I was just reading the Wikipedia entry on the Epic of Gilgamesh. One of the sources cited states that “According to a long-standing Assyriological convention, the legendary ruler of Uruk had two names: Bilgames in Sumerian and Gilgames in Akkadian.”
How can we know that?
Sumerian is a language isolate, and it hasn’t been spoken for thousands of years. It wasn’t until the 19th century that people began deciphering Sumerian cuneiform inscriptions on excavated tablets. How can we know the phonology of such languages?
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In general, we don’t really know for sure. However, we can observe that some word evolved to become that other word in another language, and that can be a good clue. You see the spelling change a bit at a certain time period, and that gives you information. Words evolve all the time, but those changes are not fully random. There are some common patterns in the way the pronunciation changes. So in some cases, you can put the pieces together, and make a decent guess about how it was pronounced.
Some languages also have a pretty consistent way to match the pronunciation of stuff to the spelling. So those are easy enough. You see how it’s written, that tells you how it sounds (in modern languages, something like Spanish does that pretty well, for example). Not all languages are as cryptic as English in that regard.
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