Editing Hittites (section)

==Language==
{{Indo-European topics}}
{{Main|Hittite language|Anatolian hieroglyphs}}
[[File:Hattusa_Bronze_Tablet_Cuneiform.JPG|thumb|upright|left|Bronze tablet from Çorum-Boğazköy dating from 1235 BC, photographed at [[Museum of Anatolian Civilizations]], [[Ankara]]]]
[[File:IndoEuropeanTree.svg|thumb|Indo-European family tree in order of first attestation. [[Hittite language|Hittite]] belongs to the family of Anatolian languages and the oldest written Indo-European language.]]

The Hittite language is recorded fragmentarily from about the 19th century BC (in the [[Kültepe]] texts, see ''[[Išḫara|Ishara]]''). It remained in use until about 1100 BC. Hittite is the best attested member of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family, and the Indo-European language for which the earliest surviving written attestation exists, with isolated Hittite loanwords and numerous personal names appearing in an [[Akkadian language|Old Assyrian]] context from as early as the 20th century BC.{{Citation needed|date=August 2021}}

The language of the Hattusa tablets was eventually deciphered by a Czech linguist, [[Bedřich Hrozný]] (1879–1952), who, on 24 November 1915, announced his results in a lecture at the Near Eastern Society of Berlin. His book about the discovery was printed in [[Leipzig]] in 1917, under the title ''The Language of the Hittites; Its Structure and Its Membership in the Indo-European Linguistic Family''.<ref>Hrozný, Bedřich, ''Die Sprache der Hethiter: ihr Bau und ihre Zugehörigkeit zum indogermanischen Sprachstamm: ein Entzifferungsversuch'' (Leipzig, Germany: J.C. Hinrichs, 1917).</ref> The preface of the book begins with:

:"The present work undertakes to establish the nature and structure of the hitherto mysterious language of the Hittites, and to decipher this language [...] It will be shown that Hittite is in the main an Indo-European language."

The decipherment famously led to the confirmation of the [[laryngeal theory]] in Indo-European linguistics, which had been predicted several decades before. Due to its marked differences in its structure and phonology, some early [[philology|philologists]], most notably [[Warren Cowgill]], had even argued that it should be classified as a sister language to Indo-European languages ([[Indo-Hittite]]), rather than a daughter language. By the end of the Hittite Empire, the Hittite language had become a written language of administration and diplomatic correspondence. The population of most of the Hittite Empire by this time spoke Luwian, another Indo-European language of the Anatolian family that had originated to the west of the Hittite region.<ref name="Hawkins 1986">{{cite journal |last1=Hawkins |first1=David |title=Writing in Anatolia: Imported and Indigenous Systems |journal=World Archaeology |date=Feb 1986 |volume=17 |issue=3 |pages=363–376 |doi=10.1080/00438243.1986.9979976 |jstor=124701 }}</ref>

According to [[Craig Melchert]], the current tendency is to suppose that Proto-Indo-European evolved, and that the "prehistoric speakers" of Anatolian became isolated "from the rest of the PIE speech community, so as not to share in some common innovations."{{sfn|Melchert|p=7}} Hittite, as well as its Anatolian cousins, split off from [[Proto-Indo-European language|Proto-Indo-European]] at an early stage, thereby preserving archaisms that were later lost in the other Indo-European languages.{{sfn|Jasanoff|2003|p=20 with footnote 41}}

In Hittite there are many loanwords, particularly religious vocabulary, from the non-Indo-European [[Hurrian language|Hurrian]] and [[Hattic language|Hattic]] languages. The latter was the language of the Hattians, the local inhabitants of the land of Hatti before being absorbed or displaced by the Hittites. Sacred and magical texts from Hattusa were often written in Hattic, Hurrian, and Luwian, even after Hittite became the norm for other writings.{{Citation needed|date=August 2021}}