| Group | Anatolian (with Luwian & Palaic), Hittite subgroup (with Lydian & Carian) |
| Geography | Eastern Anatolia |
| History | Hittites arrived to Asia Minor approximately in 1900 BC. The Old Hittite Kingdom was founded, but its main population was Hatti, the aboriginal people. After the fall of the New Hittite Kingdom in about 1200 Hittite was assimilated by Semitic Aramaic invaders and Hurritic aborigines. Its descendants partly went further westwards and later inhabited Lydia and Caria. |
| Phonetics | Obviosly did not have a distinction between short and long vowels. A 'centum' language: velar and palatalized stops coincided, labiovelar stops were preserved. Quite an archaic feature was the preservation of the laryngela sound h (harki- 'white' from IE *Harg'-). |
| Nominal Morphology | Possessed a highly developed system of noun declension, with nine cases (the directive case was added to eight Indo-European ones). Nouns were divided into active and inactive genders, with no trace of the feminine, nor of Indo-European *-, *-, *-stems which perhaps did not even exist in Proto-Indo-European when Anatolians moved away from it. Two numbers, no dual at all. |
| Verbal Morphology | Hittite used two series of verbal inflections, usually called mi and hi. |
| Lexicon | A good many of original Indo-European roots, especially terms of land cultivation, family terms, most common verbs. Lengthy contacts with Hurritic and Hatti peoples caused a lot of loanwords to appear in the sphere of religion, social and military life, and nature. |
| Writing | Hittite Cuneiform, inherited from cuneiform systems of the Middle East (Sumerian, Akkadian) |
| Close Contacts | Among Indo-European languages, has strong ties with Greek and Indic
languages, though the Anatolian group is considered to be unique in the
family.
Had long-lasted contacts with Hatti, Hurritic, Aramaic and maybe Sumerian languages. |
| Sample | nu-za kuitman nuwa X-laš ešun,
išmerilaš-za ešun, nu šaušgaš ammel išhaššaraš Mursili ammel attitešhit Muwattalin ammel Y-nan uijat. Hattusili-wa wittuš maninkuwantaš. natta-war-aš huišwannaš. nu-war-an ammuk para pai. And when I was still a child and a groom, Ishtar my mistress sent to Mursili my father through a night dream of Muwattali my brother: "Hattusili's years are short; he will not live. Give him to me". |
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