Pronunciation in this app is a scholarly reconstruction, read by an AI voice.
Nobody knows exactly how Sumerian sounded, especially its stress and rhythm. Signs appear in the standard reference shapes used in modern sign lists and textbooks (Neo-Assyrian style). Scribes of the Ur III period wrote the same signs with older shapes.
Learn the signs
How Learn works
Rise through the ranks of Sumer. As a scribe you start with the signs that have the fewest wedges; master every sign in a rank to move up, from priest to king, and finally to the names of the gods. Each new sign you get right earns 10 points. You can look up any sign at any time on the Signs tab, whatever your rank.
Signs you’ve learned come back as refreshers, further apart each time you remember them, for 5 points each. Every few cards, look at a real tablet or meet someone who helped us read them again.
Phrasebook
Each phrase is marked as attested in real texts or built from attested parts. Tap any piece of a transliteration, such as ŋu₁₀, to see how to say it and what it means. Use “Copy cuneiform” to paste a phrase into a message.
How Sumerian sounded, as far as we know
Pronunciation is reconstructed, mostly from lists in which Akkadian-speaking scribes spelled out how Sumerian words were read. Vowels and most consonants are fairly secure. Stress, tone and a few sounds are still debated, so treat the “Say it” lines as a good approximation.
| a e i u | Pure vowels, as in Spanish or Italian: ah, eh, ee, oo. There is no written o. |
| g | Always hard, as in go, never as in gem. |
| ŋ | The ng in sing, even at the start of a syllable: ŋu₁₀ is ngoo. |
| š | sh as in ship. |
| ḫ | Like the ch in Scottish loch or German Bach. |
| z | Uncertain. Probably closer to ts than English z, so this app says it as ts. |
| ₂ ₃ ₁₀ | Not pronounced. The small numbers only tell you which sign was written. |
| {d} | Markers like the god sign are silent. They were cues for the reader. |
Signs and words
Grouped into the same ranks as Learn, from the scribe’s simplest signs to the names of the gods. Within each rank, signs go from fewest wedges to most. One sign often has several readings. The small numbers tell you which sign was written: du, du₃ and du₆ sound alike but are different signs.
Write in cuneiform
Type Sumerian in transliteration. Separate signs with hyphens and words with spaces.
Not sure which du? Type it without a number and choose by meaning below. Type j for ŋ (the “ng” in sing), and {d} for the god marker.
Tap any part of the transliteration to see how to say it.
Long-press or right-click the image to save or share it. Images keep the sign shapes; pasted text depends on the reader’s fonts.
Cuneiform through time
Cuneiform was used for more than three thousand years, and Sumerian outlived the Sumerians by nearly two thousand. Dates are approximate, and the names of periods are the ones museums and scholars use.
- ca. 3300–2900 BCE
Uruk and Jemdet Nasr
Writing begins in southern Mesopotamia as a way to keep accounts. Signs are drawn or pressed into clay, mostly numbers and goods.
In this app: the proto-cuneiform barley account
- ca. 2900–2350 BCE
Early Dynastic
Sumerian city-states such as Ur, Uruk, Lagash and Nippur. The signs turn into wedges, and scribes begin writing royal inscriptions and the first literature.
In this app: the tablet from Nippur
- ca. 2350–2150 BCE
Akkadian Empire
Sargon of Akkad unites the region. Akkadian, a Semitic language unrelated to Sumerian, becomes a language of government, written with the same signs. Sumerian is still spoken in the south.
In this app: Enheduanna, Sargon’s daughter, who wrote hymns in Sumerian
- ca. 2150–2000 BCE
Neo-Sumerian: Lagash II and Ur III
After Akkad falls, Sumerian rulers take back control. Gudea of Lagash and the kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur write in Sumerian, and their state leaves behind tens of thousands of tablets. Museums often label objects from this time “Neo-Sumerian,” meaning the Sumerian revival after Akkad.
In this app: Gudea, Ur-Namma’s foundation figure, the messengers’ rations
- ca. 2000–1600 BCE
Old Babylonian
Sumerian stops being spoken day to day, and Akkadian takes over. Sumerian lives on as a learned language for religion, law and literature, much as Latin did in medieval Europe. Students copy it in the eduba, and most Sumerian literature survives in their copies.
In this app: the student’s practice tablet
- ca. 1600 BCE–80 CE
Later Mesopotamia and beyond
Cuneiform spreads across the Near East and is adapted for Hittite, Elamite, Urartian and other languages. Babylonian and Assyrian scribes keep copying Sumerian hymns and incantations, often with an Akkadian translation line by line. The last tablets that can be dated are astronomical records from the 1st century CE. After that, the script was forgotten until scholars deciphered it in the 1800s.
In this app: the sign shapes, which follow the later Neo-Assyrian style used in modern sign lists
The people behind this
Everything in this app rests on the work of ancient scribes and of the people who spent careers recovering their writing. Follow the links to their own work.
People
Tablets and objects
Tools this app uses
- Cuneiform text is standard Unicode, encoded from a proposal by Michael Everson, Karljürgen Feuerherm and Steve Tinney (Unicode 5.0, 2006).
- Signs are drawn with Noto Sans Cuneiform from Google’s Noto project, under the SIL Open Font License.
- Meanings and readings follow the conventions of the electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary (ePSD2).
- The voice was generated with ElevenLabs and checked by ear, sound by sound. Pronunciation follows the standard scholarly reconstruction described in the Phrasebook guide, with a few choices of our own where scholars disagree or the evidence runs out: z is said as ts, r is tapped or rolled, and stress is evenly spread because nobody knows where it fell.
Support the scribe
Eduba is free, with no ads, and is made by one person. Tips help cover the voice recordings and the tools behind the app. They don’t unlock anything; everything in Eduba is already yours.