Avar language (steppe people)

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The Avar language was the language of the Avars , a steppe people displaced from Central Asia , who also played an important role in East Central Europe as a federation of the Byzantines and Lombards from the middle of the 6th to the beginning of the 9th century . They were called Hephthalites or Warchonites by the Byzantines and Juan Juan by the Chinese . Part of the Avars ruled Pannonia in what is now Hungary for about 250 years .

Very poor language material

Attempts in linguistics to identify the Avar language must be regarded as having failed so far. The reason for this lies primarily in the extremely poor surviving language material of the Avars (essentially some proper names, titles and landscape names), which makes it almost impossible to decide which language family Avar belongs to. It is not even certain whether the Avars spoke only a single language or, possibly as a multiethnic group, used several languages ​​in their domain. A change of language in the course of their historical development cannot be ruled out either.

Even with steppe peoples where relevant language residues are present, the assignment to a language family is difficult, since the traditional words could also largely be loan words from other languages ​​and thus lead astray. (This problem occurs especially with personal names and titles that are often taken from other languages.)

It is understandable that the poor initial situation in researching Avar has led to various hypotheses about the affiliation of this people and their language. All hypotheses must in principle be viewed as speculative on the basis of the available material. (While linguists have clearly admitted such reservations, historians have tended to take their hypotheses as proven facts.)

Mongolian and Turkish hypotheses

The Altaists Paul Pelliot and Karl Heinrich Menges tried to prove that Avar was a Mongolian language. This view was shared by many researchers, but it is problematic because the Mongolian language only became tangible in the 13th century, while Avar was several hundred years older and long since died out in the 13th century.

The Turkologists Zoltán Gombocz , Gyula Németh and Gyula Moravcsik , on the other hand, considered the Avars to be a Turkic people and their language to be Turkish , always with the above-mentioned reservations.

Multilingualism, language change, isolated language?

In the more recent discussion (e.g. Lajos Ligeti ), multilingualism or a change of language among the Avars is generally expected. In addition, Avar - like the Hunnic language , whose problems are similar - could not belong to any known language family, i.e. it could be isolated .

The only contemporary (Byzantine) report on the language of the Avars (by a certain "archon" of the ruler Kuvers ) names four languages ​​spoken under the Avars, namely "their own language" as well as that of the Romans ( Latin or Greek ) , Slavic and Bulgarian , which indeed indicates a multilingual situation at least in the center of power. Some researchers also believe that it is possible that the Avars switched to Slavonic since the 8th century , as they had entered into close alliances with Slavic groups at that time.

Name and title

The traditional names of the Avars (e.g. Targitios , Apsich and Kandich , only about ten in total) can be explained Scythian , " Hunnic ", Mongolian or Chuvash- Turkish. The title " Chagan " is to be interpreted in Turkish or Mongolian. Other rank titles of the later Avars are similar to those of the simultaneous Bulgarian and Khazar titles, their distribution probably goes back to the Turkish Chaganat .

Some runic inscriptions

A dozen bone objects with a runic inscription have been found from Avar graves, the longest inscription is on a needle-barrel from the 8th century (58 characters). According to András Róna-Tas, the writing corresponds to the number of characters on the gold objects of Nagyszentmiklós . These inscriptions do not yet allow conclusions to be drawn about the linguistic affiliation, even if Róna-Tas cautiously suggests a Turkic decipherment. (He describes his experiment as hypothetical.) There is no connection with the Germanic runes.

In general, the use of runic script among the Avars was rather a marginal phenomenon after the current find situation. It was certainly not used in everyday life or in administration, but only in a religious and cultic context. There is also the possibility that the language of the Avar runic inscriptions is not Avar at all, but an older ritual language.

Conclusion

The available language material of the Avar language is too scanty to decide whether to belong to a language family . Neither the Mongolian nor the Turkish language hypothesis is improbable, but neither has been proven. There are also other options: several “Avar” languages, language change , isolated language . The Avar runic inscriptions are marginal and can in no way be understood as a general writing of the Avar language. Rather, they concern a special form of language used for ritual purposes that does not even have to be Avar. Your interpretation as Turkish is hypothetical.

literature

  • Walter Pohl: The Avars. A steppe people in Central Europe 567–822 AD. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2002, 2nd edition. ISBN 3-406-48969-9 .
  • Harald Haarmann: Lexicon of submerged languages. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2002. ISBN 3-406-47596-5 . (more historically oriented, hardly any statements on the linguistic topic)