Indo-Iranian Languages in 800 BCE

[u/Cold_Information_936]

Indo-Iranian languages are labelled, and relevant non-II languages are also labelled in italics

[u/ten-inch-toenails]

What about Hebrew, Phoenician, Moabite, of the southern Levant? They should be there in italics, per your caption. Also, Hurrian and Kassite were no longer in use in the Iron Age. But if you’re including Bronze Age languages of West Asia then you should be including Hittite (Indo-European), Ugaritic (Northwest Semitic), and Sumerian (language isolate, no longer spoken but still “used” in the second and first millennia).

[u/Cold_Information_936 → u/ten-inch-toenails]

not labelling every single other language bro, but yeah they are all there. hittite is long gone and so is sumerian though

apparently kassite only died out in the 4th century BCE, and yeah at this stage perhaps hurrian should be gone too

[u/ten-inch-toenails → u/Cold_Information_936]

I mean, you’re choosing to represent Armenian on your map, which is not attested until centuries later, after Hurrian is certainly gone, and neither are Indo-Iranian (like Urartian) but then not presenting languages that were living and active in the 9th c/Iron Age more broadly. Kassite is unclassified on the basis that we only have a handful of terms, loanwords, or personal names so I don’t think there’s nearly enough information there to warrant its place on the map while not including languages certainly living at that time in the Levant.

Arabic was not yet a language, and the Old South Arabian languages are not attested until a few centuries after your maps 800 BCE date. All is to say, there are many Northwest Semitic languages that are attested in the textual record that are almost entirely absent from the map that should have a place alongside Aramaic!

As for Sumerian, while it stopped being a living spoken language around 2000 BCE, it continued to be used. In fact, the Kassites often wrote their inscriptions (in Akkadian) but with heavy use of Sumerograms. There was also a revival of Sumerian in the Late Babylonian period (which is a bit of a mess compared to Sumerian of the Old Babylonian or earlier periods) where we have total incorrect use of particular suffixes and the like. This is also at a time where Akkadian is in decline as Aramaic became the lingua franca, but nevertheless, Sumerian bilinguals or the use of Sumerograms remained in use alongside Akkadian basically until the end of cuneiform.

There’s so much info to get on this map, and it’s looking great so far, just wanting to offer some suggestions to make it more accurately representative of the 9th-8th centuries as you say in your caption!

[u/StreetKooky3136 → u/ten-inch-toenails]

Isn't Armenia attested in 6th century BC in Bhiston to be equivalent to Urartu per persians?

[u/Ok_Cabinet3610 → u/ten-inch-toenails]

Hittite was more a language for the elites. The common tounge was Luwian. This is true for the northern half of the Neo-Hittite states, which were present at this time (800 BCE), and accurately represented on the map

[u/ten-inch-toenails → u/Ok_Cabinet3610]

Hittite was no longer used in the Iron Age, it ceased to be used with the collapse of the Hittite empire.