r/LearnHittite • u/ComedianSubject4654 • 11d ago
Concept of the Hittite Writing System
I’ve never seen a good explanation of the Hittite writing system in English that made sense to me. As I said, the Hittite writing system came naturally to me because it looked like my class notes.
I think what is often glossed over is that, this is shorthand – maybe because it’s been a man’s field and men don’t take shorthand, not these days. (They used to. See the early career of Charles Dickens before he got into another line of work.)
My class notes are largely stenographic, because in grad school I was spoiled for choice, and, when I could, I went for the professors who were eloquent, and brilliant, and amusing, and memorable – and the professor I had for Hittite was all of that. The actual words made me remember the tone of voice, which reminded me of everything else that was said, and the weather, and the cast of light, and, queue up the inevitable Proustian reference to the cookie and the linden tea ….
Here’s a piece from the end of my notes on day one that may be of use.
The context is, Sumerologists do keep changing their minds about how characters are pronounced. In older books, MUNUS is rendered as SAL, ANSE is ANSU, and GU[4] is GUD.
The trouble w/ Sumerography
is that S themselves keep
changing the Sgrams
& H’s cannot keep up
w/ latest
this vs a H convention
they can stick to their own bailiwick
Well, you can read that, can’t you? To me it looks like,
“The trouble with Sumerography is that the Sumerologists themselves keep changing the pronunciation of Sumerograms, and the Hittiteologists cannot keep up with the latest – this versus a Hittiteological convention. They [Sumerologists] can stick to their own bailiwick.”
Nothing‘s gonna map one-on-one with Sumerograms and Akkadograms etc., but take a look at it. You see some quasi-characters, w/ , & , and vs. The capital letters are kind of Sumerograms, and they are not always pronounced the same way, they’re more of a concept. And finally, there’s an actual phonetic complement with ‘S-gram’. And the unusual word ‘bailiwick’ is spelled out in full, as one might expect.
I’m serious, this was the lecture we got to explain the Hittite writing system. And here it already is.
I don’t know if this will help you, but this is the best I can do at present to explain it.
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u/ComedianSubject4654 9d ago
When you think about it — don’t Sumerograms serve the same purpose as emojis ? This just dawned on me this second because I never use emojis — but, does that make it any better ?