Talk:Cuneiform (disambiguation)
It should be noted that the origins of cuneiform are highly speculative.
I'd kind of like to rephrase the litany of languages to indicate the progression from one to another. First stab:
The Akkadians borrowed cuneiform from Sumerians, and many signs in the Akkadian use of cuneiform retain both the Sumerian logographic value and the phonetic value associated with the Sumerian word. Thus for example, the sign KASH (which represented "beer" in Sumerian) retained both the logographic value "beer" and the phonetic value kash, even though the Akkadian word for "beer" was shikarum.
The same process occurred when the Hittites borrowed cuneiform from the Akkadians, except that signs in Hittite also retained logograms based on Akkadian. Something similar may have happened in Elamite cuneiform.
We should also mention polyvalence.
We should also mention the role that cuneiform had in the formation of the Ugaritic and Old Persian alphabets.
btw, shikarum is the root of both the slang word "shickered" (sp?) and "cider". -phma