Vocabulary
The attested Hurrian lexicon is quite homogenous, containing only a small number of loanwords (e.g. tuppi (clay tablet), Mizri (Egypt) both from Akkadian). The relative pronouns iya and iye may be a loan from the Indo-Aryan language of the Mitanni people who had lived in the region before the Hurrians; cf. Sanskrit ya. Conversely, Hurrian gave many loan words to the nearby Akkadian dialects, for example hāpiru (nomad) from the Hurrian hāpiri (nomad). There may also be Hurrian loanwords among the languages of the Caucasus, but this cannot be verified, as there are no written records of Caucasian languages from the time of the Hurrians. The source language of similar sounding words is thus unconfirmable.
Read more about this topic: Hurrian Language
Famous quotes containing the word vocabulary:
“The vocabulary of pleasure depends on the imagery of pain.”
—Marina Warner (b. 1946)
“One forgets words as one forgets names. One’s vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.”
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)
“[T]here is no breaking out of the intentional vocabulary by explaining its members in other terms.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)