W HITTAKER EMESAL AS ( A ) W OMEN’S LANGUAGE
Gordon Whittaker Göttingen
Linguistic Anthropology and the Study of
Emesal as (a) Women’s Language
O
ne of the most controversial topics
within Sumerology – and Assyri-
ology as a whole – is surely the
question of the nature and function of Eme-
sal as a form of the Sumerian language.
Scholarly attempts to address this issue go
back to the very beginnings of Sumerology
and have, like all major issues in Assyrio-
logy, generated considerable heat and pas-
sion among the protagonists. The yield
from this investment has not always ap-
peared to justify the expenditure of time and
energy involved, as the anticlimactic con-
clusions of Manfred Schretter’s important
Emesal-Studien (1990) 1 clearly show. Most
statements in the academic literature to date
have addressed – all too often only in pas-
sing – the issue as to whether or not Emesal
is a women’s language.
Let us examine the various scenarios2
proposed for Emesal over the course of the
last one-and-a-quarter centuries.
Emesal has been variously described,
often on little more than inspired impress-
ionism, as:
(A ) — a form of speech peculiar to women:
1. women’s speech (e.g. Delitzsch 1878: 5
to the present)
2. a discrete women’s language (Sayce
1878: 418 to the present)
1
Unfortunately, this valuable work is marred by the
excessive number of typographical errors pervading it.
This is most serious in the data section containing the
Emesal – Emegir lexical equivalencies. Schretter’s in-
clusion of conflicting systems of transcription is a further
complication that, regrettably, detracts from the clarity
S. Parpola and R. M. Whiting (eds.)
CRRAI 47/I (Helsinki 2002)
ISBN 951-45-9054-6
(B ) — a stage in language development:
3. an archaic form of Sumerian (Haupt
1881: 22-23)
4. a lexically younger form of Sumerian
(Scholtz 1931: 48)
(C ) — a jargon:
5. the jargon of a particular profession
(Weissbach 1898: 155-56)
6. the jargon of a particular class (Haupt
1917/1918: 240-47)
(D ) — a regional dialect:
7. a regional phenomenon, especially a
north Sumerian dialect (e.g. Scholtz 1931:
48)
8. a south Sumerian dialect, specifically the
dialect of Lagash (Bauer 1998: 435-36)
(E ) — a register, style or manner of speech:
9. effeminate speech (Prince 1908: xix)
10. the broad speech of country bumpkins
(Gadd 1924: 41-42)
11. genteel speech, as opposed to women’s
speech (Oppenheim 1964: 378 n. 25, CAD 4
148)
12. fine/thin language (Parpola 1975: 254-
55)
13. a “sweet” pronunciation (Alster 1975:
226)
14. a style associated with women that was
“meant to be ingratiating and so used for
requests” (Jacobsen 1988: 131)
15. thin or attenuated speech, possibly sung
by castrati singing in falsetto (Hallo 1995:
1872)
of his presentation.
2
For further details on most of the sundry positions
taken on Emesal see Schretter (1990: 1-10), from whom
I gratefully borrow the references to Haupt, Sayce,
Scholtz and Speiser.
1
W HITTAKER EMESAL AS ( A ) W OMEN’S LANGUAGE
(F ) — the speech of non-Sumerians:
16. Sumerian as spoken by non-Mesopota-
mians, specifically Proto-Elamites (Speiser
1930: 49ff)
17. the narrow language of Mesopotamians,
specifically substrate populations (Salonen
1973: 9-10)
(G) — an artificial medium:
18. errors of Akkadian scribes attempting
to manipulate a cryptographic system (Halé-
vy in Weissbach 1898: 68-69)
19. an artificial, non-spoken language
(Landsberger 1933: 177)
20. a literary dialect (Falkenstein and von
Soden 1953: 28-29; 1964: 18 to the present)
21. an artificial medium of lyrical expres-
sion (Rosengarten 1968: 125-27).
Some of these oft contradictory charac-
terizations are based on the perceived socie-
tal context in which Emesal occurs, as in the
women’s language thesis; others on the
meaning of the name Emesal, as in the case
of Gadd (1924) and Oppenheim (1964); still
others on a mix of perceived characteristics,
as in Falkenstein and von Soden (1953) and
Thomsen (1984: 285-94). Several of the de-
scriptions of Emesal, particularly those
from the first half-century, have fallen by
the wayside as our knowledge and under-
standing of Sumerian have increased.
Historically central to the Emesal issue
has always been the dual analysis of the
speech-form’s name and societal context.
The name Emesal is to this day only half-
understood. The noun e m e is Sumerian for
‘tongue,’ and, by extension, ‘speech’ and
3
It is interesting to note that with the increasing partici-
pation of women in German Assyriology the antiquated
and, at least in part, negatively loaded term Weib in
Weibersprache was discreetly dropped, to be replaced by
the neutral Frau (and Frauensprache).
4
Indeed, I suggest that this might remove a problem that
has been vexing Balke (2002: 31 n. 5; 45; cf., however,
Selz 2002: 683), namely the apparent juxtaposition of
two dimensional adjectives read s a l, one meaning
‘broad,’ the other ‘thin.’ Instead of a pair of homophones
sharing the same semantic field of dimension, we would
now have a more realistic contrast of mi m ‘broad’ and
s a l ‘thin.’ If there were in fact two dimensional adjec-
2
‘language.’ The modifier s a l is more elu-
sive. Its sign, derived from an Uruk IV de-
piction of the pubic triangle, can be read in
a number of ways: m u n u s or m í ‘woman,’
g a l 4 ‘vulva,’ and s a l. An original mistaken
assumption that sal meant ‘woman’ inspired
and fired much of the early thinking in Assyri-
ology on women’s language, or as tellingly
put by some of the male scholars of the day,
the “Sprache der Weiber.” 3 The eventual
recognition that sal did not in fact mean
‘Weib’ led to a shift in emphasis to the adjec-
tival nuances of the still elusive s a l. Gadd
(1924) and Falkenstein (1953) based their
rendition ‘broad speech’ (breite Sprache) on
the equation s a l = rapašu ‘widen, broaden,’
although s a l should here be read m i m on
the evidence of the Izi lexical list entry
s a l mi-im = ru-up-p[u-šu] (Izi J ii 19). 4
The crucial evidence that tipped the scales
towards s a l as second component of the
dialect term came not from Sumerian, but
from Akkadian, in the loan forms ummisal-
lu ‘Emesal-composition (?)’ (CDA 422) and
emesallu ‘fine taste’ (CAD E 148), var. me-
sallu, ‘(desig. of salt)’ (CDA 208), all pres-
umed to be a rendition of the word e m e -
s a l. The Sumerian equivalent of the latter
loan, m u n e m e - s a l - l a, means literally
‘salt of fine taste,’ or, better, ‘salt fine to the
tongue.’ As the CAD notes, it was already
known from the writing e m e - s a l - l a in the
colophon of Emesal Voc. II that the Sume-
rian term for the dialect must end in an l.
Of special interest here is the lexical equ-
tives read s a l it would be necessary to consider the
possibility of tonal differentiation or of a distinction in
some other aspect of the phonology, clouded by the
limitations of the script. Selz’ proposal that s a l ‘broad’
and s a l ‘thin, narrow’ are reconcilable as oppositional
senses of the same word, similar to Sumerian n un (or
Latin altus) ‘high; deep,’ overlooks, I think, the fact that
polar terms such as the latter work because they refer to
extension along an axis from a single base (and usually
do not refer to the same thing in both senses), something
that cannot be said of the opposition broad/narrow, where
confusion must arise if one and the same term is used.

ation l ú e m e - s a l = lu-ru-u (CT 37 24r. ii
13′ [App. to Lu]), which the CAD (E 148)
translates as ‘a well-spoken man,’ taking
the morphemes literally as ‘fine-tongued
person.’ This is a far cry from Gadd’s ‘clown,
countryman,’ “and thus a man of broad
speech” (1924: 42), which conjures up more
the image of a hay-chewing country bump-
kin than of a suave and eloquent orator. The
most recent effort at rendering the seman-
tics of Akk. lurû was made by the CDA
(186): ‘man with feminine voice (?).’ This
is a clear attempt, harking back to von
Soden’s “Mann mit Fistelstimme” (AHw
565, following Zimmern 1915/1916: 227-
28), to reconcile the term with the notion of
Emesal as the speech of women, an asso-
ciation explicitly rejected by the CAD.
Miguel Civil (pers. comm.) has kindly in-
formed me that lurû most likely refers to a
manner of articulation involving the teeth.
I am not, however, aware of any basis for
this analysis beyond a literal interpretation
of the modifier e m e - s a l.
The frequent references to Emesal as the
speech of women, or even as a women’s
dialect or language, obviously are founded
on more than mere speculation as to the
original meaning of the name. They reflect
the widespread observation that Emesal is
spoken by, or put into the mouths of, god-
desses and women in certain literary genres.
The exact nature of these genres of cultic
lamentations, letter-prayers and love songs
will not be discussed here (for an overview
see Black 1991 and Hallo 1995: 1871-81;
see also Sefati 1998).
The Emesal compositions within the cult-
song genres known as the b a l a gé and
e r š e m m a were sung, whereas the prayer
types e r š a h u n gé a and š u i l a may have been
recited (see Black 1991: 25 contra Maul
1988: 25). Both categories were the centre-
5
Jacobsen draws attention to Text A, which in his ana-
lysis offers the parallel construction a a - b a- d a - z é- e m 3
W HITTAKER EMESAL AS ( A ) W OMEN’S LANGUAGE
piece of ritual performances by a special
class of temple personnel, the g a l a (Akk.
kalû), to the accompaniment of musical in-
struments. The sexual orientation of the g a l a
has been the focus of intense interest, not
least because of its potential bearing on the
sociocultural context of Emesal, that is, on
the question of the latter’s possible status as
a genderlect, a type of sociolect (or social
dialect) related to gender.
It has often been suggested that the g a l a
was a eunuch. This appears to have been
proposed for the first time by Allotte de la
Fuÿe (1921: 121). It dovetails with von
Soden’s rendition of the l ú e m e - s a l as a
“Mann mit Fistelstimme,” cited above, and
finds its most recent echo in Hallo’s vision
of “castrati singing in falsetto” (1995:
1872). As appealing as this vision may be
to some, no direct, or even reasonably co-
gent, evidence has ever been proffered that
the genitals of the g a l a suffered the fate of
the pre-modern choirboy. In another (undoc-
umented) attempt to rationalize the associ-
ation of a class of males with Emesal, Fal-
kenstein and von Soden (1953: 28) specu-
lated that the male g a l a may have been
preceded historically by priestesses charged
with the same office. There is, indeed, some
evidence for female g a l a in Archaic Old
Babylonian times (Black 1991: 26-27), but
almost nothing is known about them at pres-
ent beyond the fact of their existence.
Jacobsen (1959: 482-83), in his commen-
tary on Gordon’s (1959) edition of Sume-
rian proverbs, dismissed the eunuch hypo-
thesis gently by pointing to Proverb 2.99 –
one of a series of sayings poking fun at the
g a l a – which begins: g a l a - e d u m u - n i a
h a - b a - a n - d a - r i x - r i x ( RA . RA ) “The kalû-
priest, if he is engendering a (lit. ‘his’) son,
(will say:).” Jacobsen, noting that a —r i x -
r i x means literally ‘to ejaculate semen,’ 5
‘when he has given forth semen.’
3
W HITTAKER EMESAL AS ( A ) W OMEN’S LANGUAGE
comments wryly that “the saying as here
interpreted is not very favorable to the be-
lief that the kalû-priest was a eunuch” (op.
cit. 483). Sadly, precisely this interpreta-
tion has been thrown out in the most recent
edition of the proverbs (Alster 1997: I 65),
where the same passage is translated: ‘A
lamentation priest hurled his son into the
water’! 6 The text continues with the g a l a’s
words: u r u ki m à - a - g i m h é - d ù k a l a m
m à - e - g i m h é - e n - t i “May he build cities
as I do, may he give life to the Nation as I
do!” (Jacobsen’s translation). Alster,
weighing the variants, renders the passage
only slightly differently: u r u k i m à - g i m
h é - d ù u n m à - e - g i m h é - t i “Let the city
build like me, let the people live like me!”
A case can, of course, be made for either
interpretation, but Jacobsen’s has a slight
edge if the variants are taken into account. 7
Neverthless, this is no smoking gun in the
investigation of the g a l a’s virility.
An alternative tack was taken by Krecher
(1966: 36 and n. 99), who documented the
existence of children of a g a l a outside of a
literary context, followed shortly by Renger
(1969: 192-93), who noted a reference to a
g a l a as ‘patriarch,’ (lit. ‘house elder,’
puršum bitim), as well as the fact that a
g a l a could not only have a family but also
have sons that inherit his profession. While
these instances do not yet clinch the case for
the sex life of the average g a l a, they cast
serious doubt on the eunuch hypothesis.
Diakonoff (1975: 115 n. 31) deflects the
implications of the new evidence by ar-
guing that not all g a l a need have been eu-
nuchs – any more than a Vatican choirboy
need have been one in the past. But his
claim that the proverb gibes would only
strike home if the g a l a were a eunuch rings
6 8
Alster reads the verb as a — r a- r a.
7
See also the discussion by Diakonoff (1975: 115 n. 31),
who supports Jacobsen’s translation on the whole but
takes issue with the inferences he draws from it.
4
a little hollow. More evidence is needed. 8
We know, of course, that the gala sang
and recited Emesal as part of his cultic ac-
tivities. What is unclear is the extent to
which he used the dialect as an active me-
dium of communication, if at all. Proverbs
2.99A, 2.100, and 2.101 (Alster 1997: I
65-66) have the g a l a speak Emesal in
everyday life, but this may be no more than
a means of stereotyping him, in a manner
characteristic of satire. The close and pub-
lic association of the g a l a with goddesses,
whose words he was accustomed to singing
in Emesal in the first person, may have led
to his jocular depiction as an effeminate and
unworldly buffoon – a depiction only of
relevance in this context. One need only
recall the exaggerated imitations of an in-
sipid sermon style that are employed effec-
tively as a humorous device by comedians
today for stereotyping even the everyday
speech of Christian clergy.
Among the goddesses recorded using
Emesal the most important is Inanna,
together with her separately named aspects.
While Emesal is the dialect of choice when
goddesses speak, harangue and wail,
Emegir (or the ‘main dialect,’ as it is often
called in Assyriology) is characteristically
the tongue of male deities cited in the same
texts and genres. Not only goddesses but
also mortal women are generally held by
scholars to speak Emesal in literary con-
texts, but the case for human females speak-
ing the dialect is considerably weaker than
the case to be made for divine females. In
fact, the evidence for mortal women and
girls actually using Emesal still needs to be
presented. Many of the instances of women
speaking in the Emesal corpus are brief and
ambiguous, often reduced to simple excla-
A valuable new study by Jerrold S. Cooper, ‘Genre,
Gender and the Sumerian Lamentation’ (MS, to be pub-
lished in late 2002), makes a well-reasoned plea for a
differentiated view of the gala over time and space.

mations like ‘My child!’ (e.g. Erš. 1.2 39,
41 in Cohen 1981: 114), which, recorded as
d u m u - m u, appears at first glance more
Emegir than Emesal. The characteristic, but
infrequent, Emesal orthography for Emegir
d u m u is d u 5 - m u (Schretter 1990: 166 no.
79), although the opaque logogram d u m u
is frequently used in both dialects.
In Proverbs 1.125, 1.144, 1.169, and
1.192 (Alster 1997: I 27, 29, 34, 38) one or
two morphemes each betray the text as
Emesal, but the fact that women or girls,
rather than goddesses or others, are speak-
ing is always implicit, never explicit. The
dialect seems to be employed here as a lit-
erary device for indicating a general ca-
tegory of female subject (mother, wife,
bride, lady), where further specification
would be out of place.
A further indicator that women did not in
fact speak Emesal is that the dialect is not
used when women are known and named or
cited in a non-literary context. The greatest
known author of Sumerian cultic literature,
the princess Enheduanna, did not write in
Emesal, nor did she quote others speaking
it. In her composition, the n i n - m e - š á r - r a
(e.g. Hallo and van Dijk 1968), which she
dedicated to Inanna, the author never once
employs Emesal, even when she is writing
in the first person and identifying herself by
name.
There are, in fact, other categories of
beings or entities known to have employed
Emesal on at least some occasions. One of
these is a cow. In CT 36 47-50 III 24 we
have the following passage: i m - m a - a l -
l a - t a m a - a i m - m a - a l - l a - t a m a - a which
Schretter (1990: 170 no. 90), apparently
after Kramer (uncited), renders as ‘from the
cow: ‘where!’ From the cow: ‘where!’ The
cow is using Emesal: m a - a is the equival-
9
This takes the form of a compilation by Cathy Ball of
Georgetown University’s Linguistics Dept. It can be con-
W HITTAKER EMESAL AS ( A ) W OMEN’S LANGUAGE
ent of Emegir m e - a ‘where?’ Furthermore,
the cow is not simply speaking Emesal; it is
lowing Emesal. The wordplay in the text
derives from the fact that the utterance of a
cow is passably similar to the pronunciation
of the dialect interrogative. Now, it is high-
ly unusual for a cow’s lowing to be rendered
with the help of an /a/ vowel. Almost all
attestations of such onomatopoeic terms in
one cross-cultural survey 9 are characterized
by /m/ + high to mid back vowel, i.e. a
vowel in the general vicinity of /u/ or /o/. A
number of scholars have argued for the
existence of an /o/ vowel in Sumerian. The
most important case to date was made by
Boisson (1989) on the basis of statistical
probability and on an assessment of the
naturalness of the Sumerian vocalic system.
I would argue, therefore, that it is highly
likely that Emesal m a - a contained an /o/
vowel, for which there was no slot in the
Akkadian-derived syllabary used for
phonetic Sumerian.
Even as humble a creature as a fly is
recorded speaking Emesal. In an eršemma
of Dumuzi, the goddess Inanna is ad-
dressed by a fly with the memorable words:
é - k a š - a - k a é - g ir i n - n a - k a d u mu - m u -
l u - k ù - z u - k e 4 - n e d è - mu - u n - t i - l e “Let
the young of the wise one live in the ale-
house and in the house of fruit!” (Erš. 165
21-22 in Cohen 1981: 88-89). In an e r š e m -
m a of Inanna and Dumuzi (Erš. 97 52 in
Cohen 1981: 76, 81) a g a l 5 - l á demon pla-
guing Dumuzi addresses him in Emesal as:
dam ga-ša-an-ka dumu zé-er-tur-ra
“Spouse of Inanna, son of Duttur,” and even
Dumuzi himself resorts to the dialect a few
lines later (75) when he calls on Utu: m e -
r e - mu me - r e - m a š - d à n a - m e - e - g i 4 “You
should turn my feet into the ‘feet’ of a
gazelle!” Finally, not just animate beings
sulted on the Internet at <http://www.georgetown.edu/
cball/animals/cow.html>.
5
W HITTAKER EMESAL AS ( A ) W OMEN’S LANGUAGE
have been known to speak Emesal; as we
see, for example, when a temple exclaims:
a m u - g i - g a “Oh, my hierodule!” (Erš. 106
22 in Cohen 1981: 70-71).
All too often the identification of a text,
or of a passage within it, as Emesal is made
difficult by a general scribal preference for
logograms. Variant text versions may con-
trast in their use of Emegir or Emesal for
the same lines. In no few instances mixed
syllabic spellings occur, where the Emegir
form of one word (for which there is a
divergent Emesal equivalent) is clearly
given, followed by a syllabically spelt Eme-
sal word. This brings us to the question of
naturalness. The inconsistency with which
Emesal is used, or made visible, in a given
composition of a typically Emesal genre is
not in itself an argument against the natu-
ralness of a dialect, even a literary dialect.
Spoken dialects and languages, such as e.g.
Swabian and Low German, fluctuate in
their integration of main dialect, e.g. High
German, features depending on such factors
as the speaker and the occasion. Users of
literary dialects vary in the degree of their
adherence to norms. It may suffice to in-
clude a few high-profile terms from a given
dialect to indicate a specific setting or in-
tent.
Regional dialects frequently underlie lit-
erary dialects, but this does not mean that
there is ever a one-to-one correspondence
between the two (cf. Coseriu 1988: 150-51).
In Ancient Greece the Homeric dialect,
based on a somewhat Aeolicized form of
East Ionic, was traditionally used in epic
literature and hexameters. Choral lyric
poetry and the choral parts of tragedies
were composed in a form of Doric, but in no
specific regional or local Doric dialect. The
10
Schretter ascribes the observation to Falkenstein, al-
though he himself appears to have been acquainted with
Hommel’s comparison, since he adds to Falkenstein’s
reference to “Frauen” in the above quote the phrase “(und
6
dialogues in dramas, on the other hand,
were set in Attic.
A different but comparable instance in-
volves Middle Indic literature. A parallel
between the dialect situation in Sumer and
that prevailing in India between Sanskrit
and Prakrit has been proposed by Falken-
stein and von Soden (1953: 29), who write
with regard to Emesal as a probable
women’s language:
Dabei drängt sich uns sogleich ein Ver-
gleich mit einer Regelung des Sanskrit-Dra-
mas auf, in dem die Männer Sanskrit, die
Frauen dagegen Prakrit, das ist eine jüngere
Sprachstufe des Sanskrits, sprechen. Ob das
Emesal eine ausschließlich der literarischen
Äußerung vorbehaltene Sprachform ist, ver-
mögen wir noch nicht zu sagen.
And indeed nothing more was ever said of
it. What Falkenstein and von Soden fail to
admit, and Schretter (1990: 5) to clarify, 10
is that Hommel (1882: 282-83) made the
original analogy more than seventy years
earlier. But in neither case was the analogy
carried further; that is, each scholar was
content to suggest the parallel without ela-
borating on the specifics.
The sociocultural context of dialect in
Middle Indic literature is actually more
complicated than either Hommel or Falken-
stein realized. Out of the Old Indic lan-
guages, Vedic and Sanskrit, numerous ver-
naculars called Prakrits evolved in the
course of the 1st millennium BC up to the
end of the 1st millennium AD . Some of these
Middle Indic languages eventually de-
veloped into the modern Indic languages of
today. A few of the Prakrits came to be
utilized as literary dialects. In so doing,
they gradually diverged from the languages
Leute niedrigen Standes),” paraphrasing Hommel’s “die
… niederen Beamten und gewöhnlichen Leute wie die
Frauen.”

on which they were based through an artifi-
cial and mechanical application of gram-
matical rules divorced from any sense of
pragmatics. In classical Indian drama
Sanskrit and certain Prakrits were origin-
ally placed in the mouths of different social
groups as a stylized means of illustrating
the rich variety of dialects actually occur-
ring in the various strata of Indian societies
during this period (see Pischel 1900 for an
overview of the complexity). But very
quickly the choice of dialect became deter-
mined by literary convention rather than by
any sociocultural reality.
In the classical dramas high-ranking male
characters, such as the king and the
brahmans, speak and sing Sanskrit, as do a
smaller number of elite or well-educated
women, such as Buddhist nuns. Women
generally speak Sauraseni but sing Maha-
ra$#ri. A low-ranking brahman clown
known as the vidusaka also speaks Saurase-
ni, although he is the friend of the king. 11
Low-caste males, such as certain types of
servant and fishermen, speak Magadhi.
Clearly, there are some parallels between
the way Prakrit and Emesal are used in
literature that was intended to be per-
formed.
Let us now come to the question of what
constitutes women’s language. Since the
1970s the volume of academic literature on
gender-related language use has mush-
roomed dramatically. Most of the interest
has tended to focus on European languages
and societies, but there have been some
very important studies of non-Western so-
cieties that have helped to put the subject as
a whole into perspective. Linguistic anthro-
pology, the field of science dedicated to the
11
The vidusaka is rather reminiscent of the proverbial
characterization of the g a l a: he is a fool and an unwitting
source of comic relief.
12
See in particular the debate between Kimball (1987,
1990) and Saville-Troike (1988) on the precise nature of
W HITTAKER EMESAL AS ( A ) W OMEN’S LANGUAGE
investigation of the cross-cultural phe-
nomenon of language, owes much to the
Americanist tradition founded by Franz
Boas in the waning years of the nineteenth
century. An early pathbreaking study into
genderlects was published by Edward Sapir
in 1929, documenting the differences be-
tween male and female speech in Yana, an
Indian language of Northern California.
This was followed a couple of decades later
by Mary Haas’ enormously influential, but
now somewhat controversial, 1 2 analysis of
male and female speech in Koasati/Cou-
shatta (1944), an indigenous language of
Louisiana and Texas. More than any other,
Haas has inspired the investigation of the
relationship of gender to language. While
studies of language and gender in Western
countries involve politically and economi-
cally complex societies, most studies of lan-
guage use in non-Western cultures, by way
of contrast, concern societies below the
state level of complexity. Important excep-
tions are those dealing with the state so-
cieties of China and Japan.
Schretter drew on much of the older lit-
erature on the relationship of gender to lan-
guage in non-Western societies for his
monograph on Emesal. In order to deter-
mine whether Emesal may be considered (a)
women’s language, i.e., a female gender-
lect, the author summarized the findings of
investigators from colonial to modern times
with regard to such phenomena in non-com-
plex societies. 1 3 The studies cited are of
widely varying quality, are often seriously
out of date, and in some instances suffer
from a lack of familiarity with modern lin-
guistics and anthropology. An irritation is
Schretter’s continued use of the phrase
genderlects in Koasati.
13
Nevertheless, Schretter (1990: 140), ultimately un-
able to answer the question he had set himself, ends his
study on an inconclusive note.
7
W HITTAKER EMESAL AS ( A ) W OMEN’S LANGUAGE
“eine Frauensprache” for what would better
be termed simply “Frauensprache,” that is,
without the indefinite article.
This latter point is no trivial one. While
“women’s language” simply denotes the
speech characteristic of women, a universal
phenomenon like men’s language, 14 “a
women’s language” presupposes the exist-
ence of an autonomous system of speech
sufficiently differentiated as to qualify as a
discrete language alongside, by implica-
tion, a men’s language. Furthermore, it sin-
gles out female speech as a special develop-
ment in contrast to male speech, the latter
being taken to be indistinguishable from a
given society’s linguistic norm. This over-
looks the fact that in some societies it is
female speech that is influential and worthy
of general emulation, not necessarily male
speech. By way of example, in Gros Ventre
(Atsina), an Algonquian language of the
North American Great Plains with parallel
registers for men and women, younger men
are increasingly adopting female forms
(Flannery 1946, Taylor 1982). Glück
(1979) has argued strongly against the se-
ductive notion of discrete women’s lan-
guages, and has cast serious doubt on such
claims in the academic literature.
Thus, while it is legitimate to raise the
question of the existence, or prior exist-
ence, of genderlects (i.e., patterns of female
language vs. male language) in Sumerian
society, it is not defensible to posit the
existence of ‘a women’s language,’ as if the
language of Sumerian women represents a
radical departure from a (male) norm. The
latter seductive and pervasive notion is evi-
dent in Schretter’s frequent discussion of
specific aspects of Emesal phonology as
mere departures from an Emegir norm,
14
This is not, however, to say that a gender distinction
always runs along the lines of a simple male-female
dichotomy.
15
Black’s reference to the Chukchi is not coincidental,
8
rather than as parallel developments along-
side those in Emegir, both ultimately from
a common Sumerian ancestor. This is an
understandable temptation, given the status
of Emegir as the dominant dialect, but it is
not linguistically defensible.
Black (1992: 383) has taken Schretter to
task for comparing Sumerian developments
with those in non-state cultures: “One
would not have thought the complex society
of ancient Sumer comparable to the simpler
societies of e.g. the Chukchi (which seem
to be more favourable to the development
of such women’s languages).” 15 This is a
little puzzling. In matter of fact, non-com-
plex societies have no greater likelihood of
exhibiting – and no greater claim on – gen-
der-related features, or full-blown gender-
lects, than complex societies do. A case in
point is Japan, surely one of the most com-
plex societies on the planet. Japanese male
and female speech (for which see Miller
1967: 289-90, Shibatani 1990: 371-74, Shi-
bamoto 1985) is differentiated, among
other things, in areas of:
(a) phonology: e.g., among a series of vari-
ant pronunciations, women say gozamasu,
men gozaimasu,
(b) morphology: e.g. women make far more
extensive use of the beautification prefix o-
than men do,
(c) the lexicon: e.g. in informal contexts
women use the 1st and 2nd person pronouns
atasi and anta respectively, whereas men
use ore and omae, and
(d) syntax: e.g. women delete the copula da
before the final particle yo.
This is a typical case, comparable in the
range of its differentiation with the situ-
but motivated by Diakonoff’s (1975: 114) use of the
Chukchi model as a parallel to the situation with regard
to Emesal.

ation both in Western and in non-complex
societies, though not necessarily in the de-
gree. Emesal and Emegir exhibit similar
features of differentiation, and these have
been well documented by Schretter. Non-
etheless, the question remains as to how we
should interpret these differences in the
case of Sumerian. While there is nothing
unusual about the characteristics so far
known, there is still a need to evaluate,
and – in part where dubious conclusions
have been drawn too swiftly in the past – to
reevaluate, the written contexts in which
each dialect occurs. I say the written con-
texts, since spoken contexts are unexamin-
able. 16 These written contexts include both
literary and non-literary, e.g. juridical, con-
texts. It is, moreover, essential that the kind
of language in which a text is couched be
compared with the kind of language used by
individuals and other entities quoted and
embedded in the same text. Code-switch-
ing, instances of a change in the kind of
language used, should be sought and ident-
ified within the framework of a single text.
As it now stands, the evidence allows the
tentative conclusion that Emesal and
Emegir – whatever their basis may have
been in regional or local dialects – are
known to us in differing contexts: Emesal
occurs only as a literary dialect; that is, as
the vehicle of specific literary and cultic
genres and as a literary device employed,
16
I deliberately exclude instances where direct speech
is recorded in a cuneiform text, since this occurs in a
written context, not in the spoken context of a taped
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ABBREVIATIONS
AHw = Akkadisches Handwörterbuch.
CAD = The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.
CDA = A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian.
W HITTAKER EMESAL AS ( A ) W OMEN’S LANGUAGE
among other things, to identify female spea-
kers generically, never individually, in a
given social role. Emegir, on the other hand,
has a dual function (1) as the dialect of
state, society and culture in general and (2)
as a literary dialect with respect to specific
genres.
Emesal is, thus, neither a women’s lan-
guage nor the language of women.
I would like to end off with a pertinent,
but probably apocryphal, anecdote of gen-
der-, class-, and fauna-related code-switch-
ing at the court of the Holy Roman Em-
peror, Charles V (Charles I of Spain). Ac-
cording to literary tradition, this thoroughly
European monarch, who was fluent in at
least four languages of state, once pro-
claimed that he spoke Spanish to God, Ita-
lian to men, French to women, and German
to horses (Coseriu 1980: 74). In one variant
of the tradition he also spoke Flemish, his
mother tongue, to the servants. As in the
instance of Middle Indic society, the litera-
ry association of individual languages or
dialects with specific societal groups in
stereotypical manner may well parallel the
function of Emesal with relation to Emegir
in Sumerian literature. The reality of the
Mesopotamian street may have been quite
different – but, in the absence of ideal con-
ditions for fieldwork among the Sumerians,
this question will probably never be fully
resolved or resolvable.
session. Although quotations may well reflect spoken
language, they need not, and they must be regarded as
features of literature in its broadest sense.
9
W HITTAKER EMESAL AS ( A ) W OMEN’S LANGUAGE

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