Bahasa Urartu atau bahasa Vannik dituturkan oleh penduduk Kerajaan Urartu, terletak di pesisir Danau Van, dekat Kota Van, Turki.[4] Penyebaran bahasa ini tidak diketahui. Beberapa para ahli bahasa percaya bahwa bahasa ini pernah digunakan sepanjang Lembah Zab,[5] yang lain percaya bahwa bahasa ini hanya digunakan oleh kalangan atas, khususnya kelas penguasa kerajaan.[6]
Melalui naskah tertuli, bahasa ini paling awal digunakan pada abad ke-9 SM. Bahasa Urartu tidak lagi ditulis setelah runtuhnya Kerajaan Urartu pada tahun 585 SM, dan mungkin menjadi punah karena keruntuhan itu.[7] Bahasa ini telah lama berhubungan, dan secara bertahap digantikan sepenuhnya, oleh bahasa Proto-Armenia,[8][9][10] meskipun baru pada abad kelima Masehi munculnya naskah tertulis tertua dari bahasa Armenia.[11]
- ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, ed. (2023). "Urartian". Glottolog 4.8. Jena, Jerman: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- ^ "UNESCO Interactive Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger" (dalam bahasa bahasa Inggris, Prancis, Spanyol, Rusia, and Tionghoa). UNESCO. 2011. Diarsipkan dari versi asli tanggal 29 April 2022. Diakses tanggal 26 Juni 2011.
- ^ "UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger" (PDF) (dalam bahasa Inggris). UNESCO. 2010. Diarsipkan dari versi asli (PDF) tanggal 31 Mei 2022. Diakses tanggal 31 Mei 2022.
- ^ People of Ancient Assyria: Their Inscriptions and Correspondence - Page 89 by Jørgen Laessøe
- ^ Wilhelm, Gernot. 2008. Urartian. In Woodard, Roger D. (ed.) The Ancient Languages of Asia Minor. P.105. "Neither its geographical origin can be conclusively determined, nor the area where Urartian was spoken by a majority of the population. It was probably dominant in the mountainous areas along the upper Zab Valley and around Lake Van."
- ^ Zimansky, Paul. "Urartian Material Culture As State Assemblage: An Anomaly in the Archaeology of Empire." Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
No. 299/300, The Archaeology of Empire in Ancient Anatolia (Aug.- Nov., 1995). University of Chicago Press. pp. 103-115.https://www.jstor.org/stable/1357348
- ^ Wilhelm, Gernot. 2008. Urartian. In Woodard, Roger D. (ed.) The Ancient Languages of Asia Minor. P.106: "We do not know when the language became extinct, but it is likely that the collapse of what had survived of the empire until the end of the seventh or the beginning of the sixth century BCE caused the language to disappear."
- ^ Petrosyan, Armen. The Armenian Elements in the Language and Onomastics of Urartu. Aramazd: Armenian Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 2010. (https://www.academia.edu/2939663/The_Armenian_Elements_in_the_Language_and_Onomastics_of_Urartu)
- ^ Encyclopedia of Indo-European culture
. Mallory, J. P., Adams, Douglas Q. London: Fitzroy Dearborn. 1997. hlm. 30. ISBN 978-1884964985. OCLC 37931209. Armenian presence in their historical seats should then be sought at some time before c 600 BC; ... Armenian phonology, for instance, appears to have been greatly affected by Urartian, which may suggest a long period of bilingualism.
- ^ Igor M. Diakonoff. The Pre-history of the Armenian People. 1968. (http://www.attalus.org/armenian/diakph11.htm)
- ^ Clackson, James P. T. 2008. Classical Armenian. In: The languages of Asia Minor (ed. R. D. Woodard). P.125. "The extralinguistic facts relevant to the prehistory of the Armenian people are also obscure. Speakers of Armenian appear to have replaced an earlier population of Urartian speakers (see Ch. 10) in the mountainous region of Eastern Anatolia. The name Armenia first occurs in the Old Persian inscriptions at Bīsotūn dated to c. 520 BCE (but note that the Armenians use the ethnonym hay [plural hayk‘] to refer to themselves). We have no record of the Armenian language before the fifth century CE. The Old Persian, Greek, and Roman sources do mention a number of prominent Armenians by name, but unfortunately the majority of these names are Iranian in origin, for example, Dādrši- (in Darius’ Bīsotūn inscription), Tigranes, and Tiridates. Other names are either Urartian (Haldita- in the Bīsotūn inscription) or obscure and unknown in literate times in Armenia (Araxa- in the Bīsotūn inscription)."