Sumerian (𒅴𒂠 EME.G̃IR15 "native tongue") is the language of ancient Sumer and a language isolate which was spoken in southern 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 substantial scale, to syntactic, morphological, and phonological convergence. This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the third millennium BC as a Sprachbund (area of linguistic convergence).