COMPLETE BABYLONIAN

For two decades and more I had wanted to learn Akkadian, the umbrella-term for Babylonian and Assyrian. I tried three books:- David Marcus 'A Manual of Akkadian' - this uses a kind of direct method, teaching grammatical points as they arise, so that the student ends up with a pointillistic impression of the grammar, with no clear overview. The explanation of the verbal system is desperately and perversely unhelpful. Furthermore you are forced to learn the cuneiform script, which involves memorising hundreds of signs, many of them polyvalent. I found the book unusable.- Richard Caplice 'Introduction to Akkadian' - thorough, but so compressed as to be horribly indigestible. Here too you are forced to learn the cuneiform script. This book too, whilst maybe useful as a reference grammar, is unusable as a textbook for learning the language.- John Huehnergard 'Grammar of Akkadian' - a very very thorough introduction to the language, introducing new grammatical points bit by bit, and introducing the cuneiform script gradually too. A beginner may find it overwhelming, and the grammatical explanations are written in a curiously convoluted way. The sentences for translation in the early chapters are mind-numbingly dull. It's an excellent book, but it's not fun. If you buy it, make sure you also buy the extra volume with the key to the exercises, otherwise you will struggle.And now here is the second edition, revised and expanded, of Martin Worthington's 'Teach Yourself Complete Babylonian'. It's a very intelligent, lucid, practical textbook.The language is taught entirely in transliteration, so that you can learn it thoroughly without having to do battle with the cuneiform script (though in this new edition it is also possible - NB optionally - to learn the script). It is in my view better to learn the language in transliteration at first, and optionally add knowledge of cuneiform later, because deciphering a cuneiform text is far easier when you already know well what lies 'behind' it.Grammatical points are introduced in a rational, sensible, easy-to-understand way, there are plenty of normalisation+reading exercises with often highly amusing practice sentences, all of them taken from real Babylonian sources, and including such gems as 'Buy donkeys!','I spent the night in my dung, like an ox', 'He must not pester the palace', 'I'm the one with the nanny-goat'.Dr Worthington has a light touch and sprinkles the book with delightful nuggets of information.If you work through this wonderful book you will quickly and easily acquire a really excellent working knowledge of Babylonian from every era of its development. A short chapter towards the end of the book includes the main features of Assyrian in so far as it diverges from Babylonian, so that you will be able to read both dialects of Akkadian.I recommend this book wholeheartedly, and if I could give it six stars, or seven stars, I would do so without hesitation. I have spent three extremely happy months working through it in detail, and have fulfilled an ambition I had harboured for many years: to acquire a good, working knowledge of Akkadian, and - a lovely bonus - I've had a lot of fun on the way, all thanks to Dr Worthington.

Bought as a gift. I'm not qualified to judge but it certainly looks good - nice layout, very attractive, etc., The recipient was delighted. She had been using the earlier edition which was in "Teach Yourself" format, but this later edition is seemingly much better. I'm told it's the best primer on the market.

this is really good

The book is a very good source to learn Akkadian on your own. However there are some negative points that make it unnecessary more difficult.At first you learn about nouns. In the practices to those there are already verbs, which you don't know when you're just starting. The verbs are translated in brackets next to them, which makes it easier. Translating singular words would have been way easier tho as you're not exposed to words which you cannot use correclty yet.During the exercises you have to translate small sentences. Most of the words are unknown to you and there is no word list accompanying them, so you have to go to the glossary in the end to look up each word individually which takes some time. The glossary also just offers a translation from Akkadian to English and not the other way around. If you want to know an English word in Akkadian you have to check every word individually as well.The lessons however are explained easily and that really is the strenght of the book. It presents the information in a very understandable way, offering examples here and there.The lessons are great. The exercises also easily convey what you are supposed to do. It just is a hassle to do them due to the aformentioned reasons.

What I noticed is that this book introduces Ancient Babylonian in a way you would find in a contemporary foreign language textbook. It's a straightforward approach and you can easily grasp how sentences are formed.