I love Sumerian, I’m reading A Descriptive Grammar of Sumerian now, although at first I’ve been learning from A Manual of Sumerian Grammar and Texts by Hayes.. I like the way he introduces the grammar with real-life (kind of) examples and exercises. These are only royal inscriptions (so not very ‘real-life,’ but still..) from the Ur III period, though really good for beginning to learn the basics. HOWEVER, it’s from 1990, very outdated... which bounds me to Jagersma’s one (which is awesome as a comprehensive grammar reference, but the beginning can be difficult using only this book.)
Has the 2012 grammar introduced many changes (besides ‘Inana,’ etc.) or I can stick with the 2010 one without noticing too much difference?
Oh, and it’d be great to have the language revived, at least in a small circle of Sumerian enthusiasts. Of course, as it’s been said already, it would need a lot of loans and even some changes to the grammar.. buuut.. it’s normal. It has been long since dead and has a very small vocabulary, and the only corpus we have comes from inscriptions and poetry.
Anyway, I wish I will have a possibility of talking in Sumerian one day.