Chuvash Languages

In this paper, I argue that three morphological (morphosyntactic) features in Udmurt, Komi, Volga Bulgarian and Chuvash show mutual influence between the Proto-Permic and Volga Bulgarian languages in the Volga-Kama area in the late first millennium CE: First, the formal identity of the Permic accusative and 3sg possessive suffixes which does not have parallels in Uralic but in Turkic. Second, the Volga Bulgarian and Chuvash plural marker-sem, which is unknown from other Turkic languages. Third, the prohibitive particle an in Chuvash, which does not have cognates in Turkic and is loaned from Proto-Permic.

This is such a tiny revision of the work of giants of the field that it really is hard to tell the difference, not worth discussing among gentlemen really.  We propose that possibly this comes from *Won-ogur-dur meaning we would think 'Companions of the On-ogur', which by a curious coincidence would account for the meaning as well as the form.  We also discuss a bit more the ungodly mess that has been made of the question of z ~ r in Turkic, noting that oguz ~ ogur is one of the words (kulawuz ~ kolobVr is another) where r is attested half a millennium before Benzing, Scherner, Doerfer, and Georg allow it--and they of course know better than me.  But do they really know better than Lars Johansson, whose review of Scherner has apparently been ignored, and above all than Markwart 1929 who agrees with me (and the facts) and whom Benzing, for reasons unknown (maybe patriotism as they both from the same part of Germany?) cites specifically as the ultimate authority on all the relevant points while completely contradicting him (and inventing a whole bunch of stuff that as Swift's Houyhnhnms would have said  is not".  Or maybe I am wrong: maybe Chingiz Khan did speak proto-Mongolian, maybe names like Onogur appeared in the 13th century, maybe there was no such language as medieval Polish or modern Czech.  But at least Markwart does say what I say, and Benzing, who was a great scholar and whom other scholars even greater follow, did say we should all listen to Markwart.  So don't shoot the messenger.  It really is not my fault that at a tender age I learned to read and understand simple German.  And of course my etymology is all wrong, in the same way that as we know the word Czechoslovakia consists of the root Cze- (maybe as in Che Guevara) and a string of suffixes.  I also suggest a possible origin of Tengri as a Chuvashic or simply archaic Turkic form with rhotacism.

This is as much as I have managed to more or less (less rather than more) clean up of the perhaps-one-day-to-be-published version of Türkoloji 4.0.  I am sweating blood and bullets over this, and do not know when the rest will be ready to be ... generally ignored and/or attacked by Stefan Georg.  Any help would be appreciated of course.

Bu çalışmada, kökeni tartışmalı Çuvaş Türkçesi пӗҫӗ pĕśĕ “uyluk; kalça, bacak” sözcüğü için iki yeni etimoloji önerisinde bulunulmuştur. Bunlardan biri, Ermenice poçʻik “kuyrukçuk”, diğeri Orta Türkçe biçäk “baldır” sözcüğüne dayanmaktadır. Tartışma sonunda, Ermenice sözcüğün köken olarak daha muhtemel olduğu ve yüzyıllar boyu Kafkasya’da yerleşik bulunan Oğur-Bulgar boyları aracılığıyla Çuvaş Türkçesine ulaştığı sonucuna varılmıştır.

This article is in no way a serious scientific study. This is a more comic publication. Its goal is to show the true complexity of the problem of reading the runiform writing monuments from the territory of Eastern Europe, showing based several examples that with a great desire of the researcher it is possible to select absolutely any language for translation and draw any argument based on the fact that the material studied is unrepresentative, as well as, of course, researcher’s own erudition and fantasy / Данная статья ни в коей мере не является серьезным научным исследованием. Это больше шуточная публикация. Ее цель — продемонстрировать истинную сложность проблемы прочтения памятников рунической письменности с территории Восточной Европы, на нескольких примерах показав, что при большом желании исследователя можно подобрать совершенно любой язык для перевода и притянуть любую аргументацию.

Wilhelm Schott’un 1841 yılındaki keşfiyle Çuvaşçanın Türkçenin bir lehçesi olduğu gerçeği gün yüzüne çıkmıştır. Bu buluşla birlikte Türkoloji çalışmaları Çuvaşça üzerinden farklı bir ivme kazanmış ve Orta çağda Batı Türklüğünün diline dair önemli veriler, günümüzdeki yegâne vârisine de böylece kavuşmuştur. Daha sonraki çalışmalarda Türkçenin diğer dillerle ortaklaşmış olabileceği tipolojik bazı özellikler için ki bir kısmından haberdar bile değiliz, bir kısmına ise malum çekincelerden dolayı belirli bir mesafede durmayı yeğlediğimiz tartışma götürmez
bir gerçektir. Bu çekincelerin önemli bir kısmını paylaşmakla beraber bazı
noktalarda bu tipolojik özelliklere değinmeden herhangi bir mesafe kat etmek söz konusu olmayacak gibi görünmektedir. Buna rağmen söyleneceklerin tarihî Türk lehçeleri sınırları içerisinde kalarak da aydınlığa kavuşturulabileceğinin mümkün olduğunu ifade edebiliriz. İşte bu çalışmada Çuvaşçada izleyebildiğimiz bir özelliğin izlerini Kutadgu Bilig’de bulabileceğimiz inancındayız. Bu çalışmayla Çuvaşçadaki belirtme durumunun -A yönelme ekiyle ifade edilir olması konusuna
eski Türk yazıtları ve Kutadgu Bilig’ten hareketle farklı bir bakış açısı getirilmeye çalışılacaktır.

Zamir çekiminde birden fazla hâl ekinin üst üste gelerek kullanılması, Türkçenin hem tarihî hem de yaşayan bazı lehçelerinde görülen bir özelliktir. Bu özellik, önceki yıllarda yapılan çalışmalarda çeşitli şekilde adlandırılmıştır. Bu isimlerden biri de “katmerli zamir çekimi”dir. Katmerli çekimde kullanılan hâl eklerinden birincisinin sıfır fonksiyonda olduğu, asıl hâl eki görevinin ikinci ekin üzerinde olduğu bilinmektedir. Bu çalışmada, Çuvaşça örneklerden de yararlanılarak Türkçedeki katmerli zamir çekimi üzerinde durulmuş; ayrıca katmerli çekimin niteliği, kullanım özellikleri ve ortaya çıkış sebepleri de incelenmeye çalışılmıştır.

We claim that a series of commonly held beliefs about the Khazars and their languages are based on mistranslations of Hebrew or Arabic, on reading lines of text out of context (as here), arbitrary emendations, arbitrary speculations, and other manifestations of the familiar academic methodology (which seems to be to do the opposite of what is taught in 101 courses and THEN attack other people for doing that).  Here we in particular argue that Hebrew-letter <sbry'l> is not a Hebrew name (there is no such name) but a Turkic title or nicktitle which moreover reflects to a nicety what Muslim texts tell us about the Khazar court ceremonial.  Which among other things mean that the Hebrew text at issue cannot be a medieval forgery, since no one before THIS moment (except for a few people who I showed this to a few months ago) knew any of this, nor did medieval Jews know the Muslim texts or know comparative Turkic (the crucial cognate moreover occurs again in a Muslim Middle Turkic source and nowhere else!).  So not even a time machine would be enough.  In the process we point out that there are three words of Khazar with a medial -z- not one as is constantly uncritically repeated and we ask the reader how many examples -s- there are.  And there is a long footnote about Great Moravia and the names and titles of its rulers.  If you can read elementary Arabic, you can easily see that among other things the Muslim sources confirm the Latin ones about a KING of Moravia, we can figure out names and titles hitherto fantastically misread, and you can even figure out that this polity did extend, even tho those who have said this till now have been ridiculed and dismissed, quite far South.  Pt.II wil present more results about the Khazar titles and things that agree with this picture, and will hopefully put an end (if anybody reads our work) to the arguments about Khazar NOT being a Chuvashic (= Uncommon Turkic) language.  There are no cooking recipes, but I am happy to add those later.

This is a very rough work in progress, again one basically written years ago, where we show that the source for the word at issue has been brutally mistranslated.  Those who take the word to be the West Slavic strawa simply make it mean in Jordanes what it something like what it means in Slavic and then since that is not close enough they change the meaning in Slavic to make it all work out.  The word does not mean 'wake' either in Jordanes or in Slavic.  This of course is merely a replay of a similar comedy of errors that occurred when Grimm tried to make the word Germanic. We document all this in detail, and then briefly suggest that the word MAY come from a language of the Chuvashic/Bulgaric type and in fact one very close to attested Danube Bulgar in having the unusual initial clusters arising from the loss of first and/or second vowels.  Of course, given how little is known about that language and how little is clear about European Hunnic, this is merely a working hypothesis.  We do not discuss but we do not mention the Ligeti-Vovin idea that the Xiong-nu material in Chinese sources is Yeniseyan rather than Turkic and suggest that first of all there needs to be a balanced discussion of this before we can accept it and second (as I think Vovin himself has said) it does not follow that there was not a Turkic language spoken either by the same people or some allied people who we see in Europe under Attila.  Anyway Attilla's father's name is clearly Turkic and so are the names of two of his sons.  A better analysis of the Hunnic names than exists (tho of course inspired by Pritsak, many of his in part contradictory assumptions need to be scuttled) is needed to make more progress.

We propose that this is a Turkic compound that literally translates the Greek name and so means 'reaching the salt(y sea)'.  We also suggest that Proto-Turkic (which everyone accepts had *ia etc. diphthongs) also had *ua, and that this explains the otherwise inexplicable form of the word for 'salt' in Chuvash (tho not in DBg, which has a monophthong here).  The word for 'horse' (perhaps of IE anyway of foreign origin) perhaps had this also (*dwant or *dwand).  Of course, all of this can safely be ignored by those who already know everything about Turkic and about Danube Bulgar.

I offer a possible (I dont feel sure about this but it looks good) etymology of this name as being simple Turkic (of the correct branch, viz. Chuvashic alias Bulgaric, Lir, Shshlir, Uncommon, etc.) for 'little city'.  I also repeat what I keep saying in various places about Khazar as a member of the same branch--and about the etymologies of the 'city' word as well as 'fish' and above all 'Balkan'.  Obviously, it just proves that I have no idea about how Turcology should be done and should leave it to the generals and indeed field marshals and khagans.  Was Clemenceau really wrong then?

This Excel file provides a searchable list of Proto-Turkic most stable basic lexicon (as defined in https://www.academia.edu/23425060/Basic_lexicon_and_its_diachronic_stability_-_A_comparison_of_several_ranked_lists).
It includes all extant reflexes of each proto-form.
Its key sources are Starostin+Dybo+Mudrak's EDAL and a dictionary by A. Dybo (see dedicated sheet for details).
This database is intended as a stepping stone for researchers who want to try and understand the origin of Turkic languages by comparing their basic lexicon against other languages and language families.

Agyagási Klára,  (2019). Chuvash Historical Phonetics. An areal linguistics study. With an Appendix on the Role of Proto-Mari in the History of Chuvash Vocalism. Turcologica 117. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. 333 s.adlı çalışmanın tanıtma yazısıdır.

I offer here my renalysis of the Turkic (clearly Bulgaric alias Uncommon alias Shlir Turkic and almost as clearly Danube Bulgar or if not then another blind Greek of the same name) inscription of which the first cogent analysis was by Thomsen 1917.  I argue that if we make a number of changes, some due to Pritsak and Erdal and others our own, but all based on independently (this is key, INDEPENDENTLY) discovered facts of Turkic (almost all of which were unknown to both Thomsen and me, though for different reasons), we end up with a new reading that is BOTH linguistically much better AND conveys the SAME BASIC sense Thomsen saw AND conveys it much better.  This, I argue can hardly be a coincidence.  Therefore, it likely is the real meaning of the text.

Gerundium, as forms which express the accesorry movements related to the main verb, provide a wide expression ability to Turkish. The mopheme {-mAsĬr} that carries out the negative form relationship to verb in Chuvash, has interesting usages in syntax.  In this study, designations about the structure of gerundium {-mAsĬr}  and its history will be conducted, besides topics such as its usage in syntagm, its contribution to forms developing in the direction of being adverb, being particle and its expansion with comparison suffix {+tArAh} will be evaluated.
Key Words: Gerundium {-mAsĬr}, syntax, ellipsis, being adverb, being particle.

Vowel harmony is typical for the languages of the Volga–Kama area. As
both Turkic and Uralic proto-languages exhibited vowel harmony, we could suggest
that the existence of vowel harmony in the area follows from the historical heritage
and is a mere coincidence. However, we know that at least some of the vowel
harmonies do not originate from the proto-languages, but are new phenomena. In
these cases, we cannot exclude that the development of these new harmonies was
influenced by another language.

Гармония гласных типичная для языков Волго-Камского ареала.
Хотя гармония гласных и в тюрском, и в уральском праязыкам существовала, и
по этому можно думать что существование этого явления языковые наследие и
просто случайность, знаем, что по крайнем мере некоторые типы гармонии
гласных не происходят из праязыков, а новые феномены. В последних случаях
мы не можем исключять, что появление этих гармоний не произошло без
влиянии других языков.

Bu çalışm a Çuvaş yazar Mihail Belov ’un "Asker K arısı" adlı öyküsünün yazıçevrimi, Türkiye Türkçesine çevirisi ve sözlüğünü içermektedir. Öykünün Kiril harfli orijinal metni J. Benzing’in Johannes Gutenberg Üniversitesi, Türkoloji Bölümü’nde okutmuş olduğu Çuvaşça metinlerden seçildiği için Almanca çevirisi de bulunmaktadır. Sözlük bölümü, kullanımı kolaylaştırmak amacıyla, Çuvaşçada çok karşılaşılan
morfofonemik değişmeleri de göstermektedir. Çalışma genel olarak Çuvaşça öğretenlere, Türkoloji öğrencilerine ve özel olarak Çuvaşçaya ilgi duyanlara kullanılabilir malzeme vermeyi amaçlamaktadır.

Elinizdeki kitap, bütün ömrünü Çuvaş halkının aydınlanmasına adamış bir
Çuvaş eğitimcisi olan İvan Yakovlev’in (1848-1930) yüz yetmişinci doğum yıldönümü anısına hazırlanmış olup Çuvaş dili, edebiyatı ve halkbilimi alanlarında kaleme alınmış yazılardan oluşmaktadır.

This is really just a small part of the overall effort to clean up the field of Proto-Bulgarian or Danube Bulgar studies.  The key result here is that we can dispense with Vásáry's assumption of a different source for the Hungarian word than the Slavic one in favor of a slight difference in chronology, the Hungarian form predating the loss of -R- than we find in the Slavic forms.  But really the whole thing is about methodology, much of which needs to be cleaned up too.

Vowel harmony is typical for the languages of the Volga–Kama area. As both Turkic and Uralic proto-languages exhibited vowel harmony, we could suggest that the existence of vowel harmony in the area follows from the historical heritage and is a mere coincidence. However, we know that at least some of the vowel harmonies do not originate from the proto-languages, but are new phenomena. In these cases, we cannot exclude that the development of these new harmonies was influenced by another language.

Гармония гласных типичная для языков Волго-Камского ареала. Хотя гармония гласных и в тюрском, и в уральском праязыкам существовала, и по этому можно думать что существование этого явления языковые наследие и просто случайность, знаем, что по крайнем мере некоторые типы гармонии гласных не происходят из праязыков, а новые феномены. В последних случаях мы не можем исключять, что появление этих гармоний не произошло без влиянии других языков.

Vásáry (2007) has done at least five crucial jobs: (1) calling attention to the title word and its obviously Turkic (and indeed pretty clearly Danube Bulgar) origin, (2) noting the key problem for this etymology, namely, what could have happened to the-r-of the otherwise widely attested Turkic kaburçak/kaburčak/qaburčaq, vel sim., and most important to us (given our ongoing struggle with the appalling standards of scholarship generally) setting a new and higher standard in this (or any field) by (3) politely but firmly reporting on the objectively DISASTROUS state of the WHOLE field of Danube Bulgar studies, 1 (4) showing that nevertheless much is already known, while of course given the state of the field enormously more can EASILY be learned about this crucial language, learned that is (we would add) by precisely the kind of patient and balanced, not to mention calm and polite and scholarly, attitude that he himself demonstrates, not in the least by (5) at least twice indicating that there are different solutions possible to various issues between which it at least is currently difficult (and may in fact forever be impossible) to choose-without this meaning that the overall task is anything but hopeful, productive, and HIGHLY rewarding, not to mention without drawing any hostile conclusions about scholars who happen to have chosen the opposite conclusions to his own.  We try to do the same while arguing that there is no need for a *kavčak vel sim. etymon, and that the form we have can perfectly be from the same etymon as Hungarian koporsó and the widespread Turkic kaburčak.

I would like to share a two-part article of Malov, published in Russia (1882). The author Evfimii A. Malov was archpriest, professor of the Kazan Theological Academy in the department of “anti-Muslim missionary subjects”, who taught Tatar, Arabic and Hebrew languages, author of numerous articles on Islam, church history, history and modern state of missionary work, ethnography of Tatars and Chuvash people.

Éva Kincses-Nagy was born on 6 June 1955 in Hódmezővásárhely (Hungary). After completing her primary and secondary education, she studied Hungarian Language and Literature, History and Altaic Languages (Turkology) at the József Attila University in Szeged. She received her MA degree in 1982. She was invited by the chair of the Department of Altaic Studies, Professor András Róna-Tas, to work on building up the new department at the József Attila University (Szeged). She taught at that university and its legal successors until her retirement. First, she worked as an assistant lecturer, then as a senior lecturer after defending her doctoral dissertation.