The Oghuric, Onoguric or Oguric languages (also known as Bulgar,[The extinct Bulgar, Bulgaric, etc., a Turkic group, should not be confused with the unrelated Indo-European Bulgarian, which is very much alive.] Bulgharic, Bolgar,[ Glottolog] Pre-Proto-Bulgaric or Lir-Turkic and r-Turkic) are a branch of the Turkic languages. The only extant member of the group is the Chuvash language. The first to branch off from the Turkic family, the Oghuric languages show significant divergence from other Turkic languages, which all share a later common ancestor. Languages from this family were spoken in some nomadic tribal confederations, such as those of the Onogurs or Ogurs, Bulgars and Khazars.
History
The Oghuric languages are a distinct group of the
Turkic languages, standing in contrast to Common Turkic. Today they are represented only by
Chuvash language. The only other language which is conclusively proven to be Oghuric is the long-extinct
Bulgar language, while
Khazar language may be a possible relative within the group. The Hunnic language, spoken by the Huns in Europe in the late fourth and fifth centuries AD, is occasionally described as a form of Bulgharic. This association is primarily based on historical rather than linguistic evidence. The few surviving traces of "Hunnic"—such as a small number of personal names and a few common nouns—lack sufficient evidence to draw definitive conclusions and may actually represent a mix of different languages. Oghuric was the lingua franca of the Khazar state.
There is no consensus among linguists on the relation between Oghuric and Common Turkic and several questions remain unsolved:
-
Are they parallel branches of Proto-Turkic () and, if so, which branch is more archaic?
-
Does Oghuric represent Archaic Turkic before phonetic changes in 100–400 AD and was it a separate language?
Fuzuli Bayat dates the separation into Oghur r-dialects and Oghuz z-dialects to the 2nd millennium BC.[ Karadeniz Araştırmaları, Sayı 3 (Güz 2004), s.71-77. Fuzuli Bayat: Oğuz kelimesinin etimolijisi, Page 74.]
Features
The Oghuric languages are also known as "-r Turkic" because the final consonant in certain words is
r, not
z as in Common Turkic. For instance, in the
Oghuz languages, such as Azeri and
Turkish language,
öküz means
ox (
Totem animal). Compare the
Chuvash language wăkăr where the word has maintained the final /r/, and the Kipchak languages, where it is
ögiz.[Gerard Clauson (1972), An Etymological Dictionary of pre-thirteenth-century Turkish, Oxford: Clarendon Press, page: 120.]
Hence the name
Oghur corresponds to
Oghuz "tribe" in Common Turkic.
Other correspondences are :
|
| š | → | l | tâ š "stone" | tâ l "stone" | |
| s | → | š | | | The shift from s to š operates before i, ï, and iV, and Dybo calls the sound change the "Bulgar palatalization". |
| *č | → | ś | | | |
| k/q | → | ğ | | | |
| y | → | j, ś | | | |
| d, δ | → | δ > z (10th cent.) > r (13th cent.) | | | |
| ğd | → | z > r (14th cent.) | | | |
| a | → | ı (after 9th cent.) | | | |
Denis Sinor believed that the differences noted above suggest that the Oghur-speaking tribes could not have originated in territories inhabited by speakers of Mongolic languages, given that Mongolian dialects feature the
-z suffix. Peter Golden, however, has noted that there are many loanwords in Mongolic from Oghuric, such as Mongolic
ikere, Oghuric
*ikir, Hungarian
iker, Common Turkic
*ikiz 'twins', and holds the contradictory view that the Oghur inhabited the borderlands of Mongolia prior to the 5th century.
Oghuric influence on other languages
Hungarian
The Hungarian language has many borrowings from Turkic languages, with phonological characteristics which indicate that they borrowed from a Oghuric source language: Hung.
tenger, Oghur.
*tengir, Comm.
*tengiz 'sea', Hung.
gyűrű, Oghur.
*ǰürük, Comm.
*yüzük 'ring', A number of Hungarian loanwords were borrowed before the 9th century, shown by
sz- (< Oğ.
*ś-) rather than
gy- (< Oğ.
*ǰ-), for example Hung.
szél, Oghur.
*śäl, Chuv.
śil, Comm.
*yel 'wind', Hung.
szűcs 'tailor', Hung.
szőlő 'grapes'.
Mongolian
The Mongolian loanwords of Oghuric origin
include Mon. "ikere" (Oghur. *iker, Chuvash "йĕкĕр", Comm. ekkiz/ikiz), Mon. "biragu" (Oghur. *burǝʷu, Comm. buzagu), Mon. "üker" (Oghur. *hekür, Comm. öküz), Mon. "jer" (Oghur. *jer, Comm. jez). These loanwords were probably borrowed before the 4th century, before the Turkic migrations to West Asia happened.
See also
- Sources
