Talk:Hattic language

Merge suggestion

Hi, Is there anything here that cannot or should not go under Hittite language? Perhaps one name or the other is better, but this page is already encompassed. Any thoughts? --Mashford 13:31, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi Jeorge,

Hatto-Iberian/Hetto-Iberian is not Proto-Iberian. Hetto-Iberians refers only to the hypothetical grouping of Alarodian & Northwest Caucasian languages with Hattic. Georgians do not like the term so much because it excludes South-Caucasian so they use the wider term Proto-Iberian to include all tentatively related languages.

The relationship between Hattic & Northwest Caucasian (Circassian) is quite solid, but the relationship in the Wider Hetto-Iberian family is more controvercial, while its position in Proto-Iberian is something discussed only by linguists from the former Soviet states at present.

Minor correction: J.D. Bengtson, V. Blazhek and others outside the former Soviet Union have discussed this issue too.--Pet'usek 09:39, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Zestauferov 11:51, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

• OK, I have reworded the article slightly to strenghten the connection with NW Caucasian (on your word). IMHO the situation viz the conjectured larger groupings should be discussed in the languages of the Caucasus page.
  Jorge Stolfi 04:51, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Hi Zestauferov

I am intrigued by your description of the relationship between Hattic and NW Caucasian as 'solid'. Although this relationship has been proposed by Meszaros, Ardzinba, Braun, Chirikba, and Ivanov, many specialists have rejected these and suggest that Hattic is not discoverably related to any other family, living or dead. Girbal and Kabeskiri suggest a relationship with Kartvelian. Faehnrich suggests a relationship with East Caucasian. IMO none of these suggestions is solid either. Perhaps you could tell us what systematic correspondences there are which actually point to a relationship with NW Caucasian. Personally I find three things suspicious: a) feminines are formed by adding a -t; b) the unmarked form of the verb is the past tense; and c) the word for 'son', 'child' is 'bin'. IMO, this can only mean one thing: Hattic is Afroasiatic.

Best regards

Well, that may well be due to a long time of Semitic influence. Even suffixes can be borrowed, although it's not that common and widespread. And a single word for "child"...As far as I know, two criteria are necessary to postulate a genetic link: regular/recurrent phonological correspondences + sufficient number of lexical (moreover, it has to be the most basic concepts) and morphological matches.--Pet'usek 09:39, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Ed Robertson

I'd also like to know what the evidence is. I've seen very little of the Hattic language, but I have some expertise in Northwest Caucasian, so I'd be interested to see what characteristics of Hattic are supposed to be NWC. (Nevertheless, I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that it's Afroasiatic based on three small facts. [t] is a very common phoneme, and the word for "child" could be a loan.) thefamouseccles 03:24, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Exactly. That's right, Ed.--Pet'usek 09:39, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi!

I have a book in Polish "Ludy i jezyki starozytnej Anatolii" which contains some information on Hattic. I will put it here just as a dump of information without any decent organization of it. The book has a chapter on Hattians but without specific subchapter on language, just some information scattered with additional references to works by Klinger, Dunaevskaja, Ardzinba, Chirikba, Braun and Taracha.

Hattic can be described as agglutinative, ergative and polisytetic. It is however significantly different than Hurrian.

Words in Hittire believed to be of Hattic origin: tabarna (king), tawananna (queen), tuhkanti (heir to the throne), hapalki (iron).

Other Hattic words: pinu (son), wel (house), wur (country), ashhab (god). (Note that I use "sh" for s with small "v" sign above).

Verb roots can be preceded by up to 6 prefixes in a fixed order: tVsh- indicates prohibition, tV- indicates wish, a- indicates transitivity, an- and ash- subject, ta- and she- locativity, ah- and h- and ha- object. After verb roots follow the suffices, with unclear meaning (except for -em that indicates negation).

There are separate prefixes indicating collectivity (wa-) and plural number (le-).

Possesive prefixes mentioned in the book: u- "your", i- "his", li- "their".

Nominal forms may be formed by reduplication.

That is all I can provide. My translation may be messy (Ia m not linguist), sorry about that.

/Jerzy

Great, Jerzy! Thank you for the information a lot, because there's no information on Hattic available here in the Czech Republic. I'm grateful for any info on Hurrian, Urartian, PWC, PEC and Hatti(c/an). If anybody has any information s/he can share with me, I'll be very very thankful indeed! :-)--Pet'usek 09:39, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

The grammar (agglutinative polysynthetic with up to 6 prefixes, and ergative) does indeed sound West Caucasian ( = Abkhaz-Adyghe), though, as far as I know, Sumerian is also similar. David Marjanović (talk) 19:41, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Çatalhöyük language

Over at Ian Hodder's Çatalhöyük web site, the discussion boards got into the question of what language might have been spoken at Çatalhöyük. Obviously, we don't have anything to go on, so all we have is sheer educated guesswork at best. But some have speculated that it might have been Hattic, or rather the ancestor of Hattic, or else another language in the same family as Hattic. The only basis for this is the fact that Hattic is just the earliest known language of Anatolia. There could easily have been other languages, which we'll never know, which died out unrecorded during the 3,000 years in between the end of population at Çatalhöyük and the attestation of Hattic. The area where Hattic was spoken, say around the easternmost bend of the Halys, was about 250 miles (400 km) to the northeast of Çatalhöyük. Not too far away. For prehistory fans who are into Anatolia, Hattic would be a great language to learn, being the only linguistic link to pre-Indo-European Anatolia, however tenuous. Too bad we know so little about it.

--Johanna

Johanna-Hypatia 19:09, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, it is not sure that Hattians were natives either. If they were however, Çatalhöyük could be a region where the ancestor of Hattic was spoken. Unfortunately, we know near to nothing about Hattic itself. Let's hope there's going to be a rich find of tablets where the language is extensively used. Fkitselis (talk) 13:55, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Nessians from South

I removed from its south in:

"before the arrival of Nesian (ie, "Hittite") speakers from its south"

All early Indo-European migrations are hugely controversial -- any statement like that needs references.

It's not controversial here. The reference is the map.

1. The sites Hattus and Sapinuwa are known, and Hittite records show Nerik to be north of both. Kneshian "Hittite", prior to 1700 BC or so, is recorded at Kanesh in Assyrian records.

2. The Nesili / Hattili distinction derives from speakers of the former conquering and describing speakers of the latter.

-- Zimriel 17:36, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Phonology

Could someone please add a section on phonology and basic grammar. Tibetologist (talk) 20:52, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I will try to add some Hattic grammar when I have time. As for the phonology it is quite controversial... I don't dare to take any side, although I have my own views on Hattic phonology. Fkitselis (talk) 19:42, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Hattic words

• king = katte
• queen = kattah
• child = binu, pinu
• children = lebinu
• god = shapu, washapu (= gods), ashaf, shaf, fa-shaf
• land = fur
• wine = findu?
• sun = eshtan
• moon = kap
• mountain = zish
• year = lish
• bread = fula
• sea = han
• leopard = prash, parash
• to hear, listen = shama
• woman = nimhu/nimhut
• head = kash
• wind = pezil
• stone = pip
• big = te
• house = fel / fael
• lord = tafarna
• lion = takeha
• soldier = aku
• rain = tumil
• I = fa
• wine = karam (< from Semitic karm)
• horse = tarish?
• cheese = witanu
• father = fafaya
• copper = kinawar
• sky = yah
• iron = hapalki
• bird = ashti
• tongue = alef
• to protect = kip
• bright = paru
• leaves = puluku
• to blow on = puşan
• priest = paraya (see father above)
• lady = tawa-nanna
• root = tup
• gate = ştip
• thousand = far
• fear = tafa
• sour = zipina / wet
• to stand = anti
• wind = pezil
• to look = pnu
• mortality = funa
• to devour = puş
• to lie, put = ti
• long = fute
• to fall = zik
• when = anna
• to open = han
• to see = kun
• to come, go = nu
• wide = harki
• heart = şaki
• to eat = tu
• wood = zehar/zihar
• wife = zuwatu
• ground = şahhu/tahhu
• lord = şail/tail
• barber = tahaya
• to pour = tefu
• to take = tuh
• to build = teh
• to step = tuk
• horn = kaiş
• to come (here) = aş
• to be able = lu
• light = leli
• runner = luizzil
• to strew = hel
• to envy = le
• to hide = her
• arm, sleeve = hir
• to seize = hu
• spring, well = uri
• this = ana
• when = anna
• woman = anna
• upwards = akka
• 5 = apa
• earth = araz
• human being = antuh
• ritual functionaries = dudduşhijal
• palace = halentiu
• throne = halmaşşuit / kuşim
• courage = haipinamul
• among, between, through = ha-
• on, to the = ka-
• head = kaş
• witchcraft, sorcery = katakumi
• spy, messenger = kiluh
• soul = kut/kud/psun
• his = le-
• his/her = te-
• from = li-
• good = malhip
• apple = şawat
• district = telipuri
• rain = tumin
• you = un- / wa
• to you = ud-
• we = uş-
• bull, ox = milup
• stones = munamuna
• hammer = pakku
• to you = par-
• eagle = wapah
• thousand = war
• sheep = wazar
• wine = win
• bread = wulasne
• grandson = zintu
• wife = zuwatu

I used "ş" for "sh" sound... These words are Hattic words! (NOT Hittite!)Source: http://www.palaeolexicon.com/ (please click Languages, find Hattic and click Word Index. (I also wrote this on Wiktionary). Böri (talk) 15:05, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I have already added a link pointing to palaeolexicon.com some time ago. Fkitselis (talk) 19:23, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Good. I knew some of these words from the Turkish sources... From the works of Sedat Alp, Ekrem Akurgal and Ali Dinçol. Böri (talk) 08:21, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Ah, do you know if any of Ekrem Akurgals books have been translated into English? When I was in Turkey last year a had a quick look around, but no luck. Hattitology is generally not an English-friendly field :) . Fkitselis (talk) 19:36, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

You can find "Ancient Civilizations and Ruins of Turkey"(Ekrem Akurgal) and "The Hattian and Hittite Civilizations"(Ekrem Akurgal)in English. Böri (talk) 12:17, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Thank you very much!Fkitselis (talk) 17:13, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

After delving through all the etymological connections at Wiktionary, I have come to the conclusion that "findu" means wine (and seems to have been borrowed into Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Semitic on that basis), while "karam" means "dedicated to wine", thus referring to a cupbearer or ladle of that sort. The Semitic words seemingly related to karam mean "vine" of "vineyard" rather than "wine". Thoughts, anyone? Arrecife (talk) 21:12, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

References

Changed spelling from "block" to "bloc"

I've changed the spelling of the word "block" to "bloc" in the following sentence (footnotes removed):

"Certain similarities between Hattic and both Northwest (such as Abkhaz) and South Caucasian (Kartvelian) languages have led to proposals by some scholars about the possibility of a linguistic block, from central Anatolia to the Caucasus."

Please let me know if I did anything wrong.--Thylacine24 (talk) 21:53, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Hi @Thylacine24: your edit is fine. For changes of this scope, you can safely restrict yourself to leave an explanation in the edit summary, which you aptly did. If no one disagrees, you can take it as tacit approval. Unless you want to give additional information about your edit, I'll advise not to duplicate the information in the Talk page. Happy editing! – Austronesier (talk) 22:17, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

@Austronesier: Sorry. I have OCD and sometimes do this for minor things, and I wasn't entirely sure if "block" wasn't the right word in some circles. If you want me to remove this section, then I will.--Thylacine24 (talk) 22:42, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

@Austronesier: And you're welcome for the edit. Normally I don't respond to people who thank me for edits because I don't know how to contact them, but here I did since I'm in a discussion with you at the moment.--Thylacine24 (talk) 22:49, 18 August 2019 (UTC)