Bolgarian language

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Bolgarian
Period until the 14th century

Formerly spoken in

first in the steppe north and northeast of the Black Sea, later south of the lower Danube and on the central Volga
Linguistic
classification
Language codes
ISO 639-3

xbo

The bolgarische or proto Bulgarian language was the language of proto-Bulgarians . It is believed that Bolgarisch the language of at least the leading layer of the bulk Bulgarian State was the 6th and 7th Century and then passed through migration on the one hand in the Danube region and the Balkan, on the other hand to the middle Volga, where they are in Volga Bulgaria received .

However, no direct language certificates have survived from the time of the Greater Bulgarian Empire. Most of the testimonies for the language of the Danube Bulgarians are disputed in terms of their interpretation, only for the language of the Volga Bulgarians from a considerably later period (the 13th / 14th centuries) there is a sufficient number of language certificates whose interpretation is generally accepted.

Due to these late Volga Bulgarian language certificates and a limited part of the language certificates of the Danube Bulgarians, Bolgarian is assigned to the Oghur branch of the Turkic languages , to which Chuvash belongs as the only language still spoken today .

To what extent other forms of language were used by the Proto-Bulgarians in addition to the language that was partially reconstructed in this way, and if so which, cannot be conclusively clarified on the basis of the existing sources.

Remnants of language and language of the Danube Bulgarians

The Danube Bulgarians, i.e. those proto- Bulgarians who founded the First Bulgarian Empire in the Balkans under Asparuch's leadership , left a large number of inscriptions, especially in the northeast of today's Bulgaria , but also in other parts of their empire. These so-called Proto - Bulgarian inscriptions , however, are mostly written in Greek and therefore only sources for Proto-Bulgarian names, titles and individual further words. There are two inscriptions, which are probably written in Greek script in proto-Bulgarian language, but their reading and interpretation is controversial.

In addition, there are inscriptions in the native Bolgarian script , which are usually attributed to the Proto-Bulgarians . These inscriptions usually only consist of individual characters or groups of characters (words?); Entire texts have only been found in Murfatlar in northern Dobruja , but they have not yet been deciphered in a generally accepted form.

The proto-Bulgarian chronological expressions in the so-called Bulgarian list of princes , which have been handed down in Slavonic in three manuscripts from a Russian compilation known as Ellinskij letopisec, are further evidence of the language of the Danube Bulgarians, but are undoubtedly of Bulgarian origin. Although there is no agreement on the details of the calendar system behind it, the two-word expressions are generally interpreted as a combination of an animal name, which is part of a twelve-animal cycle common in China and among many Central Asian peoples , and an ordinal number. The fact that these word combinations are actually dating in the Proto-Bulgarian language results from a building inscription written in Greek by the Bulgarian ruler Omurtag , which was found near the town of Čatalar (Car Krumovo). This is explicitly dated twice at the end, once in Greek with a date according to the Byzantine calendar and once in Bulgarian with a phrase that appears in almost the same form in the Bulgarian list of princes.

A linguistic classification of the language of the Danube Bulgarians is not possible solely on the basis of the personal names and titles obtained in proto-Bulgarian inscriptions, in the Bulgarian list of princes or indirectly in reports of foreign origin. In addition to the Turkish language, these definitely also contain elements of Iranian origin. However, the animal names and ordinal numbers contained in the chronological expressions of the Bulgarian list of princes indicate a relationship between the underlying language and the language of the Volga Bulgarian inscriptions and modern Chuvash.

In Bulgaria , the proto-Bulgarian language probably died out in the 12th century at the latest and was replaced by the language of the Slavic majority of the population. The language change, however, is likely to have started much earlier, as the Slavic Old Bulgarian had already become the language of the church and public life at the end of the 9th century under Tsar Simeon .

Loan words from Danube Bulgarian have been preserved in the Slavic language forms that have taken its place and are documented in both Old Bulgarian and today's Bulgarian , e.g. B. urva (Bulgarian урва - abyss / steep slope), tojaga (Bulgarian тояга - stick / stick, Turkish değnek ), korem (Bulgarian корем - belly, Turkish karın ), kon (Bulgarian кон - horse) etc.

Volga-Bulgarian

The Volga Bulgaria have in the 10th century with the adoption of Islam and the Arabic script adopted. From the time from the 10th century to the Mongolian conquest of their territory in the 13th century, however, no indigenous documents have survived.

Volgabolgaric is only preserved in the so-called Volgabolgarian grave inscriptions from the 13th / 14th centuries. Century, which are written in Arabic script and contain a mixture of Arabic formulas and Volgabolgarian words. On this basis, Volga Bulgarian can be assigned to the same branch of the Turkic languages ​​as modern Chuvash.

The language adopted some words from Kipchak .

After the incorporation of the area of ​​the Volga Bulgarians into the Ulus Jochi (the so-called Golden Horde ), the Volga Bulgarian was displaced in a large part of the population by Kipchak varieties, from which today's Tatar was derived.

Modern Chuvash is a continuation of the Volga Bulgarian language . This has probably been preserved in a non-Islamized fringe area of ​​the Volga Bulgarian Empire, whose population originally spoke varieties of the Finno-Ugric branch of Finno-Ugric , but then adopted the language of the Volga Bulgarians.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter B. Golden: An introduction to the history of the Turkic peoples: ethnogenesis and state-formation in medieval and early modern Eurasia and the Middle East . Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1992. (Turcologica; 9), pp. 95-97.
  2. ↑ Veselin Beševliev (ed.): The proto-Bulgarian inscriptions . Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1963. (Byzantine works in Berlin; 23); Veselin Beševliev: The Proto-Bulgarian Period of Bulgarian History . Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1981, pp. 438-458.
  3. ↑ Veselin Beševliev (ed.): The proto-Bulgarian inscriptions , pp. 238–244 (No. 52, 53); Veselin Beševliev: The Proto-Bulgarian Period in Bulgarian History , pp. 315–316, 455.
  4. ↑ Veselin Beševliev: The Proto-Bulgarian Period of Bulgarian History , pp. 430–437.
  5. ↑ Veselin Beševliev (ed.): The proto-Bulgarian inscriptions . Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1963, pp. 306–323 (No. 79); Veselin Beševliev: The Proto- Bulgarian Period in Bulgarian History , pp. 481–497; Omeljan Pritsak : The Bulgarian list of princes and the language of the proto-Bulgarians . Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1955. (Ural-Altaic library; 1)
  6. ↑ Veselin Beševliev (ed.): The proto- Bulgarian inscriptions , pp. 306–323; Veselin Beševliev: The Proto-Bulgarian Period in Bulgarian History , pp. 420–421; Omeljan Pritsak: The Bulgarian list of princes and the language of the Proto-Bulgarians ; О. А. Мудрак: Заметки о языке и культуре дунайских булгар (PDF; 359 kB), in: Аспекты компаративистики . 1. Москва: изд. РГГУ, 2005, pp. 83-106: 89-105; however Johannes Benzing: Das Hunnische, Donaubolgarischen and Volgabolgarischen, in: Philologiae Turcicae Fundamenta . Vol. I. Ed. Jean Deny, Kaare Grønbech et al. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1959, pp. 685-695: 688-689.
  7. ↑ Veselin Beševliev (ed.): The proto- Bulgarian inscriptions , pp. 260–277 (No. 56); Veselin Beševliev: The Proto-Bulgarian Period in Bulgarian History , pp. 447–448.
  8. ↑ Veselin Beševliev: The Proto-Bulgarian Period of Bulgarian History , pp. 321-324.
  9. ↑ Veselin Beševliev: The Proto-Bulgarian Period of Bulgarian History , pp. 321-324; Rüdiger Schmitt: Iranica Protobulgarica. Asparuch and the like in the light of Iranian onomastics , in: Balkansko ezikoznanie = Linguistique balkanique , XXVIII (1985), 1, pp. 13-38.
  10. ↑ Omeljan Pritsak : The Bulgarian list of princes and the language of the proto-Bulgarians , pp. 42–46, 51–61, 71–75, 78; Veselin Beševliev (ed.): The proto- Bulgarian inscriptions , pp. 306–323; О. А. Мудрак: Заметки о языке и культуре дунайских булгар, in: Аспекты компаративистики. 1, pp. 83-106: 97-98.
  11. ↑ Veselin Beševliev: The Proto-Bulgarian Period in Bulgarian History , p. 327.
  12. ↑ Georg Holzer: Old Church Slavonic ( Memento of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 393 kB), in: Lexicon of the Languages ​​of the European East = Wieser Encyclopedia of the European East. Vol. 10. Klagenfurt: Wieser-Verlag, 2002, pp. 187-202: 190.
  13. ↑ Harald Haarmann: Volga Bulgarian (PDF; 105 kB), in: Lexicon of the Languages ​​of the European East = Wieser Encyclopedia of the European East. Vol. 10. Klagenfurt: Wieser-Verlag, 2002, pp. 835-836.
  14. ^ Johannes Benzing: Das Hunnische, Donaubolgarische und Volgabolgarische, in: Philologiae Turcicae Fundamenta . Vol. I. Ed. Jean Deny, Kaare Grønbech et al. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1959, pp. 685-695: 691-695.
  15. ↑ Peter B. Golden: An introduction to the history of the Turkic peoples , pp. 393-394.
  16. ↑ Peter B. Golden: An introduction to the history of the Turkic peoples , pp. 396-397; Harald Haarmann: Volga Bulgarian, in: Lexicon of the Languages ​​of the European East , pp. 835–836.
  17. ↑ Peter B. Golden: An introduction to the history of the Turkic peoples , pp. 396-397. See also Ekrem Čaušević: Tschuwaschisch (PDF; 209 kB), in: Lexicon of the Languages ​​of the European East = Wieser Encyclopedia of the European East. Vol. 10. Klagenfurt: Wieser-Verlag, 2002, pp. 811-815.