Historical sociolinguistics has long focused on medieval and early modern texts. This study breaks that boundary, applying variationist methods to Old Babylonian letters from 4,000 years ago — showing how patterns of linguistic variation already reflected geography, chronology, and scribal practice.
🔗 https://doi.org/10.25189/2675-4916.2025.V6.N1.ID792
#linguistics #sociolinguistics #HistoricalSociolinguistics #OldBabylonian

The excellent Peter Pringle performing another episode from #Gilgamesh, namely Enkidu and Shamkat. Although it's a #Sumerian #epic, most of what we know survives from #cuneiform tablets written in #Akkadian and #OldBabylonian, and this one is sung in the latter. He accompanies himself on the #saz and sampled #zurna controlled by foot keyboard. Like usual, there's a good description and summary of the part in the video description. And again, this is not a reconstruction of ancient #music, but an interpretation.
#history #histodon #histodons #musodons #performance #EpicOfGilgamesh #Sumer #language #languages
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPcB7NlI3fo