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Title: Beginning Hittite by Warren H. Held, William R. Schmalsieg, Janet E. Gertz ISBN: 0-89357-184-9 Publisher: Slavica Publishers Pub. Date: 01 November, 1988 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95

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Average Customer Rating: 2 (4 reviews)

Rating: 2
Summary: Disappointed
Comment: Although the preface states that this book "can be used by the student for self instruction without the aid of any teacher", I found that not to be the case. My hat's off to anyone who could pick up more than a smattering of Hittite from this book alone.

I had hoped for a series of lessons, with vocabulary and exercises. After an introduction to the writing system, the authors launch into a catalogue of declensions ("nominal system", "the pronominal system", "the verbal system", etc.) It looks like a throwback to the phonology - morphology - syntax grammars of the last century.

The only thing that makes this work something more than a dry reference grammar for those who already know some Sumerian and Akkadian is a 40-page or so section of readings in the rear of the book. There are 4 reading selections given in cuneiform, with the transliteration and a literal translation into English underneath. Each selection is then followed by a "real" English translation.

For a true learner's grammar of Hittite, I guess we'll just have to wait. In the last couple of years, we've seen excellent learning aids for ancient languages (Huehnergard's Akkadian, Hayes' Sumerian, Allen's Middle Egyptian, to name a few.)

I'd recommend you wait a little longer for something meant for true beginners. Hopefully, it won't take too long.

Rating: 2
Summary: Try the library
Comment: If you're very lucky you may find the following books by Edgar Sturtevant in a good library: A Hittite Chrestomathy (with George Bechtel) and A Comparative Grammar of the Hittite Language (with E. Adelaide Hahn). The Chrestomathy is an amazing book, intended for beginners, with an excellent treatment of cuneiform. You may also look for his Hittite Glossary. These are all pretty hard to come by these days, but they're better than anything else out there, including the subject of this 2 star rating.

Rating: 2
Summary: Not as good as it could have been
Comment: This book was definitely for beginning Hittite. As a linguist, I was disappointed with how it began its introduction to the Hittite language. The authors gave a decent intro. to grammar, but not to the mechanics of the cuneiform. All of the conjugations and declensions were transliterations, leaving the student with no way to deal with actual Hittite texts. Further, many of the linguistic tidbits that the authors offered amounted to "that's just the way it is." Rarely do such excuses give the only available explanation; in spite of potential evidence that would avoid such sidestepping, the authors did not comment on more concrete theories.

To limn: this book is okay as a beginning, as the barest beginning, but you'll have to spend hundreds of dollars on additional texts and do your own linguistic analyses if you're serious about learning the language.

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Title: Assyrian Grammar: An Elementary Grammar; With Full Syllabary; And Progressive Reading Book of the Assyrian Language, in the Cuneiform Ty by A. H. Sayce ISBN: 1579109659 Publisher: Wipf & Stock Publishers Pub. Date: May, 2002 List Price(USD): $17.00