1328/1329-1369) Karaite Jewish philosopher

Remains
The ruins of Nicomedia are buried beneath the densely populated modern city of İzmit, which has largely obstructed comprehensive excavation. Before the urbanization of the 20th century occurred, select ruins of the Roman-era city could be seen, most prominently sections of the Roman defensive walls which surrounded the city and multiple aqueducts which once supplied Nicomedia's water. Other monuments include the foundations of a 2nd-century AD marble nymphaeum on İstanbul street, a large cistern in the city's Jewish cemetery, and parts of the harbor wall.

The 1999 İzmit earthquake, which seriously damaged most of the city, also led to major discoveries of ancient Nicomedia during the subsequent debris clearing. A wealth of ancient statuary was uncovered, including statues of Hercules, Athena, Diocletian and Constantine.

In the years after the earthquake, the Izmit Provincial Cultural Directorate appropriated small areas for excavation, including the site identified as Diocletian's Palace and a nearby Roman theatre. In April 2016 a more extensive excavation of the palace was begun under the supervision of the Kocaeli Museum, which estimated that the site covers 60,000 square meters (196,850 square feet).

title: Nicomedia


text:
Talk:Akkadian language

Outdated Grammars
I wonder why has somebody posted all these woefully outdated XIX and early XX century grammars here. It can be of no use to anyone. Instead it creates an impression to somebody unfamiliar with the subject that all the grammatical and vocabulary readings in these books are correct which is simply not true. Yet someone has deleted the link to a very useful collection of scholarly oriented and accurate set of cuneiform fonts. (http://www.hethport.uni-wuerzburg.de/cuneifont/). I can't understand the logic behind this.

Official language?
It's confusing to people to first see the official language box, but then read that it was official, and isn't currently. I recommend removing that box and placing the information on another section in the article, or rename if former official status at least. Il Studioso  00:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree, the "official status" block is only for languages that have current official status, which means something different than it did in the 2nd millennium BCE. (Taivo (talk) 00:51, 20 February 2009 (UTC))

BC/BCE
I understand that there has been/is a revert war on BCE/BC in this article, and so I'm not going to do anything to it, but having both systems present in the one article is confusing and looks unprofessional. Could the next person who changes sets about to change it, for whatever reason, please be systematic?Zjanes (talk) 23:39, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Good catch. I made everything uniform with BCE/CE (which was the oldest pattern for this article). (Taivo (talk) 01:27, 16 December 2008 (UTC))

removed from article
Removed from article:
 * Add something about the 4x4 verb stem system, as well as ventive suffixes, -ma suffixes, and such. Also flesh out inflections, mention non-productivity of dual as well as accusative/genitive falling together as objective in dual/plural.  Also mention status absolutus, status rectus, and status constructus, which are arguably inflections and certainly morphological forms.

Ortolan88

Professial Akkadian reference books:
 * Markus Hilgert, Akkadisch in der Ur III-Zeit (IMGULA 5. Münster: Rhema, 2002)--Standforder (talk) 01:53, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
 * John Huehnergard, A grammar of Akkadian (Harvard Semitic studies 45. Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1997)--Standforder (talk) 01:53, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Ignace J. Gelb, Old Akkadian writing and grammar (Materials for the Assyrian dictionary 2. Chicago, 1952)--Standforder (talk) 01:53, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Ambiguity
This article seems contradictory because it says of the Akkadian language: "...it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate". How can it be "derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian", but then Sumerian is referred to as "an unrelated language isolate". If it is derived from the Sumerian, then how can the Sumerian be unrelated ?

 * The writing system is derived from the writing system used by Akkadian although the languages themselves are unrelated, just as the English writing system is derived from that used by Latin despite English not being derived from Latin. How can we rephrase that to be less confusing for novice readers? Ben (talk) 11:37, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

 * Maybe something like "...it used the cuneiform writing system, which was originally used to write ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate". By the way, English is partly derived from Latin; a large number of English words is ultimately of Latin origin. -- Lindert (talk) 14:45, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the rephrasing -- I like that proose. Akkadian had a similar proportion of Sumerian loanwords.  That does not make them related, however, any more than loanwords make English and Latin relelated. Ben (talk) 14:22, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

 * I guess you're right, English is technically a Germanic language, but over half of all English words are of Latin or French (derived from Latin) origin. And besides, English and Latin are definitely related if you go further back, as they are both part of the Indo-European language family. -- Lindert (talk) 15:28, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

 * Indeed. And now that we've pedanted each-other to death, I'll go add your wording to the article. Ben (talk) 19:06, 19 March 2012 (UTC)  (Looks like you beat me to it -- excellent! Ben (talk) 19:08, 19 March 2012 (UTC))

Earliest attestations?
Are the earliest written samples of Akkadian found at Akkad in Mesopotamia or at Mari, Syria? The Mari article states that the inhabitants spoke Akkadian, and the tablets there are apparently pretty old.
 * How old are the Syrian tablets, and how old are the Mesopotamian tablets? That would help more than just posting anonymously that they're "pretty old" David80 13:53, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

The oldest attestations come from Muqaiyir according to Dr. Jonathan Taylor of the curator (Cuneiform Collections)The Department of the Middle East The British Museum. He has also said, "There are no clear traces of pre-Sumerian influence on Akkadian."--Standforder (talk) 01:40, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Grammar Section
I've added some new information to the grammar section, but it still needs a lot of work. Feel free to clean it up however you see fit.

Standards of Measure

 * Rktect 8/9/05
 * I'm looking for any difference betwen Sumerian and Akkadian
 * standards of measure at Kish, Agade, Sipparta, Ashur, Mari, Ebla
 * for the following periods

 * Early Dynastic I
 * Early Dynastic II
 * Early Dynastic III

 * starting when Sargon alludes to the ships of Melluha, Makkan and Dilmun
 * Docking at the quays of Agade and ending with the Neo Sumerian revival.
 * In particular I'm looking for the differences between the standards
 * of Naram Sin and Gudea.

Questions from a linguist
As a linguist who knows nothing about Akkadian, I have a couple questions/ requests for clarification.

Under "Writing system", the article says "cuneiform was a syllabary writing system — i.e. a consonant plus vowel comprised one writing unit — frequently inappropriate for a Semitic language made up of triconsonantal roots (i.e. three consonants minus any vowels)." I'm not understanding what the form of roots has to do with writing texts in the language. Sentences are not normally formed with verb roots, but with inflected verbs. As such, a verb would have at least some vowels (well, you can have vowel-less words in languages like Salish or Berber, even occasionally in English, but it's not typical of Semitic languages to have vowel-less conjugated words). So the point about roots being (usually) triconsonantal seems irrelevant. What *might* be relevant (although I'm sure it's hard to tell with an extinct language) is the existence of geminate consonants or consonant clusters in conjugated verbs; but that has nothing to do with the roots, AFAIK. Or am I missing something?

Under "Grammar", it says "[Akkadian had] unique verb conjugations for each first, second, and third person pronoun." I'm not sure what it means to have verb conjugations for *pronouns*, or what it means to have *unique* verb conjugations for each person. Maybe what is meant is that verbs were conjugated for the person of the subject? ("Subject" is relevant here, since there are many languages that also conjugate transitive verbs for the person of the object or other verbal arguments.)

Also "Adjectives are declined exactly like nouns." Is there any indication that adjectives differed from nouns in any way (in the syntax maybe)? There are plenty of languages in the world which do not distinguish adjectives as a part of speech distinct from nouns (or distinct from verbs), and for all I know, Akkadian might be one. (Remember, I know nothing about Akkadian!)

"There are three tenses: present, preterite and permansive. Present tense indicates incomplete action and preterite tense indicates complete action, while permansive tense expresses a state or condition and usually takes a particle." It sounds to me like Akkadian did not have tense, it had aspect: maybe completive vs. incompletive aspect. I'm not sure what this "permansive" is, but maybe a stative aspect? And I don't understand what it means for the permansive to "take" a particle--on the assumption that there were many particles, is it known what caused a particular permansive verb to take one or the other particle? Lexical? Or is there a distinction in meaning? Are the particles functioning something like auxiliary verbs do (like modals in English, maybe)?

Mcswell (talk) 22:02, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Polyvalence
According to "Extinct Languages" (Friedrich, Johannes - ISBN 0-88029-338-1, 1993 translation of the 1957 German edition), symbols can be an ideogram, a determinative or a phonetic symbol sign. He goes on to say that another form of polyvariance - less common in earlier Akkadian but more frequent in later forms - was "polyphony", where the same sign represented phonetically different syllables. (Thus the sign meaning "kid" could also represent "sab" or "lil".)

 * That's a different kind of variation from the ideogram (also called sumerogram)/determinative/phonetic variation. Polyphony is when a sign has several phonetic values. A sign can also be used as two, or all three, of the different uses. — Arnsholt (talk) 17:00, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Gender in Akkadian?
The grammar section seems to contradict itself:

"Akkadian [...] possesses two genders (masculine and feminine), distinguished even in second person pronouns (you-masc., you-fem.) and verb conjugations [...]

Akkadian nouns are declined according to gender, number and case. There are three genders; masculine, feminine and common. Only a very few nouns belong to the common gender. [...]"

So does Akkadian have two genders or three?

Khepidjemwa'atnefru 04:35, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Answer: Akkadian has two genders, masculine and feminine. Common gender refers to words or forms that do not distinguish gender (i.e., are used for both genders), such as the first person pronouns (anāku, etc.) or the third person singular verbal forms (in Babylonian; e.g., iprus for both masculine and feminine contrasted with the Assyrian and Old Akkadian iprus/taprus distinction between masculine and feminine (the third person singular stative/permanisive forms, however, do distingish gender: paris [m.] / parsat [f.]). "Common" is not a gender but is a "both/either" category, not a "neither" category as "neuter" would be.

Robert Whiting, 28 JUL 2006

Enheduanna
The "Akkadian litterature" links include Enheduanna. She was called the daughter of Sargon of Akkad, but she wrote in Sumerian, as far as I know, and "Akkadian litterature" in an article on the Akkadian language would mean "litterature in the Akkadian language". So I think Enheduanna shouldn't be listed here. --85.187.203.123 21:44, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I find Akkadian language close to arabic languages from words (unsigned IP)
 * They are both Semitic languages - but "close"? About as close as English to German.104.169.39.45 (talk) 01:10, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Translation
I'm considering replacing the current article with a translation of the one from Norwegian wikipedia (Akkadisk). As far as I can make out, the article is ultimately derived from the German article, by way of Swedish. All three articles have been featured articles on their respective Wikipedias, and look like high-quality articles to me. Any comments? — Arnsholt (talk) 17:00, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Go for it, but please retain the English bibliography and the language template. (Taivo (talk) 18:57, 13 May 2008 (UTC))

article scope
this article has as its scope the entire history of the language, not just its earliest "Akkadian" phase (2300 to 2000 BC). In the Old Assyrian/Babylonian to Neo-Assyrian/Babylonian period (2000 to 600 BC), it isn't usually known as "Akkadian". I don't object to the article residing at this title, but the relations need to be made clear. dab (𒁳) 17:54, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I changed the introduction to match with the title. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ghksono (talk • contribs) 18:10, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

BC/BCE, Stop the Revert War
Wikipedia policy has been fairly uniform now for a couple of years. If an article is "historically" BC it stays BC. If an article is "historically" BCE it stays BCE. This article has been BCE for at least a couple of years now. It is a BCE article. (Taivo (talk) 13:02, 1 June 2008 (UTC))

Hopefully cleaned up some confusion
The article seemed to add a reference to the affricate theory as an afterthought. Tried to clarify the one cited piece of evidence that points to the "traditional" š, etc. sibilant reconstructions as incorrect and better described as affricates, but I didn't want to paste in all of Dyakonov's work, which also compares loanword interchange all pointing to most of the relevant cuneiform symbols referring to affricate sounds.

(http://archives.conlang.info/gae/ghoenqhu/gaubholpian.html is an abbreviated translation of the relatively dense and impenetrable originals: I. M. Dyakonov, Akkadskij jazyk, - in: Jazyki Azii i Afriki/Semitskie jazyki. No. IV/1 in the series: Jazyki Azii i Afriki, Moskva, Glavnaja redakcija vostochnoj literatury, 1991 and Vvedenije. Afrazijskie jazyki--ibid.

In the translation, which is in ASCII(!), "s" represents a sibilant, "c" an affricate, "c." an emphatic affricate, and "3" a voiced affricate, while the place information is given by the following "`" for lateral and "^" for palatal. One practically has to know Russian to glean this from the English translation!)

A slightly more comprehensible version, though nothing like as comprehensive, is found in The Ancient Languages of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Aksum, by Roger D. Woodard, sec. 2.4/2.5 of the description of Akkadian (pp. 89-94). Mellsworthy (talk) 01:40, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Maltese
Note that there are broken plurals in Maltese. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.149.223.218 (talk) 13:45, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * In adding back that particular sentence I've purged the mention of Maltese. It clearly does use broken plurals. Mo-Al (talk) 03:06, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

suggest revision for table comparing Akkadian - Arabic - Hebrew
In the table under the section "Proto-Semitic phonemes and their correspondences among Akkadian, Arabic and Tiberian Hebrew" there are places where several proto-Semitic phonemes have the same reflex in Akkadian, and this simplified correspondence is made clear by the removal of the proto-Semitic separation-lines, but in the case of the other languages, especially Hebrew, the proto-Semitic separation-lines are still there, thus making it a bit more difficult to compare with Akkadian or other columns. Can those unnecessary horizontal lines be removed, please? Jakob37 (talk) 03:00, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

 * I guess it looks better now.--Xevorim (talk) 07:06, 18 October 2009 (UTC) - Beautiful, AND informative! Jakob37 (talk) 23:59, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
 * One more little thing: the "ayin" in the table looked so tiny, more like a little apostrophe than the traditional appearance of the transliterated "ayin", so I changed it to something not too big or too small (at the right end of the Wiki IPA list), but if possible it should look bold like the others - and the Hebrew needs changing too.... Jakob37 (talk) 00:13, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

The apostrophe certainly appears tiny, but that's how the ayin is transliterated according to the DMG and ISO 259. I have also added the IPA character to clarify things.--Xevorim (talk) 03:00, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

the emphatics
1) The transcriptions in the table do not seem to be standard; e.g. instead of tˤ, shouldn't it be tˀ ? - And there is some controversy, is there not, about the actual pronunciation: were they ejectives, as your preferred symbols seem to indicate, or pharyngeals (the symbols in parentheses)? Perhaps a short discussion of the controversy would help; I'd work on it, but it's hard to get the materials here in Taiwan. Jakob37 (talk) 00:42, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

You're right. Akkadian emphatics are reconstructed as ejectives. Hetzron writes: "The dissimilatory change of one emphatic consonant to its non-emphatic counterpart in Akkadian roots containing two emphatics suggests that Akkadian emphatics were ejectives". As such I have corrected the table and added a citation. --Xevorim (talk) 03:00, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Afroasiatic?
Is it correct to term it in such a manner? I don't think semitic languages were spoken in North Africa during the times of the Akkadian Empire. - Yorkshirian (talk) 22:41, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Afro-Asiatic is the name of the language family that is mainly based in East Africa. South-, Central and East Cushitic, Omotic, Beja and Semitic all occur in East Africa. Hausa in West Africa, Berber in Northwest Africa and Ancient Egyptian in Northeast Africa. The most diverse Semitica languages are spoken in East Africa, then Southern Arabia, then the Levant, then Mesopotamia. In other words, the closer to the East African homeland of Semitic, the more complex and older the languages. Map of the Semitic languages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_languages#/media/File:Semitic_languages.svg 83.84.100.133 (talk) 18:32, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Afro-Asiatic is the name of a specific language family, much like Indo-European. The name has a regional basis, but there are Indo-European languages spoken, for example, in South Africa.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  00:13, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Bad example-English and Afrikaans are both the result of direct modern European colonization in South Africa - it didn't "migrate" there naturally over the course of millennia.HammerFilmFan (talk) 07:56, 7 January 2011 (UTC) HammerFilmFan

Assyro-Babylonian
I've moved the title to Assyro-Babylonian as it appears to be far more common.

 * Assyro-Babylonian language (127,000)

Izzedine 06:58, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Akkadian language (26,700)

 * No, Izzedine, it is not far more common. Linguists refer to this language as Akkadian almost universally.  You cannot use a Google search as evidence.  The problem you are encountering is that there are two stages to the history of Akkadian--the period before the two dialects of Assyrian and Babylonian differentiated, and the period after.  The pre-separation period is labelled as Old Akkadian.  Then the two dialects are individually labelled Assyrian and Babylonian.  But the language as a whole is always labelled in linguistic literature as Akkadian.  Akkadian is used for the language as a whole and Old Akkadian, Old Babylonian, Old Assyrian, Middle Babylonian, Middle Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, Neo-Assyrian, and Late Babylonian as labels for the different temporal and geographical divisions.  Do not move this without submitting a Move Request, soliciting input, and providing your evidence (which does not include a simple Google search).  Standard references include Giorgio Buccellati ("Akkadian," The Semitic Languages (1997, pp. 69ff)), John Huehnergard and Christopher Woods ("Akkadian and Eblaite," The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages (2004, pp. 218ff.)), and Jerrold S. Cooper ("Sumerian and Akkadian," The World's Writing Systems (1996, pp. 37ff.)).  This does not include the many language classifications that exclusively use "Akkadian".  Not a single one of these sources even uses "Assyro-Babylonian" as an option.  (Taivo (talk) 07:34, 23 November 2009 (UTC))

 * Linguists constitute a minority, and we go by common usage.. and Google searches are always used to gauge prevalence of terms. You can't have your cake and eat it Taivo. I'm not advocating uniforming references in the article to match the title though, given that "Akkadian" is well-established and as you note preferred by linguists. An alternative title suggestion then - Akkadian language (Assyro-Babylonian). Out of interest, would you know what the Akkadian name for the language is? Izzedine 07:58, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

 * In an article about language, linguists are the most important group to consider. Look at WP:NCON and you will see that raw Google searches are not to be considered as primary evidence for a name.  The article title should never include parenthesized material unless the title is ambiguous, which this one is not.  The first sentence of the lead can contain the alternate name, "Assyro-Babylonian", but the article should remain Akkadian since that is the name used by linguists and the name that is most commonly encountered in linguistic literature.  I will oppose any move out of the standard linguistic name of this language--Akkadian.  If you want to move it, submit a move request and submit your evidence and I will submit mine.  (Taivo (talk) 08:03, 23 November 2009 (UTC))
 * A book search proves that the term is widely-used, about a third as much as "Akkadian". Izzedine 08:12, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * This is only one piece of acceptable evidence and should never be used without due care and a careful examination of the results. Other equally important pieces of evidence are usage in encyclopedias, usage in academia, usage in news media, etc.  If you want to submit a move request, then do so and we'll gather the relevant evidence.  (Taivo (talk) 08:19, 23 November 2009 (UTC))
 * Actually, considering (what you explained) about the linguistic classification, I agree with keeping it Akkadian, but I think Akkadian language (Assyro-Babylonian) is worth considering. I remember a few years ago on Wikipedia I had to search for a while before I could find out what language the Babylonians spoke, and then my surprise that the Assyrians and Babylonians both spoke the same language. Izzedine 08:23, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia discourages the use of parenthetical terms as article titles unless it is a case of disambiguating things. Here "language" disambiguates from culture and other things Akkadian, but there is no other Akkadian language.  Alternate names should be in the first sentence and bolded (which Assyro-Babylonian already is).  Anyone typing "Assyro-Babylonian language" in the Wikipedia search box is going to come here anyway.  I also notice that both "Babylonian language" and "Assyrian language" redirect here as well.  So that should cover anyone looking for that information today.  (Taivo (talk) 08:33, 23 November 2009 (UTC))
 * Fair point. Izzedine 08:40, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Re the "native name". I'm not a specialist on Akkadian, but I doubt that it is known.  It's not one of the most common vocabulary items to be encountered, especially in ancient texts.  (Taivo (talk) 08:05, 23 November 2009 (UTC))
 * I'm sure it's known, considering how much written material has been discovered. Izzedine 08:12, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The problem is that people may have had a name that they used for their local dialect, but rarely did they lump these together into a common language. During Old Akkadian, there may have been a common name for the language of the Akkadian Empire, but once the Assyrian and Babylonian dialects differentiated, there was probably not a name for the common language--only for each dialect.  Look at Russian and Ukrainian today.  These "languages" are mutually intelligible, but there is no common name for the two as a unit (other than the classificatory name used by linguists--"East Slavic").  I have seen Ukrainian speakers and Russian speakers understanding each other fairly well, but when asked what they are speaking, the Russian speaker says "Russian" and the Ukrainian speaker says "Ukrainian".  This was undoubtedly the case in the past as well.  (Taivo (talk) 08:23, 23 November 2009 (UTC))
 * I see what you mean, that's a good explanation. Izzedine 08:43, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The name by which the language was known to it's natives is Lishanu Akkaditu, Lishanu from the common Semitic term for tongue (see the Classical Arabic cognate Lisan) and Akkaditu being the nominative form of Akkadian — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.65.192.1 (talk) 18:49, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Ref? Cite? HammerFilmFan (talk) 17:06, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Iraq did not exist in antiquity
Iraq did not exist in antiquity and using its modern boundaries as measures of extent when the ancient language was used beyond its borders is not really helpful. There is no such thing as "Ancient Iraq"--it was "Mesopotamia" or part of the "Near East". Iraq came into being in the modern era. Assyria and Babylonia extended outside the boundaries of modern Iraq (as did the Akkadian Empire), so equating these regions with the boundaries of the modern country is not accurate. The most common usage among historians, etc., for this region is Near East or Mesopotamia (the latter term is less Eurocentric if that is a concern). (Taivo (talk) 08:47, 23 November 2009 (UTC))

 * Tell me why it is acceptable to use the terms Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Ancient Iran and Ancient China, but not Ancient Iraq?
 * 1. Sumer was entirely within Iraq.
 * 2. Akkad was in Iraq. (not the empire)
 * 3. Babylonia was virtually entirely within Iraq.  (not the empire)
 * 4. Assyria the vast majority of it was in Iraq. (Not the empire)

 * The argument that there was minor overspill of Iraq's borders is a nonsense. "Ancient Greece" wasn't a single state and absolutely did not correspond to modern Greece's exact borders, nor did "Ancient Egypt" correspond to modern Egypt's exact borders, nor did "Ancient China", nor did any of them. As a matter of fact, modern Iraq corresponds with its ancient states to a sharply greater extant than many other countries. This is Iraqi history. You cannot use the extant of empires as an argument because expansion is a function of empires, the empires originated in and were ruled from Iraq, they were Ancient Iraqi empires - in the context of the modern unified Iraq. The Egyptian Empire extended outside of Egypt, Ancient Greece used to cover the western half of Anatolia, the Greek empires extended far outside of modern Greece, and so on.

 * Simply because there wasn't a state called Iraq doesn't make an argument (notwithstanding the city of Uruk is thought to be the etymological origin of Iraq), because there wasn't a state called Egypt either, or Greece, or China, or "Mesopotamia". I've never seen any evidence that the so-called "Babylonians" called their country "Babylonia". The term "Ancient Iraq" is widely-used interchangeably with "Mesopotamia" ,,,,. Granted, Mesopotamia is the more prevalent term, but using both terms only adds context and is square scholarship. Izzedine 10:05, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

 * Ancient Iraq did not exist. Indeed, when you click on the link to "Ancient Iraq" it goes to Mesopotamia.  Greece, Egypt, China, and Iran/Persia all actually existed in one form or another in ancient times (and were actually called by those names).  Iraq did not exist.  Look at the published histories of the ancient world and you will not find the term "Iraq" except as a reference to the modern country and modern boundaries.  The books you googled all speak of the ancient world in reference to the modern country and its boundaries, not to an ancient entity.  We could just as easily write a book about "Ancient Andorra" which described Paleo- and Neolithic sites.  "Iraq" did not exist in ancient times, unlike Greece, Egypt, China, and Persia.  And, to remind you, the "usually called Mesopotamia" should be a clue to you that common usage is Mesopotamia.  And, as well, Mesopotamia also encompasses eastern Turkey, western Iran, and eastern Syria.  This is a well-known, widely-understood, and more commonly occurring term than "ancient Iraq", going back to usages 2500 years ago.  "Iraq" is a completely modern term. (Taivo (talk) 10:57, 23 November 2009 (UTC))

 * No, you are very mistaken. Iraq is not a completely modern term at all, the Iraqis have called their land "Iraq" since antiquity, since at least Sassanid times, this is attested. As a matter of fact, "Mesopotamia" is the invented term for Ancient Iraq because Iraq was under Ottoman rule in the 19th century when European archaeologists began exploring in Iraq. Now Iraq is a sovereign state (and helped the Allies defeat the Ottoman Empire to gain independance). Actually, "Greece" did not exist in ancient times, there was the Delian League, Macedonia, Sparta, the Hellenistic civilization, etc. "Iran" did not exist, there was Elam, Medes, and various Persian empires. "China" consisted of lots of small dynasties. And if you're going to now try and shift your argument to language, the modern Egyptians don't speak Ancient Egyptian. I would advise you to be careful when discussing cultural matters Taivo. Cultural imperialism and insensitivity cause offense. I have offered a compromise where both terms can be used. Try not to ignore responses too, you seem to have ignored much of what I explained in my previous comment. Izzedine 12:00, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

In reality, it is fair to use "Iraq" for periods after about AD 1200, but in medieval times the term must be used with care, as it was not coterminous with the area of modern Iraq, there was ʿIrāq ʿArabī and ʿIrāq ʿajamī, which included much of modern Iraq and als much of modern western Iran, but not modern Northern Iraq. "Iraq" can only be used unambiguosly and without debate from periods after AD 1700 or so, or preferably only for times after 1921. Why? Because this is English Wikipedia, not Arabic Wikipedia. The meaning of Arabic  ʿIrāq  is irrelevant for usage of English Iraq, which is a loanword and as such does not necessarily have the same meaning as the source term in the original language. The OED defines the meaning of the English term Iraqi as "A native or inhabitant of Iraq, a republic in the Persian Gulf, formerly (before 23 Aug. 1921) known as Mesopotamia", unambiguously stating that in English usage, "Mesopotamia" is the term of choice for referring to the region in contexts of periods predating 1921. Thank you. --dab (𒁳) 11:58, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * the rudeness is entirely yours. You can expect to be corrected politely once or twice, or even four times, but at some point your insistence in spite of all warnings and corrections becomes simple WP:DISRUPT, and disruptive behaviour is rude. --dab (𒁳) 12:05, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * There has been nothing disruptive about my behaviour here. You are being disruptive and uncivil in your manner though. You're jumping to malevolant conclusions as usual. Izzedine 12:21, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * nonsense. You have been doing unilateral edits and moves to push your "ancient Iraq" thing for more than a year. You have been asked to stop this again and again. You refuse to comply, and you continue to push your patriotism in spite of every wiki principle. I am trying to contain the damage you are doing. Nothing personal and no "malevolence" implied, I do not take any interest in you or your account, you are just one of hundreds of patriots I have been keeping track of. If you cannot follow the rules, you'll end up blocked, it's as simple as that. --dab (𒁳) 15:11, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) As far as I'm concerned, this version is acceptable to me and the matter can be closed. (Taivo (talk) 16:24, 23 November 2009 (UTC))
 * Agreed. \//\ 20:56, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

it is not acceptable to me, for a number of perfectly good reasons. If Izzedine wants to make controversial changes to this article, let him present an argument and seek consensus under WP:BRD like everyone else. --dab (𒁳) 20:11, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Izzedine, I'll leave the article discussion between you and Dbachmann, but your user signature without a user name and link to a user page and user talk page is unacceptable. You must leave the links to your user page and talk page.  If you felt ignored before, without a user talk page link, you're going to be more ignored now than if you were an anon IP.  (Taivo (talk) 22:01, 23 November 2009 (UTC))
 * It gives users the option in preferences whether to have a link or not, so it's not unacceptable or it wouldn't provide you the option, and clicking on the history tab is how users would reach someone without a link. Anyway, if you're done i'm done, I have no desire to entertain Dbachmann. \//\ (talk) 22:28, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Although I'm unaware of the wikipedia standards regarding "Ancient X" names, at least two well-respected Assyriological books are titled "Ancient Iraq". It's not used as much in archaeological/linguistic circles as "Mesopotamia", but it's certianly not unheard of.  Ben (talk) 23:48, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

2010s

 * because the word "iraq" is less than a hundred years old so it should be refered to ANCIENT ASSYRIA . -- 98.227.120.242 16:38, 16 November 2011
 * Heh. Not quite. The word itself is centuries old, and Assyria is only part of the northern area of "Iraq." HammerFilmFan (talk) 15:48, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

2020s

 * In response to the title and not to the heated discussion above...
 * Actually there WAS a kingdom of Erekh listed in the bible, and AFAIK that's what Iraq is named after. But it definitely was not the source of nor the location of the ancient Akkadian kingdom or language. פשוט pashute ♫ (talk) 19:10, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

 * @Dbachmann, I've seen your heated discussion with @Izzedine and I simply can't understand how someone is so implicative to the point of wanting to disqualify the point of view so many times, instead of respectfully disagreeing with someone, he simply was aggressive as if only he was right, going against a good portion of Wikipedia's guidelines, I hope that he finally understood and redeemed himself, because what I saw here was a regrettable. 2804:389:E19B:7C9B:39E3:85E2:D714:7251 (talk) 00:21, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Vowel Chart
The vowel chart seems inverted with respect to "open" and "closed" vowels. Typically 'i' and 'u' refer to closed vowels while 'a' refers to some type of open vowel. I don't know enough to know where the mistake is, but there seems to be a problem there. Artificialintel (talk) 20:27, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

 * Fixed. 4pq1injbok (talk) 16:05, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Font Display Issues
I have Unicode fonts activated and quite a good multilingual font installed but akkadian is one of those rare times the foreign characters don't display for me, so I assume this would be the case for many readers too. Is there a free / open-source font we could put as a recommendation to install? |Moemin05 (talk) 10:51, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

 * What we have seems to be at the bottom of Cuneiform (Unicode block); see also the section at the top of this discussion page... AnonMoos (talk) 18:01, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Akkadian is perhaps not the oldest attested Semitic language...Canaanitic?
According to an article on sciencedaily.com, Canaanitic is the oldest attested of the Semitic languages.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070129100250.htm

 * "Prof. Steiner, a past fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University and a member of the Academy of the Hebrew Language, has deciphered a number of Semitic texts in various Egyptian scripts over the past 25 years. In his Hebrew University lecture, he provided the interpretation for Semitic passages in Egyptian texts that were discovered more than a century ago, inscribed on the subterranean walls of the pyramid of King Unas at Saqqara in Egypt. The pyramid dates from the 24th century B.C.E., but Egyptologists agree that the texts are older. The dates proposed for them range from the 25th to the 30th centuries B.C.E. No continuous Semitic texts from this period have ever been deciphered before.

 * The passages, serpent spells written in hieroglyphic characters, had puzzled scholars who tried to read them as if they were ordinary Egyptian texts. In August, 2002, Prof. Steiner received an email message from Robert Ritner, professor of Egyptology at the University of Chicago, asking whether any of them could be Semitic. "I immediately recognized the Semitic words for 'mother snake,'" said Steiner. "Later it became clear that the surrounding spells, composed in Egyptian rather than Semitic, also speak of the mother snake, and that the Egyptian and Semitic texts elucidate each other."

 * Although written in Egyptian characters, the texts turned out to be composed in the Semitic language spoken by the Canaanites in the third millennium B.C.E., a very archaic form of the languages later known as Phoenician and Hebrew. The Canaanite priests of the ancient city of Byblos, in present-day Lebanon, provided these texts to the kings of Egypt.

 * The port city of Byblos was of vital importance for the ancient Egyptians. It was from there that they imported timber for construction and resin for mummification. The new discovery shows that they also imported magical spells to protect royal mummies against poisonous snakes that were thought to understand Canaanite. Although the Egyptians viewed their culture as far superior to that of their neighbors, their morbid fear of snakes made them open to the borrowing of Semitic magic.

 * "This finding should be of great interest to cultural historians," said Prof. Steiner. "Linguists, too, will be interested in these texts. They show that Proto-Canaanite, the common ancestor of Phoenician, Moabite, Ammonite and Hebrew, existed already in the third millennium B.C.E as a language distinct from Aramaic, Ugaritic and the other Semitic languages. And they provide the first direct evidence for the pronunciation of Egyptian in this early period." The texts will also be important to biblical scholars, since they shed light on several rare words in the Bible, he said.

 * "This is a sensational discovery," said Moshe Bar-Asher, Bialik Professor of Hebrew Language at the Hebrew University and president of the Academy of the Hebrew Language. "It is the earliest attestation of a Semitic language, in general, and Proto-Canaanite, in particular."" A.Tamar Chabadi (talk) 22:54, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

 * Very interesting, but note it says the text is "Proto-Canaanite", not "Canaanitic"... I am very interested but could not find any update at that link, anything on this since '07? Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 23:31, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

 * Hi, Til Eulenspiegel! Well, I use those terms synonymously. Proto-Canaanite is often used of early Phoenician and early Hebrew...I just say Canaanitic which is purposefully general, but also specific in not implicating other Northwest Semitic languages. The Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia edited by Roger D. Woodard (2008)...http://books.google.com/books?id=vTrT-bZyuPcC&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq= mentions the paper on page 4 of Chapter 1. Cf. Also...https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/ANE-2/conversations/topics/3644. In searching through JSTOR, Mr. Steiner has other papers on similar topics. A.Tamar Chabadi (talk) 13:28, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

 * Hi, Til Eulenspiegel! Moved it to the Semitic languages talk page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Semitic_languages#Akkadian_is_perhaps_not_the_oldest_attested_Semitic_language...Canaanitic.3F
 * there's some weasel-wording in the quote from the article by the professor. He weasel-words because Akkadian was spoken internationally until about 1300 BCE, and Akkadian was a Semitic language.  The western Semitic languages like Ugaritic, Canaanitic, and Hebrew began to break away about 2000 BCE.  See Kutscher's and Saienz-Badillos' work on ancient Hebrew. 71.163.117.143 (talk) 12:46, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Hebrew is a Canaanite language not a separated as you have mentioned, the only known Canaanite languages are Hebrew and Phoenician. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.67.99.212 (talk) 12:07, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

death greatly exaggerated
I was querying Dr. Cornelia Wunsch about an article that mentioned the book she wrote with Dr Pearce, Documents of Judean Exiles and West Semites in Babylonia in the Collection of David Sofer. The article called the language Akkadian and I thought, as this article says, that Akkadian was a dead language by then. Her answer was that the language of Nebuchadnetsar and later, a living language, is now called the Neo-Babylonian dialect of Akkadian. Read the book and update your article. 71.163.117.143 (talk) 12:46, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
 * also see this article: https://www.academia.edu/4723117/Aspects_of_Aramaic_and_Babylonian_Linguistic_Interaction_in_First_Millennium_BC_Iraq 71.163.117.143 (talk) 12:38, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

 * Not sure exactly what you're saying -- there was some written usage all the way down to Roman times, but after the Persian conquest, Akkadian was no longer the everyday spoken language of the majority of the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, nor the official administrative language of the central government. AnonMoos (talk) 02:42, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Request for cuneiform numbers
Could someone please add the cuneiform written form of the numbers given in the Akkadian language section? It would be great to have something equivalent to this description of Sumerian number-writing. HLHJ (talk) 19:59, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Etruscan is Semitic?
The Etruscan obsession with haruspicy (their liver-reading priests were called 'maru') (Akkadian 'baru') and certain name forms seem to indicate a possible link with Akkadian or Sumerian. Maybe they were refugees or settlers from Babylon who came to italy via Lemnos (based on Lemnian language links and their patheon). ??who knows. It may be a fruitful avenue of enquiry. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.179.190.193 (talk) 09:02, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
 * This is not a place to spout off personal nonsense, nor are the Wiki Talk Pages a forum to discuss the subject of the article. Discuss the Reliable Sources for the improvement of the article only. 68.19.8.31 (talk) 01:35, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

akkadian dictionary
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-13715296

the BBC reports the chicago oriental institute has completed a 21 volume dictionary of akkadian.

It's probably worth some content in the article --Patbahn (talk) 23:52, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Andrew George citation
Without any details other than I guess a disagreement, this was marked as dubious. Looking at page 37, it uses mid-3rd millennium and not the specific 27th century BC. As such, I'll adjust the language to 3rd millennium broadly. Would that suffice? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:42, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

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Requested move 31 March 2018

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: consensus to move the page at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasu よ! 10:20, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Akkadian → Akkadian language – to prevent the readers to be confused for a demonym. new roderick 895 ( talk ) 10:50, 31 March 2018 (UTC)). I propose to move this article to Akkadian language because if left unchanged, many readers would confuse it for a demonym of peoples of Akkadian Empire, it will be [possibly] easier to readers as if they read the title, they [possibly] can successfully understand that this page is about an extinct language, not a demonym.  new roderick 895  ( talk ) 10:50, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Weak support can see a case for WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT here. In ictu oculi (talk) 19:09, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Support but I would not consider either the language or Akkadian Empire to be the primary topic, so a dab page at the base term would be preferable. —Xezbeth (talk) 10:16, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Never mind, I don't feel strongly enough about it to support. A hatnote to Akkadian Empire needs to be readded to this article at the very least. —Xezbeth (talk) 10:19, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

 * Strongly support All the other language articles are titled "Such-and-such language," including Sumerian language and Hebrew language. There is no reason why Akkadian should be treated any differently. It is really bizarre that the article is not titled Akkadian language already. --Katolophyromai (talk) 03:20, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
 * What about Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Cantonese, Flemish, Hindi, Inuktitut, Kannada, Kinyarwanda, Latin, Lingala, Nahuatl, Papiamento, Pashto, Sanskrit and Yiddish. —  AjaxSmack  01:52, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

 * Support per Katolophyromai (Fancy seeing you here) and nom. -- Iazyges   Consermonor   Opus meum  13:48, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Support move per nom. I'm neutral on the proposed primaryredirect, however. It's probably safest to have an "Akkadian" dab page, since we don't know which page people would be looking for when typing it in. Paintspot Infez (talk) 00:33, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Support When I created this article in 2002, there was no such standard. Nowadays I'm actually surprised that the article isn't titled "Akkadian language".  -Ben (talk) 02:48, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Support Rreagan007 (talk) 18:35, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Followup
DAB has been created by, and we have retargetted all links in articlespace (but not generally elsewhere). Akkadian language remained the most common target by far, but it was used not only where Akkadian Empire was intended but also (at least) Akkadians, Akkadian mythology, Akkadian literature, and Akkadian cuneiform. There are still a number of links to this page where another target might be better such as Akkadian literature for some instances of "Akkadian tablets". I believe that it's an attractive enough nuisance that DAB at basename would be better. ~Hydronium~Hydroxide~(Talk)~ 10:06, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

 * I agree. The same rationale that led to the move of the language article (ambiguity, &c.) mandate the move of Akkadian (disambiguation) to the base name.  —  AjaxSmack  22:17, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

word order
The statement about the Akkadian word order in section 5.1 is confusing. I understand (see also Wikipedia:Semitic Languages) that it was mainly SOV, influenced by Summerian. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nir 1953 cohen (talk • contribs) 07:45, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

 * Default SOV order, according to the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages... -- AnonMoos (talk) 09:58, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

What Is the Purpose of the Circumflex?
Several letters in many words of this language are written with a circumflex, but I can't find anything about what this diacritic represents. At least under 'Vowels' it explains that the macron indicates length, but what does the circumflex represent? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.206.181.191 (talk) 21:55, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

 * I haven't looked closely at our article, but circumflexed vowels usually indicate long vowels resulting from contraction. Also, sometimes a circumflexed e can indicate a long vowel which originated from an ay diphthong in earlier Semitic. AnonMoos (talk) 22:51, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Missing Ayin
How do we know they had no 'Ayin with a glottal sound?

Or do we? פשוט pashute ♫ (talk) 19:13, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

 * First off, early Semitic `Ayn/`Ayin was a pharyngeal consonant sound, and not a glottal stop. There's no particular evidence that any pharyngeal consonants existed in attested Akkadian (though sometimes they influenced the quality of adjecent vowels before they disappeared)... AnonMoos (talk) 05:43, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

article is back at BC/AD ... did I miss something?
I thought two previous sections on the TP identified the original writing of this article used the "BCE/CE" system? If users of original articles utilizing BC/AD want to have their views respected, stop going around Wiki reverting things to your preferred style. 50.111.1.232 (talk) 17:01, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Logogram
Why was the logographic spelling of the native name of the language removed? Until a few days ago we had: akkadû, ak-ka-du-u2; logogram:  URIKI; now we have only: Akkadian:  akkadû. Panglossa [ Talk ] 22:09, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Are these characters visible for anyone? All I see is empty squares on my screen, no text. --StellarNerd (talk) 22:14, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

 * You need to have a Unicode-encoded Cuneiform font installed, and software that can use it. (Some older software set-ups would not display characters outside the Unicode BMP, no matter what fonts were installed.) AnonMoos (talk) 01:21, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Stress in Huenergard
In my reading of his Grammar, the rules for stress are slightly different then the ones presented in this article.

I quote the article:

CV̂ should be classed as superheavy (although he uses the term ultraheavy), and CV̄C as well. As in the example ibnû with the stress on nû.

The final rule applies not only when a word contains only light syllables, but also when its only heavy syllable is the final syllable, as in the example zikarum with the stress on zi.

Unless the edition I am reading has been updated in a new edition. EricPiphany (talk) 11:44, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

What do you think of adding this channel o the article?
I know youtube is highly suspicious and nonstandard, but every channel teaching whichever ANE language systematically and in earnest is extremely rare - he is an Asyriology graduate, and seems to be up to the task. Video and audio add depth to learning any language, especially for self students who may have no ability to consult and check their progress in any other way. I have no connection to the guy, but I admit that I also want to boost his confidence, and spread the news about his channel, so that he won't decide to stop one day Anyway, please review it: https://www.youtube.com/@learnakkadian 193.27.210.15 (talk) 19:48, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Realization of š as lateral affricate in Babylonian
In a 2006 Article "Sibilants in the Old Babylonian texts of Hammurapi and of the governors in Qaṭṭunān", Streck makes a pretty solid argument that /š/ was, at least most of the time, realized as a lateral affricate [tɬ]. A lateral realization was also posited by Steiner in 1977.

Should we mention either or both of these in the article, or is more academic consensus required? 2003:E5:B713:79F2:70E0:F820:1527:F842 (talk) 18:24, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

 * Thanks for alerting me that the works of Richard C. Steiner are available on-line as downloadable PDFs; I photocopied a whole book by him in the 1980s, and this is more convenient.    As for chapter 17 of his Case for Fricative-Laterals, this seems to establish that one of the contextual allophones of what is conventionally transcribed as "š" was probably lateral in the 2nd millennium B.C.    This could be mentioned in connection with the table of consonant sounds, but it wouldn't change the basic conventional transcription.      (By the way, borrowings from Akkadian into Northwest Semitic languages in the 1st millennium B.C. seem to indicate that the Akkadian sound transcribed as "š" was then closer to Northwest Semitic "s" -- e.g. Ishtar → Esther -- while Akkadian "s" was closer to NWS "š", and that hasn't been allowed to change the basic conventional transcriptions.)    As for the other article, I was unable to download a PDF of it, and have limited time to look through the images when on-line.    Maybe if you could indicate which page has the evidence for the lateral nature of the sibilant? AnonMoos (talk) 20:05, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Is Canaano-Akkadian actually a dialect?
I looked at Canaano-Akkadian language as I was poking at things Amarna Letter and to me "Canaano-Akkadian" doesn't "seem" to have the characteristics of an actual dialect. Of course this is out of my area so I'm just making this up as I go along. Call it a curiosity question. :-) Ploversegg (talk) 00:10, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

 * It's extremely doubtful that there was ever a Canaanite-Akkadian hybrid spoken language (if there was, we have no evidence of it), but there were scribal writing practices where the normal Akkadian writing system was peppered with Canaanite language influences. In the later case of Nabatean (which I know more about), most of the inscriptions were attempts at the Aramaic language written by Arabic speakers, and as time went on, the Aramaic became somewhat nominal, and more of the underlying spoken Arabic of the inscription writers poked through.  This doesn't mean that there was an Aramaic-Arabic hybrid spoken language... AnonMoos (talk) 08:00, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
 * So then I should remove it as a dialect from the infobox of this article and from the Template:Semitic languages you think? Ploversegg (talk) 12:41, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

 * I still think that it's quite implausible that there was a spoken hybrid language (I'm having a hard time imagining the social and historical circumstances that could have led to such), and ancient scribal practices were often somewhat remote from spoken language, but the guy in the PDF file linked from the "Canaano-Akkadian language" article argues that such a hybrid language did exist, and he's certainly studied the details of that situation more than I have, so I don't know what to advise. AnonMoos (talk) 07:04, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I'll think about it. Maybe more info will turn up while I poke at things Amarna Letters. In any case, it seems like in the Akkadian Language article the infobox and article dialect section text should align on this issue. Anyway, thanks! Ploversegg (talk) 13:25, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

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