How the Hittite language was deciphered

How the Hittite language was deciphered

Source: The Secret of the Hittites, by C.W. Ceram

[HighlyEntropicMind]

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Also, since this is my video I can see the dislikes, last time I updated this comment it was: 3 dislikes

[Vielenberg]

Fantastic explanation. The most shocking for me was how Hrozny idenfied the "an" as Accusative by noticing it was similar to German Accusative. It was pretty much guessology - but it worked!

[avtaras]

It’s so sad that channels like yours barely get any views :( so informative

[Usumgallu]

Some corrections: NINDA is a Sumerian logogram, not a borrowed word. It's just a sign depicting the idea of "bread" similarly to kanjis in Japanese. Also, the Hittites did not learn the writing from Sumerians, althought the cuneiform script was invented by them. The variant of cuneiform they used came from the Assyrians.

[georgios_]

Greek accusatives also end in -n and Latin ones end in -m. So maybe this similarity also helped. Hittite has many common things with Ancient Greek and Latin

[Kyle-xkrb]

Appreciated this video! Went down a rabbit whole from the ancient city of Tarshish to ancient civilizations and started learning about the Hittite language.

[eh]

I really like how this guy takes time to explains the relevant basic linguistic concepts with economy and clarity for the general public — no talking down, no sensationalism.

In my dialect of English (disparaged as “lazy” and “slang” since long before I first went to school innocently speaking it) the pronunciation of water is written watter and pronounced wattər/wattar (or alternatively with a glottal stop in place of the T). It is more similar to the Hittite word, the way I hear different scholars pronounce it, than any modern version of “water” I’ve heard. Teachers are still ridiculing this “faulty” and “wrong” speech out of children.

[alainjosearnaudbobadilla]

Por favor, más videos sobre el deciframiento del hitita. Este video te quedó muy bien.

[basilisamelencion]

Thanks! You added more concrete research that proves Indo-European linguistics of the ancient was connected to ancient Hittites. In fact, authorities had proven these connection.

[MackerelCat]

Great video, I am also oddly into the Hittites. I’m not sure why I just love to learn about them.

[bernardfinucane]

The S in essen is relatively new. The English T is the older form. And the -n as a marker of the accusative is only in a few declensions in older German forms. So it was pretty much a shot in the dark. The vocabulary was more suggestive.

[janezjonsa]

Excellent! Thank you very much, for this informative upload.

[hans]

Good job! It's necessary to say, that he was the first scientist, who started to think about Hittite language like Indo-european and not like semitic language. That was the key to solve this mystery. However, his ideas were completely refused by the then academic community and the scientists started to take it seriously a little bit later.

Just out of curiosity, the name "Bedřich Hrozný" translated from czech 🇨🇿 to english 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 means "Frederick Horrible." 😃

[ananjakaria]

Top notch content. Highly informative. I learned a great deal about the Hittites.

[yad-thaddag]

Just subscribed to your channel. Physics, history, archeology and linguistics (and science in general) are very interesting subjects imho

[TheMajor]

People doing this work are named linguists, not archaeologists. And Bedrich Hrozny was professor in the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the University of Vienna. He was a semitic phillogist and cuneiform searcher. Czech was then a part of the Austro-Hungartan monarchy.

[alainjosearnaudbobadilla]

Great video. Muchas gracias, me encantó.

[MiksMaTaunOlema]

This is a really cool video, not many go into the tidbits of the decipher, subscribed.

I'm curious how we know what the corresponding sounds to all the symbols are in the first place. I understand that cuneiform came into Hittite from old-assyrian, does that mean it took the same pronunciation for those symbols?

As an example just like Swedish has the same pronounciation for the symbol "a" as the Romans, from whom it was taken originally.

[rifqifawaz]

This video deserves so much more views!!

[HannahHäggAutisticTransWoman]

Funny thing is that nu means now in Swedish as well which is so funny it still so