Elamite is an extinct language, which was spoken by the ancient Elamites (also known as Ilamids). Elamite was an official language of the Persian Empire from the sixth to fourth centuries BCE. The last written records in Elamite appear about the time of the conquest of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great. An Elamite Man in Persepolis The ancient Elamite Empire (تمدن عیلام in Persian) lay to the east of Sumer and Akkad, in what is now southwestern Iran. ... An extinct language (also called a dead language) is a language which no longer has any native speakers. ... (2nd millennium BC - 1st millennium BC - 1st millennium) The 4th century BC started on January 1, 400 BC and ended on December 31, 301 BC. // Overview Events Bust of Alexander the Great in the British Museum. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families Most languages are known to belong to language families. ... A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical (or genetic) relationship with other living languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common to any other language. ... The Elamo-Dravidian languages are a hypothesised language family which includes the living Dravidian languages of India and Pakistan, in addition to the extinct Elamite language of ancient Elam, in what is now southwestern Iran. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2:1998 Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 2: Alpha-3 code Twenty-two of the languages have two three-letter codes: a code for bibliographic use (ISO 639-2/B) a code for terminological use (ISO 639-2/T). ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words see here. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning sound, voice) is the study of sounds and the human voice. ... Because of technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... This is a concise version of the International Phonetic Alphabet for English sounds. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... An extinct language (also called a dead language) is a language which no longer has any native speakers. ... The ancient Elamite Empire lay to the east of Sumer and Akkad, in what is now southwestern Iran. ... The Persian Empire was a series of historical empires that ruled over the Iranian plateau (Irān - Land of the Aryans[1]) and beyond. ... Alexander the Great (Greek: ,[1] Megas Alexandros; July 356 BC–June 11, 323 BC), also known as Alexander III, king of Macedon (336–323 BC), was one of the most successful military commanders in history. ...

Elamite scripts

Over the centuries, three distinct Elamite scripts developed.

• Proto-Elamite is the oldest known writing system from Iran. It was used during a brief period of time (ca. 3100 - 2900 BCE); clay tablets with Proto-Elamite writing have been found at different sites across Iran. The Proto-Elamite script is thought to have developed from early cuneiform (proto-cuneiform). The Proto-Elamite script consists of more than 1,000 signs and is thought to be partly logographic. Since it has not yet been deciphered, it is not known whether the language it represents is Elamite or another language. It has been suggested that some early writing systems, including Proto-Elamite, may not relate to spoken languages in the way that modern writing systems do.

• Linear Elamite is a writing system from Iran attested in a few monumental inscriptions only. It is often claimed that Linear Elamite is a syllabic writing system derived from Proto-Elamite, although this cannot be proven. Linear-Elamite was used for a very brief period of time during the last quarter of the third millennium BC. Linear-Elamite has not been deciphered. Several scholars have attempted to decipher linear-Elamite, most notably Walther Hinz and Piero Meriggi.

• The Elamite Cuneiform script was used from about 2500 BCE to 331 BCE, and was adapted from the Akkadian Cuneiform. The Elamite Cuneiform script consisted of about 130 symbols, far fewer than most other cuneiform scripts.

Silver cup from Marvdasht, Fars, with Proto-Elamite inscription on it. ... A logogram, or logograph, is a single grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme (a meaningful unit of language). ... Linear Elamite is a Bronze Age writing system used in Elam, known from a few monumental inscriptions only. ... The Elamite Cuneiform is a script which was used from about 2500 BC to 331 AD and was adapted from Akkadian Cuneiform. ... (Redirected from 2500 BC) (26th century BC - 25th century BC - 24th century BC - other centuries) (4th millennium BC - 3rd millennium BC - 2nd millennium BC) Events 2900 - 2334 BC -- Mesopotamian wars of the Early Dynastic period 2494 BC -- End of Fourth Dynasty, start of Fifth Dynasty in Egypt. ... Centuries: 5th century BC - 4th century BC - 3rd century BC Decades: 380s BC 370s BC 360s BC 350s BC 340s BC - 330s BC - 320s BC 310s BC 300s BC 290s BC 280s BC Years: 336 BC 335 BC 334 BC 333 BC 332 BC - 331 BC - 330 BC 329 BC... Akkad (or Agade) was a city and its region of northern Mesopotamia, situated on the left bank of the Euphrates, between Sippar and Kish (located in present-day Iraq, ca. ... Cuneiform script The Cuneiform script is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. ...

Linguistic typology

Elamite was an agglutinative language, and Elamite grammar features case agreement between nouns, called Suffixaufnahme. It also had the unusual feature of having a class of animate nouns with separate markers for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person. It has been suggested that Agglutination be merged into this article or section. ... Grammar is the study of rules governing the use of language. ... In linguistics, declension is a paradigm of inflected nouns and adjectives. ... Suffixaufnahme (German for suffix-absorption) is a linguistic phenomenon whereby a genitive noun declines to match its head noun, and vice-versa. ...

Relations to other language families

Elamite is mostly thought to have no close relation to the neighboring Semitic languages, to the Indo-European languages, or to Sumerian, even though it adopted the Sumerian syllabic script. 14th century BC diplomatic letter in Akkadian, found in Tell Amarna. ... The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects [1], including most of the major languages of Europe, as well as many spoken in the Indian subcontinent (South Asia), the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), and Central Asia. ... The Sumerian language ( EME.GIR15 native tongue) of ancient Sumer was spoken in Southern Mesopotamia from at least the 4th millennium BCE. Sumerian was replaced by Akkadian as a spoken language around 1800 BCE, but continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary and scientific language in Mesopotamia until...

Elamo-Dravidian versus Afro-Asiatic

There have been two promising attempts at categorization. In one, an Elamo-Dravidian language family, consisting of Elamite and the Dravidian languages, was carried from Elam to India by eastward migration; this is the view proposed by David McAlpin. In the other, proposed by Václav Blažek, Elamite is more closely related to the Afro-Asiatic languages, perhaps forming a distinct subfamily of these. The Elamo-Dravidian languages are a hypothesised language family which includes the living Dravidian languages of India and Pakistan, in addition to the extinct Elamite language of ancient Elam, in what is now southwestern Iran. ... The Dravidian family of languages includes approximately 73[1] languages that are mainly spoken in southern India and Sri Lanka, as well as certain areas in Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and eastern and central India, as well as in parts of Afghanistan and Iran, and by overseas Dravidians in other countries...

References

• Khačikjan, Margaret: The Elamite Language, Documenta Asiana IV, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Istituto per gli Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici, 1998 ISBN 88-87345-01-5
• Potts, Daniel T.: The archaeology of Elam: formation and transformation of an ancient Iranian state, Cambridge U., 1999 ISBN 0-521-56496-4 and ISBN 0-521-56358-5

External links

• On the genetic affiliation of the Elamite language
• Persepolis Fortification Archive Project