Are Sumerians Semites?

77 The mortals were indeed the Sumerians, a non-Semitic racial type that conquered southern Babylonia, and the deities were Semitic, taken over by the newly arrived Sumerians from the indigenous Semites.

Why is Sumerian a dead language?

After around 2000 B.C., ancient Sumerian gradually died off as a spoken language in the region. ... The coincidence of the social upheaval, depopulation in the area and the geologic record of drought suggests climate change might have played a role in the loss of the Sumerian language, Konfirst said.