Contact settings
People and institutions bring languages together in trade, migration, schooling, administration and ritual. A bilingual text shows a written practice in one setting; it cannot by itself tell us how every inhabitant spoke. The Sumerian–Akkadian lexical lists documented by DCCLT belong to a scribal learning tradition, where a learned language was preserved beside another language.
Borrowing
A loanword proposal needs more than a lookalike sound and meaning. Compare the dates of the forms, geographic route, semantic field and expected sound changes. Consider inherited cognates and chance resemblance. A borrowed alphabet is a separate claim from a borrowed word: Coptic records a later stage of Egyptian in a mainly Greek-derived script.
Parallel versions
The Rosetta decree survives in Egyptian hieroglyphic, Egyptian Demotic and Greek. Its sections document an official multilingual publication practice, but the languages are not necessarily aligned word by word. Compare formulae, titles and audience while preserving each version’s grammar.
Modern-language examples on this page clarify a linguistic pattern. They do not establish unattested sounds or forms for an ancient language. Follow the cited sources below and keep editorial readings separate from the surviving trace.