Sumerian is a language isolate that served as the language of ancient Sumer in what is now southern Iraq, first attested in writing around 3100 BC. It was written in cuneiform, a wedge-shaped script impressed into clay tablets, and is the oldest attested written language. Sumerian ceased to be spoken as a vernacular language somewhere between 1700 and 1900 BC, when Akkadian, a Semitic language, became the dominant everyday tongue, but it survived for many centuries afterward as a sacred, literary, ceremonial and scientific language across Mesopotamia, remaining in learned use until around the first century AD.
Facts
RegionAncient Mesopotamia, in the area that is now modern-day Iraq 1 Speaker Count Proto-Language StatusNo proto-language: Sumerian is a language isolate, with no demonstrated relationship to any other known language 1 Sources
1. Wikipedia: Sumerian Language
WikipediaLead section, paragraph 1: geographic scope clause
that was spoken exclusively in ancient Mesopotamia, in the area that is now modern-day Iraq.
Lead section, paragraph 3: language shift and extinction sentence
Akkadian, a Semitic language, gradually replaced Sumerian as the primary spoken language in the area c. 2000 BC (the exact date is debated), but Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary, and scientific language in Akkadian-speaking Mesopotamian states, such as Assyria and Babylonia, until the 1st century AD.
Lead section, paragraph 1: language isolate clause
It is a local language isolate, thus unrelated to any other known language
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