Luwian luwili
Luwian hieroglyph:
Spoken in:	Hittite Empire, Arzawa, Neo-Hittite kingdoms
Region:	Anatolia, Northern Syria
Language extinction:	around 600 BC
Language family:	Indo-European  Anatolian   Luwian
Category (sources):	Inscriptions and names
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	–
ISO 639-3:	either: xlu – Cuneiform Luwian hlu – Hieroglyphic Luwian
Distribution of the Luwian language (after Melchert 2003)

Luwian (sometimes spelled Luvian) is an extinct language of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. Hittites is the conventional English-language term for an ancient people who spoke an Indo-European language and established a kingdom centered in Hattusa Arzawa was the name of a region or kingdom in Western Anatolia, which later to be known as Lydia (Assyrian Luddu, Greek Λυδία in the post- Hittite The states that are called Neo-Hittite, or more recently Syro-Hittite, were Luwian, Aramaic and Phoenician -speaking political entities of Anatolia (Anadolu Ανατολία Anatolía) or Asia minor, comprising most of modern Turkey, is the geographic region bounded by the Black Syria ( سوريّة or) officially the Syrian Arab Republic (Arabic ar الجمهورية العربية السورية According to some definitions an extinct language is a Language which no longer has any speakers, whereas a dead language is a language which is no longer spoken List of language familiesA language family is a group of Languages related by descent from a common ancestor called the Proto-language of that family The Anatolian languages are a group of extinct Indo-European languages which were spoken in Asia Minor, the best attested of them being the Hittite language ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages ISO 639 -3 (ISO 639-32007 is an international standard for Language codes The standard describes three‐letter codes for identifying languages Luwian (sometimes spelled Luvian) is an extinct language of the Anatolian branch of the Hieroglyphic Luwian is a variant of the Luwian language, recorded in official and royal seals and a small number of monumental inscriptions Albanian (sq ''Gjuha shqipe'' ˈɟuha ˈʃcipɛ is an Indo-European language spoken by nearly 6 million peoplewhile others claim that it derives from Daco - The Armenian language (hy հայերեն լեզու hajɛɹɛn lɛzu —, conventional short form) is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian The Baltic languages are a group of related languages belonging to the Indo-European language family and spoken mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic" a branch of the greater Indo-European Language family. The Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European (IE Language family. Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly The Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European family of languages The Indo-Aryan languages (within the context of Indo-European studies also Indic) are a branch of the Indo-European language family The Iranian languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family and its subfamily Indo-Iranian. The Italic subfamily is a member of the Indo-European language family's Centum branch The Slavic languages (also called Slavonic languages) a group of closely related Languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages The Anatolian languages are a group of extinct Indo-European languages which were spoken in Asia Minor, the best attested of them being the Hittite language The Paleo-Balkan languages were the Indo-European languages that were spoken in the Balkans in Ancient times. The Dacian language was spoken by the ancient inhabitants of Dacia. The Phrygian language was the Indo-European language of the Phrygians a people from Thrace who later migrated to Asia Minor. The Thracian language was the Indo-European language spoken in ancient times by the Thracians in South-Eastern Europe Tocharian or Tokharian is one of the branches of the Indo-European language family. } Albanians (Shqiptarët are an Ethnic group and a Nation, in the sense of sharing a common Albanian culture speaking the Albanian language The Armenians (Հայեր Hayer) are a Nation and Ethnic group originating in the Caucasus and in the Armenian Highlands A large The Balts or Baltic peoples (People who live by the Baltic Sea) defined as speakers of one of the Baltic languages, a branch of the Indo-European Modern Celts are those peoples who are speakers of Celtic languages, or who consider themselves or have been considered by others to participate in a Celtic culture This is a list of Germanic peoples. Classical philosophy The Greeks assigned names to populations they considered distinct based on the city-state ( The Greeks ( Greek: Έλληνες) are a Nation and Ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighbouring regions The Iranian people are a collection of Ethnic groups defined along linguistic lines as speaking Iranian languages. Latin European peoples are those who speak Romance languages, descended from Vulgar Latin, spread during the time of the Roman Empire. Anatolia (Anadolu Ανατολία Anatolía) or Asia minor, comprising most of modern Turkey, is the geographic region bounded by the Black The Hittites were an ancient Anatolian people who spoke a language of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family and established Luwian (sometimes spelled Luvian) is an extinct language of the Anatolian branch of the Celts (ˈkɛlts or /ˈsɛlts/, see Names of the Celts Ancient Galatia was an area in the highlands of central Anatolia in modern Turkey. Gaul (Gallia was the Roman name for the region of Western Europe comprising present day northern Italy, France, Belgium, western The Germanic peoples are a historical group of Indo-European -speaking peoples originating in Northern Europe and identified by their use of the Germanic Illyrians has come to refer to a broad ill-defined " Indo-European " group of peoples who inhabited the western Balkans ( Illyria, roughly Ancient peoples of Italy are all those peoples that lived in Italy (including the islands of Sicily and Sardinia) before the Roman domination The Sarmatians, Sarmatae or Sauromatae ( Old Iranian Sarumatah 'archer' Σαρμάτες The Scythians or Scyths (Σκύθες Σκύθοι were an Iranian speaking people of horse-riding Nomadic pastoralists who dominated the Pontic "Thracians" also refers to modern inhabitants of Thrace, regardless of ethnicity The Tocharians were the Tocharian -speaking inhabitants of the Tarim basin, making them the easternmost speakers of an Indo-European language in antiquity Indo-Iranian peoples consist of the Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Dardic and Nuristani peoples that is speakers of Indo-Iranian languages The Indo-Aryan tribes mentioned in the Rigveda are described as semi- Nomadic pastoralists subdivided into temporary settlements ( vish, viś and headed Ancient Iranian peoples who settled Greater Iran in the 2nd millennium BC first appear in Assyrian records in the 9th century BC. The Proto-Indo-Europeans (PIE were the speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language, who likely lived around 4000 BC, during the Copper Age and the The society of the Proto-Indo-Europeans (PIE existed during the Bronze Age (roughly fifth to fourth millennium BC and has been reconstructed The existence of similarities among the deities and religious practices of the Indo-European (IE peoples allows glimpses of a common Proto-Indo-European The question of the homeland ( Urheimat) of the Proto-Indo-European peoples and their Proto-Indo-European language has been a recurring topic in Indo-European The Kurgan hypothesis (also theory or model) is a model of early Indo-European origins, which postulates that the Kurgan culture of the Pontic steppe The Anatolian hypothesis is also called Renfrew's NDT; it proposes that the dispersal ( Discontinuity) of Proto-Indo-Europeans originated in Neolithic The Armenian hypothesis of the Proto-Indo-European Urheimat, based on the Glottalic theory suggests that the Proto-Indo-European language The Out of India theory ( OIT, also called the Indian Urheimat Theory) is the proposition that the Indo-European language family originated in The Paleolithic Continuity Theory (or PCT,Italian La teoria della continuità) is a Hypothesis suggesting that the hypothetical Proto-Indo-European Indo-European studies is a field of Linguistics dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct The Anatolian languages are a group of extinct Indo-European languages which were spoken in Asia Minor, the best attested of them being the Hittite language List of language familiesA language family is a group of Languages related by descent from a common ancestor called the Proto-language of that family Luwian is closely related to Hittite, and was among the languages spoken by population groups in Arzawa, to the west or southwest of the core Hittite area. Hittite or Nesili is the Extinct language once spoken by the Hittites, a people who created an empire centered on ancient Hattusas (modern Arzawa was the name of a region or kingdom in Western Anatolia, which later to be known as Lydia (Assyrian Luddu, Greek Λυδία in the post- Hittite The Hittites were an ancient Anatolian people who spoke a language of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family and established In the oldest texts, eg. the Hittite Code, the Luwian-speaking areas including Arzawa and Kizzuwatna were called Luwia. The Hittite laws have been preserved on a number of Hittite cuneiform tablets found at Hattusa ( CTH 291-292 listing 200 laws Kizzuwatna (or Kizzuwadna) is the name of an ancient Anatolian kingdom in the Second millennium BC. In the post-Hittite era, the region of Arzawa came to be known as Lydia (Assyrian Luddu, Greek Λυδία). Defining Lydia Aside from a legend related by Herodotus, who states that the name Lydia came from king Lydus at the time of the fall of Troy

Luwian is either the direct ancestor of Lycian, or a close relative of the ancestor of Lycian. Lycian (Lycian Trm̃mili) is a modern adjective meaning in this case the inscriptional language of ancient Lycia as well as its presumed spoken counterpart Luwian is also one of the likely candidates for the language spoken by the Trojans, alongside a possible Tyrrhenian language related to Lemnian. Troy ( Greek: grc Τροία Troia, also, Ilion; Latin: Trōia, Īlium, Hittite: Wilusa or Aegean languages are the language groups spoken around the Aegean Sea area prior to and along with Greek. The Lemnian language is a language of the 6th century BC spoken on the island of Lemnos.

From this homeland, Luwian speakers gradually spread through Anatolia and became a contributing factor to the downfall, after circa 1180 BC, of the Hittite Empire, where it was already widely spoken. Hittites is the conventional English-language term for an ancient people who spoke an Indo-European language and established a kingdom centered in Hattusa Luwian was also the language spoken in the Neo-Hittite states of Syria, such as Milid and Carchemish, as well as in the central Anatolian kingdom of Tabal that flourished around 900 BC. The states that are called Neo-Hittite, or more recently Syro-Hittite, were Luwian, Aramaic and Phoenician -speaking political entities of Syria ( سوريّة or) officially the Syrian Arab Republic (Arabic ar الجمهورية العربية السورية Melid (modern Arslantepe, near Malatya, Turkey) was a Hittite city at the Tohma River, the ancient name of a tributary Carchemish (called Europus by the Greco-Romans) was an important ancient city of the Mitanni and Hittite empires now on the frontier between Tabal (Bib Tubal, Gk Τιβαρηνοί Tibarenoi, Lat Tibareni, Thobeles in Josephus was a Luwian speaking Neo-Hittite

Luwian has been preserved in two forms, named after the writing systems used to represent them: Cuneiform Luwian, and Hieroglyphic Luwian.

Cuneiform Luwian

Cuneiform Luwian is the form of the Luwian language attested in the tablet archives of Hattusa; it is essentially the same cuneiform writing system used in Hittite. Hattusa (URU Ḫa-at-tu-ša 𒌷𒄩𒀜𒌅𒊭 Unicode cuneiform article to display these cuneiform characters--> Hittite or Nesili is the Extinct language once spoken by the Hittites, a people who created an empire centered on ancient Hattusas (modern In Laroche's Catalog of Hittite Texts, its corpus runs from CTH 757-773, mostly comprising rituals.

Hieroglyphic Luwian

Main article: Hieroglyphic Luwian

Hieroglyphic Luwian is a form of Luwian written in a native script, known as Anatolian hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphic Luwian is a variant of the Luwian language, recorded in official and royal seals and a small number of monumental inscriptions Anatolian hieroglyphs are an indigenous Logographic script native to central Anatolia, consisting of some 500 signs ^[1][2] Once thought to be a variety of the Hittite language, "Hieroglyphic Hittite" was formerly used to refer to the language of the same inscriptions, but this term is now obsolete. Hittite or Nesili is the Extinct language once spoken by the Hittites, a people who created an empire centered on ancient Hattusas (modern The first report of a monumental inscription dates to 1850, when an inhabitant of Nevşehir reported the relief at Fratkin. Nevşehir, formerly Muşkara, ancient Nyssa, is a city and the capital district of Nevşehir Province in the Central Anatolia In 1870, antiquarian travellers in Aleppo found another inscription built into the south wall of the el-Qiqan Mosque. For other meanings see Aleppo (disambiguation. Halab redirects here for other meanings see Halab (disambiguation. In 1884 Polish scholar Maryan Sokolowski discovered an inscription near Köylütolu, western Turkey. Turkey (Türkiye known officially as the Republic of Turkey ( is a Eurasian Country that stretches The largest known inscription was excavated in 1970 in Yalburt, northwest of Konya. Konya ( قونیه; also Koniah, Konieh, Konia, and Qunia; historically also known as Iconium ( Latin Luwian in its hieroglyphic stage could have been influenced from Hittite and perhaps also Greek, which had spread to Late Minoan II Crete by the 15th century BC. Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly

Relationship to preceding languages

Luwian has numerous archaisms, and so is important both to Indo-European linguists and to students of the Bronze Age Aegean.

Craig Melchert in Studies in Memory of Warren Cowgill (1987; pp 182–204) used Luwian to propose that the Proto-Indo-European language had three distinct sets of velar consonants:

• plain velars
• palatovelars
• labiovelars

For Melchert, PIE *ḱ > Luwian z (probably [ts]); *k > k; and *kʷ > ku (probably [kʷ]). H Craig Melchert is a linguist known particularly for his work on the Anatolian branch of Indo-European. The term labiovelar is ambiguous It may mean labial-velar (a Consonant made at two places of articulation, one at the lips and the other at the soft

Luwian has also been enlisted for its verb kaluti, which means "turn" or "circle". Many linguists claim that this derives from a proto-Anatolian word for "wheel", which in turn would have derived from the common word for "wheel" found in all other Indo-European families. A wheel is a circular device that is capable of rotating on its axis facilitating movement or transportation whilst supporting a load ( Mass) or performing labour in machines The wheel was invented in the 5th millennium BCE and, if kaluti does derive from it, then the Anatolian branch left PIE after its invention (so validating the Kurgan hypothesis as applicable to Anatolian). The Kurgan hypothesis (also theory or model) is a model of early Indo-European origins, which postulates that the Kurgan culture of the Pontic steppe However kaluti need not imply a concrete wheel, and so need not have derived from a PIE word with that meaning. The IE words for a wheel may well have arisen in those other IE languages after the Anatolian split.

Non-Indo-European survivals in Luwian

In addition, Luwian and its descendants in general reflect survivals of a non-Indo-European type in western Anatolia. Where Hittite, with some Hieroglyphic Luwian and Palaic texts, allow for the classically Indo-European suffix -as for the singular genitive and -an for the plural genitive, the "canonical" Luwian as used in cuneiform (with some Palaic rituals) employed instead an adjectival suffix -assa. Palaic is an extinct Indo-European language attested in Cuneiform tablets in Bronze Age Hattusa. Given the prevalence of -assa place-names and words scattered around all sides of the Aegean Sea, this suffix is considered evidence of a shared non-Indo-European language or at the very least an Aegean Sprachbund preceding the arrivals of Luwians and Greeks. Etymology In ancient times there were various explanations for the name Aegean. A Sprachbund (ˈʃpraːxbʊnt in German plural Sprachbünde) from the German word for “language union” also known as a linguistic area, convergence The Greeks ( Greek: Έλληνες) are a Nation and Ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighbouring regions This feature of Cuneiform Luwian may have been a deliberate archaism, to emphasise their roots in that land; or else the Luwians may have genuinely forgotten the Indo-European genitive only to pick it up later for Hieroglyphic Luwian.

Notes

References

Stele of Sultanhan
Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara, Turkey

• Laroche, Emmanuel. Catalogue des textes hittites 1991.
• Melchert, H. Craig. "PIE velars in Luvian. " In Studies in memory of Warren Cowgill (1929–1985): Papers from the Fourth East Coast Indo-European Conference, Cornell University, June 6–9, 1985, ed. Warren Cowgill (1929 — 1985 / ˡkowgɪl/ was a professor of linguistics at Yale University and the Encyclopædia Britannica ’s authority on Indo-European C. Watkins, 182–204. Calvert Watkins is a Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and the Classics at Harvard University and professor-in-residence at UCLA. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1987. Berlin is the capital city and one of sixteen states of Germany. Year 1987 ( MCMLXXXVII) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link displays 1987 Gregorian calendar)
• Melchert, H. Craig. Anatolian Historical Phonology. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994. Year 1994 ( MCMXCIV) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link will display full 1994 Gregorian calendar)
• Melchert, H. Craig (ed). The Luwians. Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2003. Year 2003 ( MMIII) was a Common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ISBN 90-04-13009-8.
• Otten, Heinrich. Zur grammatikalischen und lexikalischen Bestimmung des Luvischen. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1953. Year 1953 ( MCMLIII) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar.
• Rosenkranz, Bernhard. Beiträge zur Erforschung des Luvischen. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1952. Year 1952 ( MCMLII) was a Leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar.
• Starke, Frank. Die keilschrift-luwischen Texte in Umschrift (StBoT 30, 1985)
• Starke, Frank. Luwian (sometimes spelled Luvian) is an extinct language of the Anatolian branch of the Studien zu den Bogazkoy -Texten (abbreviated StBoT) edited by the German Akademie der Wissenschaften und Literatur, Mainz, since 1965 Year 1985 ( MCMLXXXV) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link displays 1985 Gregorian calendar) Untersuchungen zur Stammbildung des keilschrift-luwischen Nomens (StBoT 30, 1990)
• Woudhuizen, Fred. Studien zu den Bogazkoy -Texten (abbreviated StBoT) edited by the German Akademie der Wissenschaften und Literatur, Mainz, since 1965 Year 1990 ( MCMXC) was a Common year starting on Monday (link displays the 1990 Gregorian calendar) The Language of the Sea Peoples. Amsterdam: Najade Pres, 1992. Year 1992 ( MCMXCII) was a Leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display full 1992 Gregorian calendar)

External links

• Arzawa, to the west, throws light on Hittites
• Alekseev Manuscript
• Hieroglyphic Luwian Phonetic Signs
• Catalog of Hittite Texts: TEXTS IN OTHER LANGUAGES
• Genitive Case and Possessive Adjective in Anatolian