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Elamite should not be confused with the proto-Elamite language or its writing system, which have yet to be proved identical or affiliated with Elamite.
Elamite has been classified into four periods based on its known history: Old Elamite, Middle Elamite, Neo-Elamite, and Achaemenid Elamite. For information on the text corpora from these periods, consult that listed section.
Phonology
As with several other languages written in Mesopotamian cuneiform, the historical ambiguities and deficiencies of that script have made our understanding of Elamite phonology more difficult. In particular, voicing distinctions in stops are not always clear.
= Phoneme inventory =
This information is tentative. Moreover, one must take into consideration diachronic phonological changes in the language through time. Based on Stolper 2008 pg. 57.
Consonants
| Stops | p, b,k,g t,d | |
|---|---|---|
| Fricatives | s, sz, z, h?, f/v? | |
| Liquids and Nasals | n,m l,r | |
| Glides | y,w |
Vowels
There are vowels /a/, /i/, /u/, and /e/. Vowel length is not phonemic, nor are there diphthongs (Stolper pg. 59).
A number of ambiguities and variations in spelling practices have been sources of speculation about Elamite phonemes. One is the possibility of tense and lax consonants. As argued by Erica Reiner (Reiner 1969 pg. 112 ff.), Old Persian loanwords into Elamite with voiced intervocalic stops are spelled as single consonants in the syllabary (i.e. (V)C-CV), as in OP Babiru = ba-pi-li. On the other hand, voiceless intervocalic stops are spelled as gemminated consonants (i.e. VC-CV) as in OP Gautama = ka-ma-ad-da. This variation indicates
