Ancient Cappadocian language

There are no known extant texts written in Cappadocian, i.e. it is unattested. Thus, it cannot be securely classified. The only positive statement about Cappadocian's affiliation comes from Strabo, who states that it was related to "Cataonian", another unattested language in the neighboring region of Cataonia.^[7] However, Strabo notes that by his time, the people of Cataonia had been completely assimilated into Cappadocian culture, no longer retaining any distinctive language.^[8]

One certain fact about the identity of Cappadocian is that it was distinct from Greek. Gregory of Nyssa, one of the three fourth-century theologians known collectively as the Cappadocian Fathers, cites words for heaven in various languages:^[6]

ἡμεῖς οὐρανὸν τοῦτο λέγομεν, σαμαΐμ ὁ Ἑβραῖος, ὁ Ῥωμαῖος κελούμ, καὶ ἄλλως ὁ Σύρος, ὁ Μῆδος, ὁ Καππαδόκης, ὁ Μαυρούσιος, ὁ Σκύθης, ὁ Θρᾷξ, ὁ Aἰγύπτιος

[We call it ouranós, the Hebrew šamáyim, the Roman caelumcode: lat promoted to code: la , and still otherwise the Syrian, the Mede, the Cappadocian, the Moor, the Scythian, the Thracian, the Egyptian.]

The linguist Mark Janse concludes from this that Cappadocian was not Greek or any of the other languages mentioned, and that it was also unlikely that Cappadocian was a Northwest Semitic language or closely related to Aramaic, since the Cappadocian fathers seem to be unfamiliar with Aramaic. For example, in the quote above, Gregory of Nyssa seems to be unaware that the Aramaic word for heaven, šěmayyâ, was very similar to the Hebrew šamáyim.^[9]

Before the decipherment of Anatolian languages in the twentieth century, some scholars, such as the nineteenth century historian Maximilian Wolfgang Duncker, believed that Cappadocian was a Semitic language. As evidence, they cited classical designations of Cappadocians as Leucosyri 'White Syrians'—as Semitic languages were spoken in the region of Syria—and classical accounts of Cappadocians having a taboo on eating pork and practicing circumcision, which were customs associated with speakers of other Semitic languages.^{[10] [11]} Other nineteenth-century western scholars, such as the orientalist Paul de Lagarde and the historian Eduard Meyer, argued that Cappadocian was an Iranian language within the Indo-European family. This argument was supported by the Kingdom of Cappadocia having rulers with Iranian personal names and using a calendar with Iranian month names.^{[12] [13]}

In 1885, the historian Pavlos Karolidis published a book claiming that some ancient Cappadocian words had been preserved in the modern dialect of Cappadocian Greek spoken in Pharasa, and identified Cappadocian as an Indo-European language most closely related to Phrygian and Armenian.^{[14] [15]} However, his theory was not widely accepted, and many words he identified as ancient Cappadocian were shown to also be present in other varieties of Modern Greek. Karolidis's methodology was criticized as "entirely uncritical" and "no more than guesswork" in a 1916 book by the linguist Richard MacGillivray Dawkins.^[15]

In 1896, the linguist Paul Kretschmer proposed that during antiquity, there had been a single unidentified language family occupying most of Anatolia, citing common elements in place names and personal names. In particular, he identified the elements -nd- and -ss-, which occurred particularly frequently in the regions of Cappadocia, Cataonia, Cilicia, Pamphylia, Pisidia, Lycia, Caria, and Lydia in southern and central Anatolia.^{[16] [17]} For the element -nd-, Kretschmer's examples in Cappadocia include towns such as Soandos and Dasmenda.^[18] Kretschmer's identification of a single major language family in Anatolia was well-received.^[19] It was novel at the time, as previous scholars had tried to divide the languages of Anatolia among the surrounding known language families of Indo-European, Semitic, and the various families of the Caucasus.^[17]

Although Kretschmer's thesis of Anatolian linguistic unity remained accepted, his characterization of the Anatolian family as not Indo-European was shown to be erroneous when Anatolian languages were first deciphered in the early twentieth century.^[20] Hittite was deciphered first in 1917, after the discovery of cuneiform tablets from the second millennium BC, and quickly shown to belong to the Indo-European family.^[21] Then, Anatolian languages in first-millennium-BC inscriptions began to be interpreted, starting with Lycian, which was also shown to be Indo-European. By the middle of the century, the patterns in personal and place names that had earlier been identified in classical Greek sources and first-millennium-BC inscriptions were also found in the Anatolian languages of the second-millennium-BC, and many such elements received Indo-European etymologies.^[20]

According to the linguist and hittitologist Günter Neumann [de ], the uniformity of names in Anatolia is a convincing argument for their linguistic uniformity. Since some languages within this region, such as Lycian, are securely established as belonging to the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European family, it follows that the other, more poorly documented languages in the region—including Cappadocian—were likely also Anatolian.^{[22] [23]}

According to Mark Janse, Cappadocian is likely a descendant or relative of the Luwian language spoken in the Neo-Hittite kingdom of Tabal in the same region.^[24] Janse connects the designation of Cappadocians as Leucosyri 'White Syrians' in Greek sources to the Hittite dominance of Syria during the Bronze Age. As a parallel, Janse points to the Akkadian term māt Ḫatti 'land of the Hittites', which had denoted Cappadocia during the Old Babylonian and Middle Babylonian periods of the second millennium BC, but had also come to denote Syria in the Neo-Babylonian period starting in the first millennium BC.^[25] The linguist Zsolt Simon identifies the region of sura—mentioned in Hieroglyphic Luwian inscriptions—with Cappadocia on the basis of the Greek term.^[26]

Due to the effects of language contact, Cappadocians spoke Greek with a notorious accent.^[40] According to Strabo, Cappadocians were known to "speak Greek like a barbarian".^[24] Lucian, a second-century rhetorician, is said to have said that "it was easier to find white ravens or winged turtles than a decent Cappadocian orator".^[41] The third-century philosopher Philostratus explicitly describes the Cappadocian accent of Pausanias of Caesarea (2nd century AD):^[42]

ἀπήγγειλε παχείᾳ τῇ γλώττῃ καὶ ὡς Καππαδόκαις ξύνηθες, ξυγκρούων μὲν τὰ ξύμφωνα τῶν στοιχείων, συστέλλων δὲ τὰ μηκυνόμενα καὶ μηκύνων τὰ βραχέα

[He delivered his declamations with a heavy accent, as is the way with Cappadocians, making his consonants collide, shortening the long syllables, and lengthening the short ones.]

Although the Greek spoken by Cappadocians was heavily influenced by the Cappadocian language in its phonology and phonetics, there is no evidence for any corresponding interference in the grammar or lexicon of the Cappadocian-influenced Greek in antiquity. There is also no evidence of any Cappadocian influence in the modern variety of Cappadocian Greek.^[42]