Paper

Bad Hittite, Good Hattian: Linguistic Interference in the Old Hittite Oracle KBo 18.151

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Abstract

The establishment of the Hittite-speaking court in Hattusa in the 17th century BCE must have led to close contact of speakers of Hattian, Luwian, and newly introduced Hittite in and around Hattusa, if not beyond. In such a situation we would expect influence from Hattian on
Hittite beyond borrowed lexemes. However, there is no evidence of Hattian interference with the grammar of Hittite that can be extracted from the documents of the court, our main source of Hittite. Nonetheless, a rare document, the oracle inquiry KBo 18.151, does exhibit such influence from Hattian. As has generally been accepted, this document, dated to Hattusili I’s reign, contains orthographic anomalies pointing to Hattian phonetic interference reflecting the speech of a native speaker of Hattian, perhaps representing the general populace. But there is more interference. The current study reveals how the incorrect use of Hittite case endings is best explained as resulting from pattern imposition of the Hattian case system. The language of KBo 18.151 might thus reflect the type of Hittite that resulted from acquisition of Hittite as a second language. This implies that Old Hittite society was diglossic, with Hittite predominantly as the elite language, while Hattian and possibly Luwian were spoken by the general populace. KBo 18.151 provides an invaluable glimpse into the initial phase of Hittite-Hattian language contact from the perspective of a native Hattian speaker.

Keywords: Hittite, Hattian, Luwian, oracle, Interference, diglossic, Contact

How to Cite:

Goedegebuure, P., (2026) “Bad Hittite, Good Hattian: Linguistic Interference in the Old Hittite Oracle KBo 18.151”, Proceedings of the Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference 35(1): 2, 13-34. doi: https://doi.org/10.5070/J5.62150