Hattic language


Hattic, or Hattian, was a non-Indo-European agglutinative language spoken by the Hattians in Asia Minor in the 2nd millennium BC. Scholars call the language "Hattic" to distinguish it from Hittite, the Indo-European language of the Hittite Empire. The Hittites referred to the language as hattili, related to the Assyrian and Egyptian designation of an area west of the Euphrates as "Land of the Hatti".
The heartland of the oldest attested language of Anatolia before the arrival of Hittite-speakers, ranged from Hattusa, then called "Hattus", northward to Nerik. Other cities mentioned in Hattic include Tuhumiyara and Tissaruliya. Hittite-speakers conquered Hattus from Kussara to its south in the 18th century BC. They absorbed or replaced the Hattic-speaking ruling class but retained the name Hatti for the region. The name of the inhabitants of that area is likewise identified with the Biblical Heth, from which, in turn, the English word Hittite is derived.

Classification

Certain similarities between Hattic and both Abkhazo-Adyghean and Kartvelian languages have led to proposals by some scholars about the possibility of a linguistic bloc from central Anatolia to the Caucasus. According to Alexey Kassian, there are also possible lexical correspondences between Hattic and Yeniseian languages, as well as with the Burushaski language; for instance, "tongue" is alef in Hattic and alup in Kott, "moon" is kap in Hattic and qīp in Ket, "mountain" is ziš in Hattic and ćhiṣ in Burushaski. Relationship with Kaskian, another non-Indo-European language in Anatolia, has also been proposed.

Corpus

No document has been found in which native Hattic-speakers wrote their own language. Scholars must rely on indirect sources or mentions by their neighbours and successors, the Hittites. Some Hattic words can be found in religious tablets of Hittite priests that date from the 14th and the 13th centuries BC. The passages contained, between the lines of the text signs, the explanation "the priest is now speaking in Hattic".
Roots of Hattic words can also be found in the names of mountains, rivers, cities and gods. Other Hattic words can be found in some mythological texts.
All published Hattic documents are catalogued in the Catalogue des textes hittites. Documents from Hattusa span CTH 725–745. Of these CTH 728, 729, 731, 733, and 736 are Hattic/Hittite bilinguals. CTH 737 is a Hattic incantation for the festival at Nerik. One key, if fragmentary, bilingual is the story of "The Moon God Who Fell from the Sky".

Grammar

Hattic has been claimed to form conventional plurals with a le- prefix: "children" = le-pinu; however, most specialists today consider it to be a possessive pronominal clitic, meaning "his" or "their". It formed a collective plural by attaching the prefix fa-: fa-shaf "gods".

Case

The genitive case was declined with the suffix -n. Some linguists like Polomé and Winter have claimed that the accusative case was marked with es- and give the example of ess-alep "word", but that has been identified by others as a pronominal clitic, meaning "their".

Vocabulary

Some known Hattic words include:
  • alef = "tongue"
  • ashaf = "god"
  • fa-zari = "humankind, population"
  • fel = "house"
  • *findu = "wine"
  • fur = "land"
  • Wurunkatte = "King of the Land", the Hattic war god
  • Wurusemu = Hattic sun goddess
  • Ḫalmašuit = Hattic throne goddess
  • hilamar = "temple"
  • Kašku = the Hattic moon god
  • katte = "king"
  • -nifas = "to sit"
  • pinu = "child"
  • zari = "mortal"
  • -zi = "to put"