The last known Akkadian cuneiform document dates from the first century AD.Neo-Mandaic spoken by the Mandaeans, and Assyrian Neo-Aramaic spoken by the Assyrian people, are two of the few modern Semitic languages that contain some Akkadian vocabulary and grammatical features.Cuneiform was in many ways unsuited to Akkadian: among its flaws was its inability to represent important phonemes in Semitic, including a glottal stop, pharyngeals, and emphatic consonants.In addition, cuneiform was a syllabary writing system—i.e., a consonant plus vowel comprised one writing unit—frequently inappropriate for a Semitic language made up of triconsonantal roots (i.e., three consonants plus any vowels).In contrast to most other Semitic languages, Akkadian has only one non-sibilant fricative: ḫ .Akkadian lost both the glottal and pharyngeal fricatives, which are characteristic of the other Semitic languages.For centuries, Akkadian was the native language in Mesopotamian nations such as Assyria and Babylonia.

However, in Akkadian the script practically became a fully fledged syllabic script, and the original logographic nature of cuneiform became secondary, though logograms for frequent words such as 'god' and 'temple' continued to be used.

This novel word order is due to the influence of the Sumerian substratum, which has an SOV order.

Additionally Akkadian is the only Semitic language to use the prepositions ina and ana (locative case, English in/on/with, and dative-locative case, for/to, respectively).

From the second half of the third millennium BC (c.

2500 BC), texts fully written in Akkadian begin to appear.