Ancient Babylonian Music

[Queequeg]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/12/what-did-ancient-babylonian-songs-sound-like-something-like-this/

Some of the vocal flourishes strike me as modern, but this is still quite haunting and pretty.  It's quite an attractive language.  Seems to lack the laryngeal hideousness of Arabic. 

[Admiral Yi]

 

[Razgovory]

It's not clear if the song presented is Afro-Asiatic or not.  If it's Sumerian it isn't, if it's Akkadian or Assyrian it is releated to Arabic.  Still it probably doesn't sound like much like original language.  Like someone in reading a Russian song without any understanding of Russian.

[Queequeg]

It's not clear if the song presented is Afro-Asiatic or not.  If it's Sumerian it isn't, if it's Akkadian or Assyrian it is releated to Arabic.  Still it probably doesn't sound like much like original language.  Like someone in reading a Russian song without any understanding of Russian.

Babylonian would presumably Akkadian, but Akkadian was very strongly influenced by the native Sumerian so I'm guessing it would sound quite a bit different from the quite conservative Afro-Asiatic languages of the deep desert. 

[Razgovory]

There is quite a degree of ambiguity in the article.  It says it uses both "Babylonian and Sumerian" but does not distinguish which is being used in the song or if they are distinguishing the languages at all.  I question how much Akkadian "sounded" like Sumerian.  Does Basque sound like French or Spanish?  Does Hungarian sound like German?  Finnish like Russian?  Each is an example of two separate language families existing where one is conquered by the other.

[Queequeg]

Uh.

Finnish and Russian do kind of sound alike because of the extensive Uralic influence on Russian.  If you look at Finnish or say Mordvin names, their phonology will look vaguely Russian a lot of the time. The Russian system of indication possession is largely lifted from the Uralic languages. And Spanish and Basque actually do sound somewhat alike.  Basque land is right next to historic Castile. A lot of the early inhabitants of the County or Kingdom of Castile would have been Basque, and a lot of the early great kings are Basque.  Ditto a lot of typically Spanish first and last names. 

[Queequeg]

Hungarian is kind of an exception there, but then only kind of.  It has some structural similarities with the Turkic languages of the inner Pannonian basin before the honfoglalás, and as previously stated Slavic and Uralic phonology have some similarities due to thousands of years of close contact.  And I'd argue that the Uralic and Indo-European languages are genetically related but that's...not the argument. 

[Ed Anger]

Well, Spellus sucked any fun out of the subject.

[grumbler]

Well, Spellus sucked any fun out of the subject.

Once a thread is thoroughly Razzed, it's dead.  At least Spellus makes it sound like he knows something other than what he read on Wikipedia right before posting.

[Grinning_Colossus]

How much do we even know about Sumerian's genetic relationships?

[Siege]

Is this for real?

[Queequeg]

How much do we even know about Sumerian's genetic relationships?

Generally speaking nearby mountain populations are going to be a lot more conservative.  Eastern Arab populations are going to reflect 1,400 years of the Arab slave trade and 3,000 years of migration of nomads from the deep desert, the steppe and Europe.  They'd probably look like Caucasians.  I think there's actually some evidence for this; Jews outside of the Beta Israel and Kaifeng populations (who have been, at least legally, endogamous for 2,500 years) are pretty closely grouped with Armenians and Turks.  There's also some evidence that Sumerians migrated to their core area from the north IIRC. 

[Admiral Yi]

Is this for real?

Not really.  They took the lyrics from some cuneiform, made an educated guess about the pronounciation, and made up the melody.

Broad is nice looking though.

[Queequeg]

IDK if that's accurate.

You can construct some basics of pronunciation of dead languages and "Babylonian" has a fairly close descendant in Assyrian.   

Here's what a Sumerian might have looked like:

[Ideologue]

How much do we even know about Sumerian's genetic relationships?

Generally speaking nearby mountain populations are going to be a lot more conservative.  Eastern Arab populations are going to reflect 1,400 years of the Arab slave trade and 3,000 years of migration of nomads from the deep desert, the steppe and Europe.  They'd probably look like Caucasians.  I think there's actually some evidence for this; Jews outside of the Beta Israel and Kaifeng populations (who have been, at least legally, endogamous for 2,500 years) are pretty closely grouped with Armenians and Turks.  There's also some evidence that Sumerians migrated to their core area from the north IIRC.

Yeah, but they got shields on it and everything.