A determinative is an ideogram used to mark classes of words in pictographic languages; example classes include "dead people", "lifting", "things made of wood", and "swords". Determinatives are often, but not always, words of their own. Determinatives never played a role in spoken language, where different vowel sounds would have distinguished words that have the same set of consonants.

Cuneiform

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In Mesopotamian cuneiform texts (mainly of the languages Sumerian, Akkadian and Hittite) nouns are preceded by a Sumerian word acting as a determinative. In transliterations, the determinatives are commonly superscript and written in capitals.

• GIŠ for trees and all things made of wood
• KUR for countries
• URU for cities (but also often succeeding KI)
• LU for people and professions
• LU.MEŠ for ethnicities or multiple people
• LUGAL for kings
• DINGIR for gods
• É for buildings and temples

Egyptian hieroglyphs

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In Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, determinatives came at the end of a word and before any suffixes. Nearly every word — nouns, verbs, and adjectives — features a determinative, some of which become rather specific: "Upper Egyptian barley" or "excreted things".

Determinatives are generally not transcribed, but when they are, they are transcribed by their number in Gardiner's Sign List.

Determinativ