Complete Babylonian Beginner to Intermediate Course: Learn to read, write, speak and understand a new language with Teach Yourself by Martin Worthington

by Martin Worthington

Is this the right book for me?Do you want to engage with Babylonian culture and literature in the original language? The course will introduce you to a fascinating world of gods and demons, heroes and kings. The readings are drawn from myths, letters, law-codes, medical incantations, and other authentic, ancient writings. The language is presented in the Roman alphabet, with an explanation of cuneiform script, and the main features of Assyrian - cognate with Babylonian - are also explained. Learn effortlessly with a new easy-to-read page design and interactive features in this book from Teach Yourself, the No. 1 brand in language learning.Complete Babylonian Part one - Getting startedChapter 1: IntroductionChapter 2: How to use this bookChapter 3: PronunciationChapter 4: Writing Babylonian in Roman CharactersChapter 5: Roots and patternsPart two - Nouns and adjectivesChapter 6: Overview of nouns and adjectivesChapter 7: Nouns and adjectives, singularChapter 8: Nouns, pluralChapter 9: Adjectives, pluralChapter 10: The construct stateChapter 11: Possessive suffixesChapter 12: The dualChapter 13: PrepositionsPart three - Strong verbsChapter 14: Overview of verbsChapter 15: The presentChapter 16: The preteriteChapter 17: The perfectChapter 18: The stative and the verbal adjectiveChapter 19: Verbs with accusative, dative and ventive suffixes Chapter 20: The imperativeChapter 21: The precativeChapter 22: The infinitivePart Weak and irregular verbsChapter 23: III-weak verbsChapter 24: I-weak verbsChapter 25: II-weak verbsChapter 26: I-w verbsChapter 27: Doubly weak verbsChapter 28: Three irregular verbsPart five - Clauses into sentencesChapter 29: Verbless clausesChapter 30: Joining clauses into sentencesChapter 31: Particularities of relative clauses with saChapter 32: The interrelation of clausesPart six - Further topicsChapter 33: The Gtn, Dtn and Stn systemsChapter 34: The Gt, Dt and St systemsChapter 35: ParticiplesChapter 36: AdverbsChapter 37: Independent pronounsChapter 38: Quadrilateral verbsChapter 39: NumbersChapter 40: some worked examplesChapter 41: The main features of AssyrianChapter 42: Taking things furtherPart seven - ReferenceChapter 43: Some common wordsChapter 44: The main features of syllabic spellingsChapter 45: Summary of strong verbs' cores and suffixesChapter 46: Forming nouns and patternsChapter 47: Some sound changesLearn effortlessly with a new easy-to-read page design and interactive Not got much time?One, five and ten-minute introductions to key principles to get you started.Author insightsLots of instant help with common problems and quick tips for success, based on the author's many years of experience.Test yourselfTests in the book and online to keep track of your progress.Extend your knowledgeExtra online articles to give you a richer understanding of the subject.Five things to rememberQuick refreshers to help you remember the key facts.Try thisInnovative exercises illustrate what you've learnt and how to use it.

Genres: Language, Reference, Linguistics

Paperback

First published August 27, 2010

Reviews

[Koen Crolla · Rating 3 out of 5]

A victim of its concern for its accessibility. In aiming to be understood perfectly even by people who have absolutely no experience with any language other than English, and even that not in a scholastic context, Worthington ends up over-explaining a lot of very basic concepts, ironically often making them considerably harder to grasp at a glance. Though the book's brevity shouldn't really be an issue (except when it comes to vocabulary, obviously; Babylonian/Akkadian, though alien to someone used to Indo-European languages, is a very straightforward language), his unwillingness to introduce much more than one new concept per chapter means he ends up repeating himself a lot as well, eating up space to the point that by the end he's clearly racing through it—numerals, quadriliteral roots, and numerals deserve more than one page each.
I suppose a book like this is best thought of as a taster to see if you want to get into a language rather than a useful introduction in its own right, and it does work as that. There's no bibliography, but Worthington will point you in the general direction of more traditional resources.

[Stephen Simpson · Rating 2 out of 5]

A decent attempt at transliteration-based learning of an interesting ancient language ... but I felt like the effort to simplify and make it more accessible actually undermined the education/teaching value. Yeah, you can get a decent sense of the language from this book, but I seriously question whether you could get very far with what you learn here. But I suppose you can use this as an easy entry-level test of whether you're really interested and want to commit to a more rigorous program of study.

[Beluosus · Rating 5 out of 5]

quttâku ! šattam u šaddaqdim gimir šiṭirti ātamar u ūmišam liginnī aqtabi. kīma ummânum šuruš lišānim išariš almad. dimmatam ištiat īšu : tikip santakki ul ulammad-ma ṭuppī šaṭāram ul ale''e.

[PS]

Great introduction to Babylonian. Will revisit this later this year when the new edition is released which includes the cunéiforme script – this edition uses transliteration.