How was Hattian different from Hittite and the other Anatolian languages?

Hattian was fundamentally different from Hittite and the other Anatolian languages because it was a non-Indo-European language, whereas Hittite, Luwian, Palaic, and their relatives belonged to the Indo-European family.123

While the Anatolian languages share a common history and grammatical structure—such as specific noun cases and verbal systems—Hattian served as the linguistic substratum in central and northern Anatolia before the arrival of the Indo-European Hittites. Key differences include:43

• Linguistic Classification: Hattian is completely unrelated to the Indo-European Anatolian group.3
• Grammatical Structure: A striking feature of Hattian is its use of agglutination, employing both prefixes and suffixes, and it lacks formal marks to distinguish between nouns and verbs. In contrast, the Anatolian languages are characterized by inherited Indo-European suffixes for case and gender, as well as complex systems of enclitic pronouns and particles.14
• Usage: All extant Hattian material is preserved only as interpolations within Hittite religious texts, such as rituals and myths, whereas Hittite and its sister languages were the primary administrative and spoken languages of the region.123