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A Grammar of Akkadian
Book by Huehnergard, John
648 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1997
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121 people want to read
About the author
John Huehnergard
14 books2 followersJohn Huehnergard is a Canadian-American Semiticist and emeritus professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
February 4, 2013
I have only used the prepublished version, but it was the textbook for my second year Akkadian class. It was used by the first year class too, but I started with the second year class since first year class was not offered at Harvard that year. Being nervous about not having taken the first year, I was grateful for Professor Huehnergard's well presented grammar and texts that enabled me to autodidactically catch up with the rest of the class members who had taken the first year course. It is an excellent text book from an outstanding Semitic language expert that I still have on my shelf even though I am no longer involved directly in assyriology. Having read Gilgamesh in cuneiform with the aid of this textbook was one of my life's most memorable literary experiences. I'd be interested in acquiring a copy of the published edition.
June 28, 2013
Huehnergard's grammar is excellent. Divided into 38 lessons with more than ample numbers of exercises, this Akkadian grammar (focusing on the Old Babylonian dialect) provides an excellent basis for entry into Akkadian texts. Beginning quite early on, the texts which are translated and provided by the lessons are drawn directly from actual texts such as the Law Collection of Hammurapi, extispacy texts, and even narratives. By the end of the grammar, students are translating directly from the cuneiform signs, as well as normalizing and transliterating other texts. I feel that the attention to text is something that Huehnergard does excellently, and the number and nature of exercises are to be greatly lauded.
That said, I do retain a (very) few (small quibbles). There are remain a number of small typos which should have been caught by the editor/publisher: most are inconsequential (consisting only of grammar and spelling), but others are substantial regarding the arrangement of columns which can hinder the identification and learning of forms. More frustrating was the publisher's decision to break the various columns of LC Hammurapi onto multiple pages, forcing students to jump back and forth between texts, the order of which is never explained. When students are already paying $55 for a 600 page book, I think the publisher should have "splurged" by adding an additional 10-15 pages (and even charged an extra $5!) to have made the exercises and texts simpler to use and more visually friendly. Other places, Huehnergard differs from the standard von Soden grammar, but does not mention the reasons for his differentiation.
But, even with all of these (minor) quibbles, the grammar is distinctly useful. The grammar includes an Akkadian to English dictionary, an English to Akkadian dictionary, a Sign List (~200 signs), a Logographic dictionary, a reverse syllable-to-sign key, and a list of Akkadian to Hebrew cognates. All of these help provide numerous tools to the student in helping him learn the language.
For those who are seeking to supplement their language work, this would be an excellent grammar for those student who already have a high degree of familiarity with Hebrew. For those who think that this is a massive grammar--you're right. But we completed the entire grammar in three weeks, so buck up and carry on: you _can_ do it and you should.
That said, I do retain a (very) few (small quibbles). There are remain a number of small typos which should have been caught by the editor/publisher: most are inconsequential (consisting only of grammar and spelling), but others are substantial regarding the arrangement of columns which can hinder the identification and learning of forms. More frustrating was the publisher's decision to break the various columns of LC Hammurapi onto multiple pages, forcing students to jump back and forth between texts, the order of which is never explained. When students are already paying $55 for a 600 page book, I think the publisher should have "splurged" by adding an additional 10-15 pages (and even charged an extra $5!) to have made the exercises and texts simpler to use and more visually friendly. Other places, Huehnergard differs from the standard von Soden grammar, but does not mention the reasons for his differentiation.
But, even with all of these (minor) quibbles, the grammar is distinctly useful. The grammar includes an Akkadian to English dictionary, an English to Akkadian dictionary, a Sign List (~200 signs), a Logographic dictionary, a reverse syllable-to-sign key, and a list of Akkadian to Hebrew cognates. All of these help provide numerous tools to the student in helping him learn the language.
For those who are seeking to supplement their language work, this would be an excellent grammar for those student who already have a high degree of familiarity with Hebrew. For those who think that this is a massive grammar--you're right. But we completed the entire grammar in three weeks, so buck up and carry on: you _can_ do it and you should.
December 18, 2024
This is the most brilliant grammar I have ever read. The detailed explanation, the organization, and the conciseness are all amazing.
But the most brilliant thing is the exercises. There is a copious amount that tests active and passive language learning, it's incredible.
But the most brilliant thing is the exercises. There is a copious amount that tests active and passive language learning, it's incredible.
November 24, 2022
My opinion on this grammar is no doubt colored by my using it for my initial introduction to Akkadian, and my having read it very quickly (the whole textbook was assigned to me in one semester). Most, but not all, of my gripes are fairly small. On the whole, this is an excellent resource for detailed information about Old Babylonian grammar (and some related subjects).
Pros:
1) Huehnergard is fairly exhaustive. He'll not only list the rules but also every exception -- even rare exceptions. This makes the book great for reference.
2) The exercises cover the full range of Old Babylonian literary genres, from letters to law codes, from oaths to omens.
3) There's a robust set of appendices with great information, including semitic cognates, an English-to-Akkadian glossary, a discussion of the major differences between Babylonian and Assyrian dialects, etc.
Cons:
1) Huehnergard presents primary texts in the exercises, each of which are presented in era-specific cuneiform scripts (Lapidary, Cursive, and Neo-Assyrian). This is all well and good, but the Cursive script is incredibly poorly drawn/printed so that it is often actually illegible.
2) The translations provided by the author (esp. in the answer key) are dynamic to the point of being less than transparent. They're objectively fine translations, but as a student it can be difficult to work out how he got to the English from the Akkadian. More wooden translations would have been better for this context.
3) The organization of the material has a logical flow to it, but it's not always straightforward.
4) The vocabulary glosses are probably more exhaustive than they need to be, including lots of idiomatic definitions that could be pretty easily deduced from a word's usage in context.
5) The typesetting doesn't do the content a lot of favors. Too much information on a single page, paradigms split across pages, things like that.
6) A lot of the more exhaustive information could have been separated out into footnotes, or into distinct "advanced information" sections, to make it easier to sort data according to relative importance.
7) I would have appreciated if semitic cognates were included in the vocabularly lists of each chapter, since that's a huge factor in how I handle memorization. It was annoying to have to flip to the back of the textbook for each word (sometimes only to find there is no cognate!).
8) It would help with clarity if important information (especially in paradigms) was printed in a different color, or at least in bold font.
---
As I said earlier, this is actually a fantastic resource. Most of my criticisms have to do with ease-of-use rather than the substance of the material.
Pros:
1) Huehnergard is fairly exhaustive. He'll not only list the rules but also every exception -- even rare exceptions. This makes the book great for reference.
2) The exercises cover the full range of Old Babylonian literary genres, from letters to law codes, from oaths to omens.
3) There's a robust set of appendices with great information, including semitic cognates, an English-to-Akkadian glossary, a discussion of the major differences between Babylonian and Assyrian dialects, etc.
Cons:
1) Huehnergard presents primary texts in the exercises, each of which are presented in era-specific cuneiform scripts (Lapidary, Cursive, and Neo-Assyrian). This is all well and good, but the Cursive script is incredibly poorly drawn/printed so that it is often actually illegible.
2) The translations provided by the author (esp. in the answer key) are dynamic to the point of being less than transparent. They're objectively fine translations, but as a student it can be difficult to work out how he got to the English from the Akkadian. More wooden translations would have been better for this context.
3) The organization of the material has a logical flow to it, but it's not always straightforward.
4) The vocabulary glosses are probably more exhaustive than they need to be, including lots of idiomatic definitions that could be pretty easily deduced from a word's usage in context.
5) The typesetting doesn't do the content a lot of favors. Too much information on a single page, paradigms split across pages, things like that.
6) A lot of the more exhaustive information could have been separated out into footnotes, or into distinct "advanced information" sections, to make it easier to sort data according to relative importance.
7) I would have appreciated if semitic cognates were included in the vocabularly lists of each chapter, since that's a huge factor in how I handle memorization. It was annoying to have to flip to the back of the textbook for each word (sometimes only to find there is no cognate!).
8) It would help with clarity if important information (especially in paradigms) was printed in a different color, or at least in bold font.
---
As I said earlier, this is actually a fantastic resource. Most of my criticisms have to do with ease-of-use rather than the substance of the material.
February 11, 2008
A great introductory text for learning Cuneiform, Akkadian, and Sumerian logograms; however, be prepared for some confusion. The book makes no attempt to ease you into intricate grammar constructs, so be prepared for some hard hitting stuff right off the bat. That being said, you'll find a lot of valuable lessons that will improve your own grasp of grammar, and on top of that, you'll get to read one of the first languages to exist in the world, which has a wealth of amazing literature still untranslated. Oh, and you won't have to start cunieform memorization for a few chapters, so don't sweat that.
January 29, 2008
This is my favorite grammar to any ancient language that I've studied. It opens up the literature of ancient Mesopotamia to all who are interested in history, literature, Bible, etc. It is well written with extensive examples and exercises.
October 11, 2012
Compared to other akkadian grammar text books, it is the most detail and illustated. now i just learn half of it and i expect to learn it all.
April 15, 2024
a 4.5-star reference grammar (with unusually clear exposition for a reference grammar) doing very uncomfortable double duty as a 1.5-star pedagogical introduction to Akkadian.
section granularity was uncomfortably sequenced, with an overwhelming amount of space devoted to fine-grained phonological analysis that gives the reader the impressions (a) that the evolutionary/philological reconstruction of virtually every last underlying principle and event giving rise to the entirety of the Akkadian lexicon starting from Proto-Semitic is essentially complete, as if it hadn't been transmitted to us in a depressingly defective and ambiguous writing system and (sometimes circularly!) decoded in part by directly importing data from other Semitic languages, and (b) that all such details are of equal relevance to the successful pedagogical presentation of Akkadian grammar, neither of which is true.
the image resolution on the OB (non-lapidary) cuneiform examples was poor throughout, flat-out precluding the analysis of the constituent strokes comprising some signs.
virtually no space is devoted to digressions on issues of culture or literary content or religious practice or archaeology or cuneiform decoding or any of the other gems readily available from adjacent scholarship that might motivate students' ongoing self-application to the neverending series of verb paradigms; even the inline-quoted "real life" exemplars of Akkadian grammatical structures are terse, minimal examples selected with all the editorial soul of a lifelong low-level bureaucrat. all of the missing content types mentioned above -- possibly even delivered in an occasionally conversational narrative voice -- would surely go a long way to relieving the relentlessly formulaic droning tedium that the book ended up being.
there should have been at least four times as much exercise content, given the scope of material this book tried to cover. if adding that much would violate constraints on available space, then one must ask oneself: textbook or comprehensive reference grammar? if it's the first one, sometimes you have to break it up into multiple books to teach the material properly. if it's the second one, there's no need for exercises at all. if it's neither, it serves no one very well.
my (openly subjective) impression is that cuneiform is offered as an unpleasantly necessary afterthought, with almost an apology for having to mention it at all, as if all of Akkadian scholarship weren't rooted hip-deep in the script and its various branchings and contexts (and, more to the point, as if cuneiform didn't constitute a fascinating topic in its own right, an absurd proposition).
for a night-and-day comparison demonstrating how else one might go about educating humans on an ancient language with an abstruse, alien script, in an engaging way that doesn't sacrifice one bit of scholarly rigor, please see
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
... in comparison to which this work has some glaring deficiencies.
i don't mean to quite assert that this book wasn't well written. it was clearly (if mind-blowingly dully) presented, complete in topic coverage, impressively low on typos, and the appendices were really top-notch. i just think there remains a lot of unpicked low-hanging fruit when it comes to making it an effective textbook.
section granularity was uncomfortably sequenced, with an overwhelming amount of space devoted to fine-grained phonological analysis that gives the reader the impressions (a) that the evolutionary/philological reconstruction of virtually every last underlying principle and event giving rise to the entirety of the Akkadian lexicon starting from Proto-Semitic is essentially complete, as if it hadn't been transmitted to us in a depressingly defective and ambiguous writing system and (sometimes circularly!) decoded in part by directly importing data from other Semitic languages, and (b) that all such details are of equal relevance to the successful pedagogical presentation of Akkadian grammar, neither of which is true.
the image resolution on the OB (non-lapidary) cuneiform examples was poor throughout, flat-out precluding the analysis of the constituent strokes comprising some signs.
virtually no space is devoted to digressions on issues of culture or literary content or religious practice or archaeology or cuneiform decoding or any of the other gems readily available from adjacent scholarship that might motivate students' ongoing self-application to the neverending series of verb paradigms; even the inline-quoted "real life" exemplars of Akkadian grammatical structures are terse, minimal examples selected with all the editorial soul of a lifelong low-level bureaucrat. all of the missing content types mentioned above -- possibly even delivered in an occasionally conversational narrative voice -- would surely go a long way to relieving the relentlessly formulaic droning tedium that the book ended up being.
there should have been at least four times as much exercise content, given the scope of material this book tried to cover. if adding that much would violate constraints on available space, then one must ask oneself: textbook or comprehensive reference grammar? if it's the first one, sometimes you have to break it up into multiple books to teach the material properly. if it's the second one, there's no need for exercises at all. if it's neither, it serves no one very well.
my (openly subjective) impression is that cuneiform is offered as an unpleasantly necessary afterthought, with almost an apology for having to mention it at all, as if all of Akkadian scholarship weren't rooted hip-deep in the script and its various branchings and contexts (and, more to the point, as if cuneiform didn't constitute a fascinating topic in its own right, an absurd proposition).
for a night-and-day comparison demonstrating how else one might go about educating humans on an ancient language with an abstruse, alien script, in an engaging way that doesn't sacrifice one bit of scholarly rigor, please see
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
... in comparison to which this work has some glaring deficiencies.
i don't mean to quite assert that this book wasn't well written. it was clearly (if mind-blowingly dully) presented, complete in topic coverage, impressively low on typos, and the appendices were really top-notch. i just think there remains a lot of unpicked low-hanging fruit when it comes to making it an effective textbook.
January 19, 2014
A fantastic resource, but unrealistic to get done, even in a calendar year. Dialect-wise, he restricts himself to Old Babylonian, but he wants you to learn all the cuneiform from nearly-Sumerian to Neo-Akkadian, which is way to much. This is a fine book, but nothing something to tackle by yourself. If language books are spectrum, with the left edge being easy to learn but not something you will consult in years to come, and the right edge being very difficult but a lifelong references, this book is nearly all the way to the right.
June 2, 2011
I Used this book for a linguistics project, comparing the grammar of Old Babylonian Akk to Classical Arabic, and it was an immense help.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews