Editing Culture of Iraq (section)

=== Ancient ===
'''Sumerian''' (𒅴𒂠 ''EME.G̃IR<sub>15</sub>'' "[[Exonym and endonym|native tongue]]") was the language of ancient [[Sumer]] and a [[language isolate]] that was spoken in [[Mesopotamia]] ([[Iraq]]). The Sumerian language is the earliest known written language.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Sumerian language {{!}} History, Characteristics, & Facts|url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sumerian-language|access-date=2021-05-06|website=Encyclopedia Britannica|language=en}}</ref> The "proto-literate" period of Sumerian writing spans c. 3300 to 3000 BC. In this period, records are purely [[logographic]], with phonological content. The oldest document of the proto-literate period is the [[Kish tablet]]. [[Adam Falkenstein|Falkenstein]] (1936) lists 939 signs used in the proto-literate period ([[Uruk period|late Uruk]], 34th to 31st centuries).
During the 3rd millennium BC, an intimate cultural symbiosis developed between the [[Sumer]]ians and the [[Semitic languages|Semitic]]-speaking [[Akkadian Empire|Akkadians]], which included widespread bilingualism. The influence of Sumerian and the [[East Semitic]] language [[Akkadian language|Akkadian]] on each other is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a substantial scale to syntactic, morphological, and phonological convergence.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Deutscher|first=Guy|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/352917905|title=Syntactic change in Akkadian : the evolution of sentential complementation|date=2000|publisher=Oxford Univ. Press|isbn=978-0-19-154483-5|location=Oxford|oclc=352917905}}</ref> This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the third millennium BC as a ''[[Sprachbund]]''.