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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We can’t that’s why they are considered extinct languages because they have no native speakers left and we can only theorize how they sound based on current languages that use them as a base or evolved from them.
You basically take a language that has its roots in the dead language and attempt to work backwards on how it may have been pronounced using the still spoken language as your base.
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