Bulgar (also known as Bulghar, Bolgar, or Bolghar) is an extinct Oghur

Turkic language The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turkic languag ...

spoken by the

Bulgars The Bulgars (also Bulghars, Bulgari, Bolgars, Bolghars, Bolgari, Proto-Bulgarians) were Turkic semi-nomadic warrior tribes that flourished in the Pontic–Caspian steppe and the Volga region during the 7th century. They became known as noma ...

. The name is derived from the Bulgars, a tribal association that established the Bulgar state known as

Old Great Bulgaria Old Great Bulgaria or Great Bulgaria (Medieval Greek: Παλαιά Μεγάλη Βουλγαρία, ''Palaiá Megálē Voulgaría''), also often known by the Latin names ''Magna Bulgaria'' and ''Patria Onoguria'' (" Onogur land"), was a 7th- ...

in the mid-7th century, giving rise to the Danubian Bulgaria by the 680s.Encyclopædia Britannica Online �
''Bolgar Turkic''
Campbell, George L. ''Compendium of the World's Languages''.

Routledge Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law ...

, 2000
''page 274''
/ref>Marcantonio, Angela. ''The Uralic Language Family: Facts, Myths and Statistics''. Blackwell Publishing Limited, 2002
''page 25''
/ref> While the language was extinct in Danubian Bulgaria (in favour of

Old Church Slavonic Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic () was the first Slavic literary language. Historians credit the 9th-century Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius with standardizing the language and using it in translating the Bible and othe ...

), it persisted in

Volga Bulgaria Volga Bulgaria or Volga–Kama Bulgaria, was a historic Bulgar state that existed between the 7th and 13th centuries around the confluence of the Volga and Kama River, in what is now European Russia. Volga Bulgaria was a multi-ethnic state ...

, eventually giving rise to the modern

Chuvash language Chuvash ( , ; , , ) is a Turkic language spoken in European Russia, primarily in the Chuvash Republic and adjacent areas. It is the only surviving member of the Oghur branch of Turkic languages, one of the two principal branches of the Tur ...

. Other than Chuvash, Bulgar is the only language to be definitively classified as an Oghur Turkic language. The inclusion of other languages such as

Hunnish The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe between the 4th and 6th century AD. According to European tradition, they were first reported living east of the Volga River, in an area that was par ...

Khazar The Khazars ; he, כּוּזָרִים, Kūzārīm; la, Gazari, or ; zh, 突厥曷薩 ; 突厥可薩 ''Tūjué Kěsà'', () were a semi-nomadic Turkic people that in the late 6th-century CE established a major commercial empire coverin ...

and Sabir within Oghur Turkic remains speculative owing to the paucity of historical records. Some scholars suggest

had strong ties with Bulgar and to modern Chuvash and refer to this extended grouping as separate Hunno-Bulgar languages.

Affiliation

Mainstream scholarship places Bulgar among the "Lir" branch of

Turkic languages The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia ( Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turki ...

referred to as Oghur Turkic, Lir-Turkic or, indeed, "Bulgar Turkic", as opposed to the "Shaz"-type of Common Turkic. The "Lir" branch is characterized by sound correspondences such as Oghuric /r/ versus Common Turkic (or Shaz-Turkic) /z/ and Oghuric /l/ versus Common Turkic (Shaz-Turkic) /š/.Johanson, Lars. 1998. "The history of Turkic." In: Johanson, Lars & Éva Agnes Csató (ed.). 1998. ''The Turkic languages''. London: Routledge, pp. 81–125.; Johanson, Lars. 2007. Chuvash. ''Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics''. Oxford: Elsevier. As was stated by

Al-Istakhri Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Farisi al-Istakhri () (also ''Estakhri'', fa, استخری, i.e. from the Iranian city of Istakhr, b. - d. 346 AH/AD 957) was a 10th-century travel-author and geographer who wrote valuable accounts in Arab ...

(Х c. AD), "''The language of the

Khazars The Khazars ; he, כּוּזָרִים, Kūzārīm; la, Gazari, or ; zh, 突厥曷薩 ; 突厥可薩 ''Tūjué Kěsà'', () were a semi-nomadic Turkic people that in the late 6th-century CE established a major commercial empire coverin ...

is different than the language of the Turks and the Persians, nor does a tongue of (any) group of humanity have anything in common with it and the language of the Bulgars is like the language of the Khazars, but the Burtas have another language.''" The only surviving language from this linguistic group is believed to be Chuvash.

Omeljan Pritsak Omeljan Yosypovych Pritsak ( uk, Омелян Йосипович Пріцак; 7 April 1919, Luka, Sambir County, West Ukrainian People's Republic – 29 May 2006, Boston) was the first Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Har ...

in his study "The Hunnic Language of the Attila Clan" (1982) concluded that the language of the Bulgars was from the family of the ''Hunnic languages'', as he calls the Oghur languages. According to the Bulgarian Antoaneta Granberg, "The Hunno-Bulgar language was formed on the northern and western borders of China in the 3rd–5th c. BC." The analysis of the loan-words in Slavonic language shows the presence of direct influences of various language-families: Turkic, Mongolic, Chinese and Iranian.

Bulgarian views

On the other hand, some Bulgarian historians, especially in recent decades, link the Bulgar language to the Iranian language group instead (more specifically, the

Pamir languages The Pamir languages are an areal group of the Eastern Iranian languages, spoken by numerous people in the Pamir Mountains, primarily along the Panj River and its tributaries. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Pamir language family was ...

are frequently mentioned), noting the presence of Iranian words in the modern Bulgarian language. According to

Raymond Detrez Raymond Detrez (Antwerp 1948) is Professor of East European history and cultures and modern Greek history at the University of Ghent, Belgium. Biography He has studied Eastern European languages and history at the University of Ghent (1967–7 ...

, who is a specialist in Bulgarian history and language, such views are based on

anti-Turkish sentiment Anti-Turkish sentiment, also known as Anti-Turkism ( tr, Türk karşıtlığı), or Turkophobia () is hostility, intolerance, or xenophobia against Turkish people, Turkish culture and the Turkish language. The term refers to intolerance, not onl ...

s and the presence of Iranian words in the modern Bulgarian is result of

Ottoman Turkish Ottoman Turkish ( ota, لِسانِ عُثمانى, Lisân-ı Osmânî, ; tr, Osmanlı Türkçesi) was the standardized register of the Turkish language used by the citizens of the Ottoman Empire (14th to 20th centuries CE). It borrowed extens ...

linguistic influence. Indeed, other Bulgarian historians, especially older ones, only point out certain signs of Iranian influence in the Turkic base or indeed support the Turkic theory.

Danubian Bulgar

The language of the Danube Bulgars (or ''Danubian Bulgar'') is recorded in a small number of inscriptions, which are found in

Pliska Pliska ( , cu, Пльсковъ, translit=Plĭskovŭ) was the first capital of the First Bulgarian Empire during the Middle Ages and is now a small town in Shumen Province, on the Ludogorie plateau of the Danubian Plain, 20 km northeast o ...

, the first capital of

First Bulgarian Empire The First Bulgarian Empire ( cu, блъгарьско цѣсарьствиѥ, blagarysko tsesarystviye; bg, Първо българско царство) was a medieval Bulgar- Slavic and later Bulgarian state that existed in Southeastern Eur ...

, and in the rock churches near the village of Murfatlar, in present-day

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...

. Some of these inscriptions are written in the Greek characters, others in the Kuban alphabet which is similar to the

Orkhon script The Old Turkic script (also known as variously Göktürk script, Orkhon script, Orkhon-Yenisey script, Turkic runes) was the alphabet used by the Göktürks and other early Turkic khanates from the 8th to 10th centuries to record the Old Tu ...

. Most of these appear to have been of a private character (oaths, dedications, inscriptions on grave stones) and some were court inventories. Although attempts at decipherment have been made, none of them has gained wide acceptance. These inscriptions in Danubian Bulgar are found along with other, official ones written in

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

; which was used as the official state language of the First Bulgarian Empire until the end of the ninth century, when it was replaced by

( Slavonic). The language of the Danubian Bulgars is also known from a small number of loanwords in the Old Bulgarian language, as well as terms occurring in Bulgar Greek-language inscriptions, contemporary

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

texts,Rance, Phili
"Photios and the Bulgar Language (τῶγα, tuğ)"
''Byzantinoslavica'' 79 (2021) 41–58 and later Slavonic Old Bulgarian texts. Most of these words designate titles and other concepts concerning the affairs of state, including the official 12-year cyclic calendar (as used in the Nominalia of the Bulgarian khans). The language became extinct in Danubian Bulgaria in the ninth century as the Bulgar nobility became gradually Slavicized after the Old Bulgarian tongue was declared as official in 893.

Phonology

Unlike Volga Bulgarian and Chuvash, d'ization is seen in the sounds at the beginning of words.

Talât Tekin Mehmet Talât Tekin (July 16, 1927, Tavşancıl, Dilovası - November 28, 2015, Bodrum) was a Turkish linguist, Turkologist, researcher and writer who made important contributions to Turkology, the study of Old Turkic inscriptions, and Altais ...

argues that this sound corresponds to the initial ''gy'' sound in Hungarian and is pronounced close to it.

Volga Bulgar

The language spoken by the population of Volga Bulgaria is known as ''Volga-Bulgar''. There are a number of surviving inscriptions in Volga-Bulgar, some of which are written with Arabic letters, alongside the continuing use of

. These are all largely decipherable. That language persisted until the 13th or the 14th century. In that region, it may have ultimately given rise to the

, which is most closely related to itClark, Larry. 1998. "Chuvash." In: Johanson, Lars & Éva Agnes Csató (ed.). 1998. ''The Turkic languages''. London: Routledge, p.434 and which is classified as the only surviving member of a separate "

Oghur-Turkic The Oghuric, Onoguric or Oguric languages (also known as Bulgar, Pre-Proto-Bulgaric or Lir-Turkic and r-Turkic) are a branch of the Turkic language family. The only extant member of the group is the Chuvash language. The first to branch off fro ...

" (or Lir-Turkic) branch of the Turkic languages, to which Bulgar is also considered to have belonged (see above).Формирование болгарской (древнечувашской) народности �
''web page''
/ref> Still, the precise position of Chuvash within the Oghur family of languages is a matter of dispute among linguists. Since the comparative material attributable to the extinct members of

Oghuric The Oghuric, Onoguric or Oguric languages (also known as Bulgar, Pre-Proto-Bulgaric or Lir-Turkic and r-Turkic) are a branch of the Turkic language family. The only extant member of the group is the Chuvash language. The first to branch off fr ...

(

and Bulgar) is scant, little is known about any precise interrelation of these languages and it is a matter of dispute whether Chuvash, the only "Lir"-type language with sufficient extant linguistic material, might be the daughter language of any of these or just a sister branch.

Notes

External links

Britannica Online
– The article describes the position of Bulgar and Chuvash in the classification of the Turkic languages. * – A Russian Turkologist's take on Danube Bulgar inscriptions and the Bulgar calendar, in Russian. The article contains a tentative decipherment of inscriptions based on the Turkic hypothesis.

– A Bulgarian archeologist's proposal. The author concedes that the ruling elite of the Bulgars was Turkic-speaking as evidenced by the inscriptions etc., but stipulates that the bulk of the population was Iranian. {{DEFAULTSORT:Bulgar Language Oghur languages Medieval languages Extinct languages of Asia Extinct languages of Europe Turkic languages