The Hurrian Language - Isolate, Northeast Caucasian, or Distant Indo-European Connections?

[@lecros6628]

I think most of your viewers would totally dig a video on the Khoi San languages, which if I remember correctly you mentioned to be your primary linguistic field of study. Of course there are the phonologies, but I would love an examination of some grammatical features. Shared in the Sprachbund or just an examination of one or two example languages

[@LearnHittite]

Good call, I'll look into it. Next will probably be Thracian because people asked for it but I wouldn't mind covering KKG for example.

[@rocktapperrobin9372]

What I really like about your videos is that you references for where we can find good information. As to affiliated languages, in my opinion we should accept that most of language history is lost. On evolutionary grounds I would argue that fully developed language has been around as long as our species has existed. It follows that language families have come and gone and very ancient relationships, given that there has to be continuity of speech, cannot be established. There is simply no evidence. Proto Urartian-Hurrian has to come from somewhere but it could derive from a family of languages that don’t now exist. Or it may be related to an extant language. Sometimes we can’t connect the dots

[@LearnHittite]

I agree competely, but I think it is human nature, or at least the nature of many linguists, to try a find those deep connections. As futile as it may be.

[@Yekemcar]

One of modt interesting point is the Hurrian word (" Hil " ) means (to say, to speak). In Kurdish we have word ( Hewal-deh ) a compound verb, by: ▪Hewal-: to say, to speak, to tell ▪-deh: is the root of verb to Do, to done, to make So we say it quotidia in Kurdish: - ji me ra hewal-da (for us tell-did ... told us) - Ka ez ji we ra çîroka Memê Alan hewal-dim (Give me for you count-of Mem-the Alan I do telling ... Let me tell you the count of Mamê Alan). And I see the word ( Hewal-deh, hewl-deh ), as a very obvious an agglutination between Hurrian's root (hewal, hewl) with Indo-European root suffix (-deh). And it's make to remember the historic fact about Hurro-Mittanian Kingdom, where two languages emerged in mixing. To create base foundation to new language later.

[@horoefrin4776]

Till to day as Kurdish peoples we use Horo name in Kurdistan north Syria and in Afrin north Syria we still have ancient town and citadel in the name of King Hori, Hor Khor(means Sun☀️ ,solar Disc) in our native oldest langauges and also in Kurdistan west Iran and North Iraq means Sun . also Hori Khori passed into Christian religion

[@horoefrin4776]

En , Eni till today as Kurdish we use this word which it is Friday's name in our week days name , and as a verb En , Enan means belive , thought

[@LuisAldamiz]

Very interesting. I'm sure there must be many substrate loanwords from Hurrian into Kurdish, even the word Kurd looks like totally derived from Hurr-. Bsically Kurds are Iranized (Medianized, not Persianized) Hurrians, with whatever admixture History always brings by.

[@YouTubeUniversity-ko8ug]

There is no relationship between the Hurrians and the Kurds. The language of the Hurrians is really one of the languages ​​of the North East Caucasus. The Kurds to this day speak a mixture of words from several languages ​​such as Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Armenian, Indian and Urdu. To this day, the Kurds do not have any alphabet of their own. Even the Kurdish folk clothes are not originally Kurdish. For example, the Kurds' trousers are of Greek origin. Their jackets are of French origin. Their red tarbooshes with the soft black tail are of Greek and Armenian origin. Even Kurdish dance is a mixture of Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Indian and Armenian dance.

[@DavidvanDeijk]

Very interesting, that is probably in all dialects of Kurdish?

[@yakonpetzinc7451]

My field of study is the Mayan languages of the Guatemalan Highlands. This presentation of yours is absolutely fascinating and very illustrative of a scientific approach to understanding ancient languages. In the case of living Mayan languages, the problem we face is the lack of an extensive literary corpus. The well-known cosmogonic text, Popol Vuh, was written with Latin characters during the early years of European conquest. Mayan languages are ergative and often rely on a VOS sentence structure. I am particularly interested in agglutinative languages. In our region, we have the living Nahuatl language from Mexican regions, as well as the more ancient and still-being-rescued Nahuat languages of El Salvador and Nicaragua. This exposition is truly valuable. Thanks for sharing.

[@jahanas22]

This is a good presentation. I’ve been studying Hurrian for several years. I haven’t read Woodard but have the others. I’m always interested in gaining new knowledge.

[@LearnHittite]

Yeah I really recommend Woodard's work. Very knowledgeable

[@Nastya_07]

Also, it seems that Bomhard does no longer consider Hurro-Urartian to be related to Indo-European, instead arguing the similarities are due to early contact. Wegner, I., Bomhard, A. R. (2020). An Introduction to the Hurrian Language. p. 15. "In 2010, Arnaud Fournet and Allan R. Bomhard prepared a study in which they tried to demonstrate that there were non-Indo-Aryan Indo-European (grammatical and lexical) elements in Hurrian. Bomhard now (2020) takes these to be the result of prehistoric language contact."

[@LearnHittite]

@@Nastya_07 Thanks for this 👍

[@SporeMurph]

Excellent presentation.

[@LearnHittite]

Thanks very much for the kind words!

[@barbaraoztas3686]

Your explanations are always great and very interesting, thank you for your work

[@LearnHittite]

Glad you like them!

[@christopherellis2663]

I cannot imagine an ergative language requiring the accusative. The " and" reminds ne of the noun phrase marker in Basque (-a)

[@LuisAldamiz]

You're absolutely correct about ergative and accusative being totally incompatible, the absolutive is used instead. Word of Basque... but also by definition: in the ergative logic, the subject of an intransitive sentence and the direct object of a transitive one are the same case always (absolutive), what varies is the subject of the transitive form (ergative). Thus the accusative has no room to exist at all. However I see almost no coincidences with Basque, for example in the case table at 14:10, not a single case suffix (except very arguably the directive singular -da, which may resemble Basque -ra) looks even remotely similar to Basque forms. I also don't see much or any similitudes in the rest of the vocabulary, except the professional suffix -ari, which I mention in my separate comment in the last observation.

[@christopherellis2663]

@@LuisAldamiz Adyghe is even more interesting.

[@LuisAldamiz]

@@christopherellis2663 - In which sense? I never had the heart to deal with NW Caucasian, infamous as it is for its extremely consonantic phonetics, which I've read is the nightmare of much wiser people than myself.

[@Nastya_07]

Kassian has suggested a connection between Hurro-Urartian, Hattic, Burushaski and Yeniseian Source: Kassian, A. (2009-2010). Hattic as a Sino-Caucasian language

[@LearnHittite]

Very interesting, I'll give the text you cited a read

[@maiarostiashvili6489]

As Georgia is small, when I write about Georgia, they think that we must have learned from outside, and in fact they learned from us, everyone's language matches Georgian with a very large vocabulary. They think that the map of the world was as it is now

[@gabirican4813]

Thanks!

[@LearnHittite]

Thank you very much for your support!

[@AutoReport1]

By the Mitanni period Indo-Iranian mercenaries had assumed power in the Hurrian kingdom, so there is a later Indo European overlay.

[@LuisAldamiz]

Very interesting, I would probably also subscribe to a channel called "Learn Hurrian". That area of Mittani, later Media, is the true heartland of West Asia (as the name suggests, both seem to mean "the middle country") and thus potentially holds many linguistic clues to the labyrinth of Neolithic and post-Neolithic Fertile Crescent (and its ancient scatter to Europe, India, etc.) My suspicion, based on very limited number comparisons, is that Hurrrian is not just linked to East Caucasian but that both may well be distantly related to Sumerian as well (which arguably also originated somewhere in that area and then migrated southwards through Mesopotamia). Some other observations: 1. Hur > > Kurd is plausible (although of course Kurdish is Iranic, surely Median-derived, and not anymore Hurrian, it may well retain much Hurrian substrate vocabulary). 2. When the books locate Urartean in "Armenia" they don't mean the modern residual country but rather Historical Armenia, including all NE Turkey. This is more explicit when they say (and you repeat without paying attention) "lake Van". It's well known and generally accepted that Armenian is the result of Phrygians conquering Urartu in the Iron Age. 3. The professional suffix "-ari" (which you treat as two elements but I'll treat as just one) is extremely intriguing. Until now I was aware of it being Latin ("-arius"), which produces Romance and Germanic -er(o/a) endings and the extremely similar Basque -ari, with identical role (but usually different construct words, such as nekazari, literally "effort-er" or "work-er" more loosely but used for farmers in fact). This suffix lacks satisfactory Indoeuropean etymology, while to me the Basque/Vasconic etymology is obvious (ari = continuous tenses' necessary particle, arin = fast, aritu = to hurry up). Thus I had concluded that the Latin element was necessarily a Vasconic substrate loanword, however now that a Hurrian identical element shows up, I can't say for sure anymore.

[@maiarostiashvili6489]

Chechnya and Ingushetia are written here in the comments, I do not rule out that these people are related to the same Hurrites - Tusheti, they are exactly bordered by them.

[@barkos3713]

18:45 would it be thinkable to interpret hill as “tell" like in talk,say and speak. It’s kind a funny because in Turkish ”til/dil” means 👅tongue or language. In German we have a crazy word what is "Dolmetscher” dol/dil+match and means simply who matches tounghes (translator). Hope didn’t get to abstract and you get the idea. Thx and regards 😊

[@LearnHittite]

That interpretation is certainly possible yes. We are quite certain of the meaning of the sign because according to Laroche it occured in an Hurro-Akkadian bilingual text. Til/Dil is also attested in some names and verb forms but its meaning is not fully understood.

[@danielbriggs991]

I'm pretty sure it's the other way around: Tell means hill. Sorry, I had to 😆

[@peterszeug308]

The language is literally nothing like (Proto-)Indoeuropean, except for the suffix -š/-ž in the Ergative Singular in Hurrian which sightly reminds one of the suffix -ş in the Nominative Singular in Gothic or Latin. My hypothesis would be, that PIE and Proto-Urartu-Hurrian either borrowed this presumed Agens marker from some unknown tongue without surviving records, or PIE borrowed the suffix from Proto-Urartu-Hurrian. The singular -s always appeared odd to me, confusing the precise articulation of case & number, but in Hurrian, the -š/-ž does not seem out of place at all, it is very much distinct as would be expected of an Ergative marker for it to function effectively, which of course doesn't necessarily proves or disproves a native, Hurrian origin of the suffix. I doubt that PIE is the original source of the suffix, but to be fair, there were speakers of a very early variant of Indo-Aryan language in Mitanni, living in the exact same area as the Hurrians, though to my knowledge, this Indoeuropean tongue would had already have lost the Ergative-Absolutive alignment of PIE and would have had the classic Nominative-Accusative alignment, which begs the question, for what reason could the Hurrians have adopted only this one feature of the Mitanni-Aryan language, and change the application of it towards a linguistic feature [Ergative suffix], which Hurrian beforehand should have had in the first place?? A common genetic origin of Hurrian and PIE seems totally implausible, as Hurrian is neither similar to PIE, nor one of the, much more likely, distant relatives of PIE. Uralic, Basque, Kartvelian or Afro-Asiatic have, at the utmost, highly superficial parallels to Hurrian, if any at all.

[@LearnHittite]

Some good points here, thanks for sharing.

[@peterszeug308]

@@LearnHittite Thank you very much!

[@jacobersno6955]

Hurrian language was pretty similar to Nohchiy(Chechen) language.

[@horoefrin4776]

En , Eni till today as Kurdish we use this word which it is Friday's name in our week days name , and as a verb En , Enan means belive , thought

[@maiarostiashvili6489]

Bogazkale-This is also a Georgian name, because the Khats were a Georgian people, who were then conquered by the Hittites. I think this is the same Georgian name, Boga Cave is with us and Zkali means water. Tushes can be seen in the name Khatusha, so it is related to Urartu, but it is also related to Khatusha, isn't it? Is Bogazkale an old name?

[@varjovirta3085]

I truly believe that Hurro-Uratian languages have big time connections to some IE-languages like Hittite. It maybe even some kind of para- IE-language branch itself!! Armenian seem to have big time connections to Hurro-Urartian languages which have to be look in to more. Armenian has words common with especially Urartian language.

[@Seyfudin]

I believe in Russia academics determined it to be a relative of Vainakh (Checheno-Ingush).

[@peterszeug308]

Russian linguistics is quite off... just as Turkish linguistics

[@pierreabbat6157]

Has anyone found a Hurrian or Urartian word for "hundred"? Does it sound anything like "haryoor"?

[@A.2.0.2.4-5]

In Armenian Haryur is 100 . Used today. Հարյուր

[@pierreabbat6157]

@@A.2.0.2.4-5 Yes, but is it from Urartian?

[@mareksagrak9527]

@@pierreabbat6157 No, it's not. But there are certainly some words in Armenian borrowed from Urartian, even though they are much less numerous than Parthian loanwords for example.

[@maiarostiashvili6489]

The Hyksos were Shemitic-Hurrians people who are actually Georgian people. The wheel is connected to them, these are Hurrians. Then they became Semites-Hurrians people. Now the Hurrian has disappeared, only the Shemitic has remained in the name.

[@sahhaf1234]

I vote for an urartian video. the next natural stop after the hurrian..

[@maiarostiashvili6489]

Hyksos are the same Georgian people, they are called Tushes. These are the same Hurrites, carpenters, they brought the wheel to Egypt

[@flavio-viana-gomide]

Great.

[@AndreaMastacht-lj4in]

I wonder if this language has enough corpus so that it could be revived some day again...

[@LearnHittite]

You never know, there could be a huge corpus of Hurrian waiting to be unearthed somewhere....

[@AndreaMastacht-lj4in]

​@@LearnHittiteI was wondering what is your opinion about language revival movements, when people want to revive languages like this that have been extinct for already many centuries.

[@mohammedalwakeel1983]

Genetically Uraratians are definitely armenians but Hurrians are in between Armenians and Kurmanji kurds

Genetically Hittites are definitely Turks according to your pseudo historic theory.

[@BlueBird-q8k]

These kurds are crazy 😭🙏

[@maiarostiashvili6489]

Tushrata=Tush people in Georgia 🤗

[@josepheridu3322]

Black Speech, the language invented by Tolkien for Orcs, seems to be superficially based on this language.

[@fatosshubert7272]

Etymology is very new linguistic science, l don’t think it will be any good for comparison.

[@vascoespañol]

Hurrian sounds like Basque from Euskal herria

[@horoefrin4776]

Till to day as Kurdish peoples we use Horo name in Kurdistan north Syria and in Afrin north Syria we still have ancient town and citadel in the name of King Hori, Hor Khor(means Sun☀️ ,solar Disc) in our native oldest langauges and also in Kurdistan west Iran and North Iraq means Sun . also Hori Khori passed into Christian religion

[@LuisAldamiz]

IMO Kurd looks like linearly derived from Hurr- (Hhur(t)-?, I get the "t" from Urartu, which may be just a variant form of Hurr- and convenient for the etymology). Kurdish should have lots of Hurrian substrate, as does Armenian (via Urartean), what varies here is mostly the Indoeuropean superstrate: Iranic (Median) in the Kurdish case and Phrygian in the Armenian case (originally from the Balcans and surely distantly related to Greek).

[@stefano1005]

Proto asiatik is old Armenian

[@KurdishKing-v2e]

These are ancestors of the Kurdish people

[@HozanMzere1063]

Huryan kurdish

[@jaca2899]

So the Hurrians were the Kurds of antiquity

[@LuisAldamiz]

Just as "the Pelasgians were the Greeks", "the Urarteans were the Armenians" and "the Vasconic peoples of Karanovo-Gumelnitsa were the Thracians". Or to put it more modernly just as "the Aztec and Mayas are modern Mexicans": there is clearly a serious substrate element but the dominant layer is something else: Indoeuropean by conquest and then elite domination (also often some significant elite immigration).

[@jaca2899]

@@LuisAldamizI think I only said this comment because of the similarities in the geopolitical situation

[@LuisAldamiz]

@@jaca2899 - You're right in a more fundamental sense however: the Kurds derive from the Hhurs (Hurrians) but only after Indoeuropeanization (first in Mittani by an unsuccessful Indo-Aryan elite, later more clearly by a more successful Median one). It's not just geography and geopolitics, it's direct ancestry.

[@BlueBird-q8k]

​@@LuisAldamiz no the word kurd first used by arabs its come from kurt meaning pastoralist

[@LuisAldamiz]

@@BlueBird-q8k - Corduene (Latin) = Kordyene (Greek) = Beth Qardu (Syriac) = Korduk' (Armenian) = Qardu (Biblical Hebrew) = Carduchoi nation mentioned by Xenophon ... all before Arabs reached the region at all.

[@BlueBird-q8k]

Kurdish nonsense is killing me there is no connection to ie The maybe similarity would be because of presence of indo European speakers in Anatolia from 2000 bc Hittite , proto Armenians and mitani whom elite were of indo Iranian origin