Hittite was spoken in Asia Minor and is first recorded in about 1900 BCE. It is preserved on clay tablets found at Boghazköy the ancient capital of the Hittites.

There are somewhat more than 25,000 tablets in this archive. Several languages are found on the tablets. That Hittite belongs to the Indo-European family was first established by Hrozny in 1915. It is usually recognised as belonging to its own branch. The relationship is most obvious in inflection of the noun where the case endings are similar to those in Greek and Latin as shown.

Case Hittite Latin
Nominative -s -s
Accusative -(a)n -em
Genitive -as -is
Dative -i -i
Ablative -ts -tus
Instrumental -it ?

A cuneiform script was introduced by Assyrian merchants from their trading centre in Kanesh. More suitable for writing Semitic languages this script initially obscured the nature of Hittite. Another complication arising from the Assyrian script was the use of Sumerian words to replace native words (Sumerian words were easier to write in the syllabic script). Consequently, some common words were never written phonetically. The Hittite words for woman, sheep, copper and many other every day objects are not known.

It is generally accepted that Hittite and its related Indo-European languages were introduced from either the Balkan region or from the north east.

Speakers of Hittite may have infiltrated from the north east but they were preceded by the speakers of Luwian a closely related Indo-European language used over the south western region of Anatolia. The Balkan region has some support as a source for Luvian speakers because place-names in the Aegean and Greece show Luvian influence. There is no conclusive evidence for either assumption.

Hittite is a modern name based on Hatti, the name of a predecessor population speaking a non-Indo-European language. The Hittites called themselves nes and their language nesili
the Hittite lands