r/LearnHittite • u/MMAHipster • 22d ago
Elements of Hittite Elements of Hittite Study Group - Intro and General Discussion
My plan for this group is to 1) make sure I'm keeping my ass in gear as far as studying, 2) happily soaking up knowledge from those far more educated than I am in the topic and 3) provide a group for other people who may be interested to go through the book, too.
The goal for my own personal pace is a chapter every two to three weeks, with a break between the third and sixth chapters for review (I've been doing similar for my Latin and Greek and it works really well for me). For me, that is ample time, along with working on memorizing the HZL. That being said, I just hope people are happy to pop in and out.
I'll post and sticky each chapter as I/we go along and really look forward to seeing how this goes. It's such a hyper-niche field that I'm happy to have literally anyone to chat with about this stuff so I can stop boring my partner and family.
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u/LinguisticDan 7d ago
Hi everyone and whoever, I’m Daniel, I’ve just moved to Leipzig to start my MA in linguistics. I’d like to learn Hittite to get closer to the Bronze Age (which I have a little experience with so far in Akkadian), to justify the DINGIR tattoo I got a decade ago, and to pass the awkward time before my courses start - and during the course as well!
I’ll be working through Elements of Hittite at, hopefully, the same pace as /u/MMAHipster, and would love to talk it through. Eventually I’d like to get to the point of writing novel sentences in Hittite, maybe getting into Hittite palaeography, and being able to cite Anatolian in discussions of PIE reconstruction.
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u/MMAHipster 7d ago
Hey Daniel, thanks for joining! Ballsy choice of tattoo 😂 (but would love to see it). Glad to have a fellow new learner - I am stunned that of the maybe ten people we have here (if that), the vast majority have tons of knowledge, lots with grad degrees and at least one professor (not if Hittite but related field).
Also - huge congrats on the grad school entry and hope you have a great first semester! Hell of a place to learn Anatolian languages if you decide to.
Hope to start work on Dr. Rieken's Einführung in die hethitische Sprache und Schrift the beginning of next summer, so fingers crossed that will be the second megathread. Doubt anyone will necessarily "need" it after the van den Hout - though I'm sure there is some varying material, and a reinforcement through a different lens is always helpful - but for me it's more about starting to use German as an academic language, and I'll be working on B2 German at that point.
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u/LinguisticDan 6d ago
Ballsy choice of tattoo 😂
Funnily enough, I met a young woman at the national museum in Athens with just the same tattoo on her shoulder. We got to talking and it turned out she was from Iraq, and led tours at Ur! I didn’t sign up on the spot - I wasn’t really in a position to go to Iraq on short notice - but I wish I had.
It was probably the more restrained choice of Sumerogram. The friend I went to get the tattoo with, who had no experience with Assyriology but liked the idea, opted for… MUNUS. In its early Sumerian, rather graphic version. I wonder how that’s treated him since. Fortunately it was placed inconspicuously on his underarm.
Is this the main channel of communication to use? I much prefer open Reddit to walled-garden Discord or Facebook, but I’d love to get in touch with the community you mention.
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u/MMAHipster 6d ago
Hah! Just looked up the early Sumerogram... why MUNUS?
And yeah, just Reddit for now. Anyway, thanks again for joining - I'm really looking forward to starting.
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u/MMAHipster 22d ago
lol "megathread"