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Hieroglyphic Luwian is hlu and Cuneiform Luwian is xlu, see the IANA Language Subtag Registry. But why do these get separate language codes, rather than using script tags?

Egyptian hieroglyphics are egy-Egyp, while hieratic is egy-Egyh and demotic is egy-Egyd. Why not, e.g., luw-Luwh and luw-Luwc, with luw for unspecified or spoken Luwian?

If language codes were old I could imagine this being simply a historical holdover from when these were not recognized as being the same language. But ISO 639-3 dates from 2007.

Any ideas? I figured this is pretty much the only place I could ask about a language like Luwian.

CGreathouse wrote:Hieroglyphic Luwian is hlu and Cuneiform Luwian is xlu, see the IANA Language Subtag Registry. But why do these get separate language codes, rather than using script tags?

Egyptian hieroglyphics are egy-Egyp, while hieratic is egy-Egyh and demotic is egy-Egyd. Why not, e.g., luw-Luwh and luw-Luwc, with luw for unspecified or spoken Luwian?

If language codes were old I could imagine this being simply a historical holdover from when these were not recognized as being the same language. But ISO 639-3 dates from 2007.

Mostly historical reasons and reasons of academic practice - even though both forms have been recognised as forms of the same language, they're studied separately; most monographs and articles you'll see about Luwian deal only with either Hieroglyphic or Cuneiform, not with both. Academically, you either train to read cuneiform, and then study Hittite, Cuneiform Luwian and the other languages of Anatolia that are written in cuneiform (Palaic, Hattic) or you train in Hieroglyphic Luwian additionally and then concentrate on that (I don't think there are many scholars who do hluw and don't have at least a basic training in cuneiform Anatolian).
And until we find tape recordings from ca. 1000 BC, luw could only refer to unspecified Luwian. But as all material we have up to now is in either of the both scripts, the need for a "neutral" tag normally doesn't arise.

Also, the two varieties of Luwian were not always realized to be that. In older literature, Hieroglyphic Luwian was called "Hieroglyphic Hittite", until closer inspection revealed that it was much closer to (Cuneiform) Luwian than to Hittite.

hwhatting wrote:Mostly historical reasons and reasons of academic practice - even though both forms have been recognised as forms of the same language, they're studied separately; most monographs and articles you'll see about Luwian deal only with either Hieroglyphic or Cuneiform, not with both. Academically, you either train to read cuneiform, and then study Hittite, Cuneiform Luwian and the other languages of Anatolia that are written in cuneiform (Palaic, Hattic) or you train in Hieroglyphic Luwian additionally and then concentrate on that (I don't think there are many scholars who do hluw and don't have at least a basic training in cuneiform Anatolian).

Good to know. ZBB never lets me down, even with really obscure questions!

Thanks, hwhatting.

hwhatting wrote:And until we find tape recordings from ca. 1000 BC, luw could only refer to unspecified Luwian. But as all material we have up to now is in either of the both scripts, the need for a "neutral" tag normally doesn't arise.

I put that in there mostly for humor (and I'm glad you caught it). But I could imagine a reconstructed version being spoken, just like Latin. Admittedly, it's a longshot, given what we know about Luwian....