Sumerian (𒅴𒂠 EME.G̃IR15 "native tongue") is the language of ancient Sumer, a language isolate which was spoken in northern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). During the 3rd millennium BC, a very intimate cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism. The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian (and vice versa) is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a massive scale, to syntactic, morphological, and phonological convergence.