[2] The language, now long extinct, is attested in cuneiform, in records dating from the 17th[3] (Anitta text) to the 13th centuries BC, with isolated Hittite loanwords and numerous personal names appearing in an Old Assyrian context from as early as the 20th century BC, making it the earliest attested use of the Indo-European languages.

It appears that Luwian was the most widely spoken language in the Hittite capital, Hattusa, in the 13th century BC.

[9] Unlike most other Indo-European languages, Hittite does not distinguish between masculine and feminine grammatical gender, and it lacks subjunctive and optative moods as well as aspect.

According to Craig Melchert, the current tendency (as of 2012) is to suppose that Proto-Indo-European evolved and that the "prehistoric speakers" of Anatolian became isolated "from the rest of the PIE speech community, so as not to share in some common innovations".

Sacred and magical texts from Hattusa were often written in Hattic, Hurrian and Luwian even after Hittite had become the norm for other writings.

The predominantly syllabic nature of the script makes it difficult to ascertain the precise phonetic qualities of some of the Hittite sound inventory.

However, there is no agreement over the subject among scholars since some view the series as if they were differenced by length, which a literal interpretation of the cuneiform orthography would suggest.

However, if the distinction were one of voice, agreement between the stops should be expected since the velar and the alveolar plosives are known to be adjacent since that word's "u" represents not a vowel but labialization.

Hittite inflects for nine cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative-locative, ablative, ergative, allative, and instrumental; two numbers: singular, and plural; and two animacy classes: animate (common), and inanimate (neuter).

Early Hittite texts have a vocative case for a few nouns with -u, but it ceased to be productive by the time of the earliest discovered sources and was subsumed by the nominative in most documents.

The examples of pišna- ("man") for animate and pēda- ("place") for inanimate are used here to show the Hittite noun declension's most basic form: The verbal morphology is less complicated than for other early-attested Indo-European languages like Ancient Greek and Vedic.

Hittite syntax shows one noteworthy feature that is typical of Anatolian languages: commonly, the beginning of a sentence or clause is composed of either a sentence-connecting particle or otherwise a fronted or topicalized form, and a "chain" of fixed-order clitics is then appended.

Although he had no bilingual texts, he was able to provide a partial interpretation of the two letters because of the formulaic nature of the diplomatic correspondence of the period.

[21] Knudtzon was definitively shown to have been correct when many tablets written in the familiar Akkadian cuneiform script but in an unknown language were discovered by Hugo Winckler in what is now the village of Boğazköy, Turkey, which was the former site of Hattusa, the capital of the Hittite state.

He focused on the striking similarities in idiosyncratic aspects of the morphology that are unlikely to occur independently by chance or to be borrowed.

After a brief initial delay because of disruption during the First World War, Hrozný's decipherment, tentative grammatical analysis and demonstration of the Indo-European affiliation of Hittite were rapidly accepted and more broadly substantiated by contemporary scholars such as Edgar H. Sturtevant, who authored the first scientifically acceptable Hittite grammar with a chrestomathy and a glossary.

More than 30,000 tablets or fragments have been excavated from the royal archives of the capital of the Hittite Kingdom Hattusa, close to the modern town of Boğazkale or Boğazköy.

While Hattusa has yielded the majority of tablets, other sites where they have been found include: Maşat Höyük, Ortaköy, Kuşaklı or Kayalıpınar in Turkey, Alalakh, Ougarit and Emar in Syria, Amarna in Egypt.

ne-pi-is-za-as-ta DIŠKUR-un-ni a-as-su-us e-es-ta na-as-ta DIŠKUR-un-ni-ma ma-a-an a-as-su-us e-es-ta URUNe-e-sa-as LUGAL-us URUKu-us-sa-ra-as LUGAL-i ... LUGAL URUKu-us-sa-ra URU-az kat-ta pa-an-ga-ri-it ú-e-et nu URUNe-e-sa-an is-pa-an-di na-ak-ki-it da-a-as URUNe-e-sa-as LUGAL-un IṢ-BAT Ù DUMUMEŠ URUNe-e-sa-as i-da-a-lu na-at-ta ku-e-da-ni-ik-ki tak-ki-is-ta an-nu-us at-tu-us i-e-et nu MPi-it-ha-a-na-as at-ta-as-ma-as a-ap-pa-an sa-ni-ya ú-et-ti hu-ul-la-an-za-an hu-ul-la-nu-un DUTU-az ut-ne-e ku-it ku-it-pat a-ra-is nu-us hu-u-ma-an-du-us-pat hu-ul-la-nu-un ka-ru-ú MU-uh-na-as LUGAL URUZa-a-al-pu-wa DSi-ú-sum-mi-in URUNe-e-sa-az URUZa-a-al-pu-wa pe-e-da-as ap-pe-ez-zi-ya-na MA-ni-it-ta-as LUGAL.GAL DSi-ú-sum-mi-in URUZa-a-al-pu-wa-az a-ap-pa URUNe-e-sa pe-e-tah-hu-un MHu-uz-zi-ya-na LUGAL URUZa-a-al-pu-wa hu-su-wa-an-ta-an URUNe-e-sa ú-wa-te-nu-un URUHa-at-tu-sa tak-ki-is-ta sa-an ta-a-la-ah-hu-un ma-a-na-as ap-pe-ez-zi-ya-na ki-is-ta-an-zi-at-ta-at sa-an DHal-ma-su-i-iz Dsi-i-us-mi-is pa-ra-a pa-is sa-an is-pa-an-di na-ak-ki-it da-a-ah-hu-un pe-e-di-is-si-ma ZÀ.AH-LI-an a-ne-e-nu-un ku-is am-me-el a-ap-pa-an LUGAL-us ki-i-sa-ri nu URUHa-at-tu-sa-an a-ap-pa a-sa-a-si na-an ne-pi-sa-as DIŠKUR-as ha-az-zi-e-et-tu Anitta, Son of Pithana, King of Kussara, speak!