Sumerogram
As Sumerogramm orientalists denote the verbal sign of the cuneiform script, when it is used in languages other than Sumerian. The Sumerians, who had originally developed the cuneiform script, wrote the word stems with these word mark and only the grammatical suffixes and prefixes with syllabic signs. Other languages such as cuneiform Akkadian, Elamite, Hurrian, Urartian and Hittite took over the writing of the Sumerians, but wrote mainly the stems with the syllabic signs. For many common words are, however, often shortened the letters from the fact that, similar to the Sumerian, the word stem with the Sumerian word signs equal importance wrote. The same character must be read in the appropriate language of course. In the Ancient Near Eastern Studies always the Sumerian phonetic value of the word in question is used for transliteration of a word mark in non- Sumerian languages , which has led to the term Sumerogramm. Here, the character is listed in uppercase.
An example: The cuneiform Lu, originally the image of a person listed in Sumerian is a noun meaning " man, person " with the presumed pronunciation / lu /. The same symbol is also used in Akkadian texts, where it is awīlum to read (so the Akkadian word for " man " ), or in Hittite texts for antuhšaš " man ", and is in these languages as Sumerogramm. In both cases it is conventionally transliterated as Lu.
Most Sumerogramme be used in Akkadian; also Hittite still has many Sumerogramme, but only those that were common in the contemporary Akkadian. In other cuneiform script languages like Hurrian and Elamite inventory of used Sumerogrammen is less. In Sumerian is called, by definition, not of Sumerogrammen, but simply by word characters.
One can use the term Sumerogramm of modern linguistic point of view regard as unclean, because he is not used to synchronous description of the writing system of a language, but a sign classified in a language according to the criterion which function in another language - has - namely, the Sumerian. A linguistically more satisfactory term for much the same character class is, however, more generally, logogram or word characters.