Subway Hittite is a new blog that will document how I am teaching myself Hittite in the summer of 2013. You may see me on the New York City subway--with a hittite textbook, or looking through flashcards with cuneiform on them and mumbling to myself.
Hittite has a lot in common with Greek and other ancient languages. It's attested in cuneiform on clay tablets from the second millennium B.C. (more specifically, according to my textbook, "30,000 tablets and fragments" from about 1650-1180 B.C.). The books I am using are Theo van den Hout, The Elements of Hittite (2011)1 and Harry Hoffner and Craig H. Melchert, Grammar of the Hittite Language (2008).2 I hope as I go through the books and write this blog to be able to make suggestions about how best to study the bits and pieces of Hittite, and maybe even what they have in common with the old standard, Johannes Friedrich's sonorously titled Hethitisches Elementarbuch (2d ed. 1960). I'm on the way to borrow it from the library right now. Also available, and in my possession, is the 1987 Beginning Hittite by Warren H. Held, Jr., et al., which received negative criticism when it appeared3 and which I don't expect to use much.
Hittite looks like fun, especially because its vocabulary and grammar remind one of other languages that are far better known and attested only much later. Famously, watar in Hittite means "water" (Greek ὕδωρ, "HOO-dor"); van den Hout early introduces the verb išpantḫi, "I make a libation," which is related to the Latin spondeo. But more is to come on all this--first impressions can deceive: My impression that the Hittite antuḫšas, "man," might be related to the Greek ἄνθρωπος (ANT-hropos) was not correct. The etymological dictionaries of Hittite and of Greek (here and here) show there's no good clue to where ἄνθρωπος comes from; the Hittite etymological dictionary finds that antuḫšas is closely related to the Greek ἔνθεος, and probably means (as the Greek word more or less does) filled with some sort of spirit.
1. Reviewed by Ilya Yakubovich, Classical Rev. 63:1 (2013) and by Mark Weeden, Antiquity issue 336 (2012).
2. Reviewed by Zsolt Simon, J. of Near Eastern Studies 71:338 (2012) and by Philomen Probert, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2009.05.49.
3. Norbert Oettinger, Historische Sprachforschung / Historical Linguistics 105: 307 (1992); Gary Beckman, J. of the American Oriental Society 111: 658 (1991); Andrew Garrett, Language 67: 402 (1991).
