Hunnic language sayfasının kaynağını görüntüle

{{Infobox language
|name=Hunnic
|region=from [[Eurasian steppe]] into [[Europe]]
|extinct=after 5th century CE
|familycolor=unclassified
|family=[[Unclassified languages|Uncertain]]
|iso3=xhc 
|linglist=xhc 
|glotto=none
}}

The '''Hunnic language''', or '''Hunnish''', was the language spoken by [[Huns]] in the [[Huns#Unified Empire under Attila|Hunnic Empire]], a heterogeneous, multi-ethnic tribal confederation which ruled much of Eastern Europe and invaded the West during the 4th and 5th centuries. A variety of languages were spoken within the Hun Empire.<ref>Blockley, R. C. 1983. ''The Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire''. Liverpool: Francis Cairns.; citing [[Priscus]]</ref> [[Priscus|A contemporary]] reports that Hunnish was spoken alongside [[Gothic language|Gothic]] and the languages of other tribes subjugated by the Huns.<ref>Priscus: ''Byzantine History'', available in the original Greek in Ludwig Dindorf : ''Historici Graeci Minores'' (Leipzig, [[Teubner]], 1870) and available online as a translation by [[J.B. Bury]]: ''[http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/texts/priscus.html Priscus at the court of Attila] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20010204040700/http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/texts/priscus.html |date=February 4, 2001 }}''</ref><ref>Wang Shiping, Where Did the Huns Go? http://www.chinesejy.com/yuwen/259/305/2005122925403.html Wang Zu, Scourge of God http://www.amazon.cn/dp/bkbk705875</ref><ref>Lin Gan, A Study of Northern Nationalities in Ancient China http://www.amazon.cn/dp/zjbk600291 {{unreliable source?|date=September 2011}}</ref>

Evidence for the language is very limited, consisting almost entirely of [[proper name]]s.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|p=376}} Hunnic language cannot be classified at present,{{sfn|Sinor|1990|p=201}}{{sfn|Pronk-Tiethoff|2013|p=58}} but due to proper names origin it has been compared mainly with [[Turkic languages|Turkic]] and [[Mongolian language|Mongolian]].<ref name="Marácz">{{cite journal |last=Marácz |first=Lászlo |title=Borbála Obrusánszky: Heritage of the Huns |date=2009 |url=http://www.federatio.org/joes/EurasianStudies_0409.pdf |journal=[[Journal of Eurasian Studies]] |volume=1 |pages=158, 162}}</ref>{{sfn|Pronk-Tiethoff|2013|p=58}}{{sfn|Kim|2013|p=30}}

== Corpus ==
Contemporary observers of the European Huns, such as [[Priscus]] and the 6th century historian [[Jordanes]], preserved three words of the language of the Huns: {{quote|In the villages we were supplied with food - millet instead of corn - and ''medos'' as the natives call it. The attendants who followed us received millet and a drink of barley, which the barbarians call ''kamos''.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|p=424}}{{sfn|Pronk-Tiethoff|2013|p=58}}}} {{quote|When the Huns had mourned him [Attila] with such lamentations, a ''strava'', as they call it, was celebrated over his tomb with great revelling.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|p=425}}}}

The words ''medos'', a beverage akin to [[mead]], ''kamos'', a [[barley]] drink, and ''strava'', a [[funeral]] feast, are of [[satem]]ised [[Indo-European languages|Indo-European]] origin.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|p=424–426}} They may be of Slavic, but also Germanic and Iranian origin.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|p=424–426}}{{sfn|Pronk-Tiethoff|2013|p=58}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Schenker |first=Alexander M. |author-link=Alexander M. Schenker |date=1995 |url=https://books.google.hr/books?id=0lzGQgAACAAJ |title=The Dawn of Slavic: an introduction to Slavic philology |publisher=[[Yale University Press]] |pages=6 |isbn=9780520015968}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Vékony |first=Gábor |author-link=Gábor Vékony |date=2000 |title=Dacians, Romans, Romanians |url=https://books.google.hr/books?id=czX72PO_0LEC |publisher=[[Matthias Corvinus]] |pages=236 |isbn=9781882785131}}</ref> Maenchen-Helfen argued that ''strava'' may have come from an informant who spoke Slavic.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|p=425}}

==Possible affiliations==
Many of the waves of nomadic peoples who swept into Eastern Europe, are known to have spoken languages from a variety of families. Several proposals for the affinities of Hunnic have been made.

===Altaic-Turkic===
A number of historians and linguists including [[Peter Heather]] and [[Karl Heinrich Menges]] feel that the proper names only allow the Hunnic language to be positioned in the broad group of [[Altaic languages]].<ref name="Menges1995">{{cite book |author=Karl Heinrich Menges |title=The Turkic Languages and Peoples: An Introduction to Turkic Studies |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rS8n872Je4MC&pg=PA17 |year=1995 |publisher=Otto Harrassowitz Verlag |isbn=978-3-447-03533-0 |page=17}}</ref><ref name="Brown2001">{{cite book |author=Neville Brown |title=History and Climate Change: A Eurocentric Perspective |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZRxpKBSQOjoC&pg=PA72 |year=2001 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-0-415-01959-0|page=72}} citing [[E.A. Thompson]] ''The Huns'' (revised posthumously by Peter Heather)</ref> Heather argued that "opinions differ even over their linguistic affiliation, but the best guess would seem to be that the Huns were the first group of Turkic, as opposed to [[Iranian peoples|Iranian]], nomads to have intruded into Europe".<ref>{{cite book |first=Peter |last=Heather |date=1995 |title=The Huns and the End of the Roman Empire in Western Europe |url=http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/content/CX/435/4.full.pdf+html |publisher=[[English Historical Review]] |pages=5}}</ref> Although Menges was also reserved towards the language evidence, his view of the Huns was that "there are [[Ethnology|ethnological]] reasons for considering them Turkic or close to the Turks".<ref name="Menges1995"/>

[[Omeljan Pritsak]] in his study (1982),"''The Hunnic Language of the Attila Clan''",<ref name="Pritsak1982">{{cite book |last=Pritsak |first=Omeljan |author-link=Omeljan Pritsak |date=1982 |title=The Hunnic Language of the Attila Clan  |url=http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/huri/files/vvi_n4_dec1982.pdf |publisher=[[Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute]] |place=Cambridge, Massachusetts |volume=IV |issue=4 |issn=0363-5570}}</ref> who analyzing the 33 survived personal names concluded: "It was not a Turkic language, but one between Turkic and [[Mongolian language|Mongolian]], probably closer to the former than the latter. The language had strong ties to [[Bulgar language]] and to modern [[Chuvash language|Chuvash]], but also had some important connections, especially lexical and morphological, to [[Ottoman Turkish language|Ottoman Turkish]] and [[Yakut language|Yakut]]".<ref name="Pritsak1982"/>

[[Otto Maenchen-Helfen]] pointed out that many tribal and proper names among the Huns appear to have originated in Turkic languages, and they spoke one.{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|p=392–411}} Some scholars suppose that Hunnic may have been mainly Turkic,<ref>Gmyrya, L. 1995. ''Hun country at the Caspian Gate: Caspian Dagestan during the epoch of the Great Movement of Peoples''</ref><ref>{{de icon}} Doerfer, Gerhard. Zur Sprache der Hunnen. ''Central Asiatic Journal'', 17(1):&nbsp;1-50.</ref> possibly a member of the [[Oghuric languages|Oghuric]] branch of the [[Turkic language]] family, to which [[Bulgar language|Bulgar]], [[Khazar language|Khazar]], and [[Chuvash language|Chuvash]] also belong.<ref>"It is assumed that the Huns also were speakers of an ''l-'' and ''r-'' type Turkic language and that their migration was responsible for the appearance of this language in the West." Johanson, Lars; Éva Agnes Csató (ed.). 1998. ''The Turkic languages''. Routledge; Pritsak, Omeljan. 1982 "The Hunnic Language of the Attila Clan." ''Harvard Ukrainian Studies'', vol. 6, pp. 428–476.; Dybo A.V., ''"Linguistic contacts of early Türks. Lexical fund: Pra-Türkic period"'' Moscow, 2007, p. 103, ISBN 978-5-02-036320-5 (''In Russian''); Dybo A.V., ''"Chronology of Türkic languages and linguistic contacts of early Türks"'', Moskow, 2007, p. 786, (''In Russian''); Starostin S.A. (project "Tower of Babel"), the database includes Sinicisms borrowed into the Pra-Türkic (i.e., present in both Pra-Türkic and Bulgar branches); Murdak O.A. ''"Pra-Türkic metallurgical lexicon"'', "Monumenta Altaica"; Tzvetkov P.S., ''"The Turks, Slavs and the Origin of the Bulgarians"''//The Turks, Vol 1, pp. 562–567, Ankara, 2002, ISBN 975-6782-55-2, 975-6782-56-0; Shervashidxe I.N., ''"Fragment of Ancient Türkic lexicon. Titles"''//Problems of Linguistics, No 3, pp. 81–91, (''In Russian'')</ref><ref name=Heather1995>[[Peter Heather|Heather, Peter]]. 1995. The Huns and the End of the Roman Empire in Western Europe. ''English Historical Review'', 90:&nbsp;4-41.</ref>

Lászlo Marácz noted that in recent years "increasing number of linguists demonstrate that the basis of the Turkic and Mongolian languages was the language of the Huns", and that on this basis were reconstructed some Hun words found in Chinese chronicles.<ref name="Marácz"/> In 2013, Hyun Jin Kim concluded that "seems highly likely then from the names that we do know, most of which seem to be Turkic, that the Hunnic elite was predominantly Turkic-speaking".{{sfn|Kim|2013|p=30}}

===Indo-European===
Maenchen-Helfen classified a few names as Germanized or [[Germanic languages|Germanic]],{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|p=386–389}} and [[Iranian languages|Iranian]].{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|p=390–391}}

===Uralic===
Attempts have been made to identify the Hunnic language as [[Hungarian language|Hungarian]]. These have not achieved scholarly approval. The thesis that [[Simon of Kéza]], who dedicated his [[Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum|Gesta Hungarorum]] to [[Ladislaus IV of Hungary|Ladislaus IV]] (1272–1290), preserved genuine Magyar traditions about the Huns has long been refuted. Eighty years ago Hodgkin wrote: "The Hungarian traditions no more fully illustrate the history of Attila than the [[Book of Mormon]] illustrates the history of the Jews".{{sfn|Maenchen-Helfen|1973|p=386}} Hungarian legends and histories from medieval times onwards assume close ties with the Huns. The name ''Hunor'' is preserved in legends and (with a few Hunnic names, such as ''Attila'') is used as a given name in modern [[Hungary]] and in [[Turkey]] as ''Atilla'' and ''Onur'' respectively. Some Hungarian people share the belief that the [[Székely]]s, a Hungarian ethnic group living in modern-day Transylvania, are descended from a group of Huns who remained in the [[Carpathian Basin]] after 454; this myth was recorded in the medieval [[Gesta Hungarorum]].<ref>[http://mek.niif.hu/02200/02254/02254.htm Kordé Zoltán: A székelykérdés története]</ref>{{citation needed|date=November 2015}}

===Xiongnu===
It has been suggested that the Hunnic language was related to that of the [[Xiongnu]] (or ''Hsiung-nu'') of Mongolia &ndash; itself a language of unknown affiliations.<ref>Étienne de la Vaissière, Xiongnu. [http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/xiongnu Encyclopedia Iranica online] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120104081516/http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/xiongnu |date=January 4, 2012 }}, 2006</ref><ref>Dr. Obrusánszky, Borbála : The History and Civilization of the Huns. Paper of the University of Amsterdam, 8 October 2007. Page 60. [http://www.epa.oszk.hu/00000/00007/00028/pdf/00028.pdf]</ref>

===Yeniseian===
Some scholars – most notably [[Lajos Ligeti]] (1950/51) and [[Edwin G. Pulleyblank]] (1962) – have claimed that languages of Siberia, especially [[Ket language|Ket]] – a member of the [[Yeniseian]] language family – may have been a major source (or perhaps even the linguistic core) of the Xiongnu and/or Hunnic languages.<ref>E. G. Pulleyblank, "The consonontal system of old Chinese" [Pt 1], ''Asia Major'', vol. IX (1962), pp. 1&ndash;2.</ref><ref>A wide range of sources on the Yeniseian language are discussed by Edward J. Vajda (''Yeniseian Peoples and Languages: A History of Yeniseian Studies with an Annotated Bibliography and a Source Guide'' (2013, Oxford/New York, Routledge). Sources for the theories of a connection between Yeniseian and Hunnic are mentioned by Vajda on the following pages: pp. 4, 14, 48, 103&ndash;6, 108&ndash;9, 130&ndash;1, 135&ndash;6, 182, 204, 263, 286, 310.</ref> Marácz claimed, however, that any purportedly Yeniseian words could also have Mongolian and/or Turkic origins.<ref name="Marácz"/>

==Possible script==
It is possible that a written form of Hunnic existed and may yet be identified from artifacts. Priscus recorded that Hunnic secretaries read out names of fugitives from a written list.{{sfn|Kim|2013|p=204}} [[Franz Altheim]] considered it was not Greek or Latin, but a script like the Oguric Turkic of the [[Bulgars]].{{sfn|Kim|2013|p=204}} He argued that the runes were brought into Europe from [[Central Asia]] by the Huns, and were an adapted version of the old [[Sogdian alphabet]] in the Hunnic (Oghur Turkic) language.{{sfn|Kim|2013|p=55, 204}} [[Zacharias Rhetor]] wrote that in 507/508 AD, Bishop Qardust of [[Arran (Caucasus)|Arran]] went to the land of the Caucasian Huns for seven years, and returned with books written in the Hunnic language.{{sfn|Kim|2013|p=204}} There is some debate as to whether a Xiongnu-[[Xianbei]] runic system existed, and was part of a wider Eurasian script which gave rise to the [[Old Turkic alphabet]] in the 8th century.{{sfn|Kim|2013|p=205}}

Professor Azgar Mukhamediev of the Academy of Sciences of the [[Republic of Tatarstan]] (part of the Russian Federation) has suggested that some of these unidentified inscriptions are in an unidentified Turkic language, in a script that he calls "[[Turan]]ian".<ref name="Mukhamediev">{{cite book |last=Mukhamediev |first=Azgar |title=Problemy lingvoėtnoistorii tatarskogo naroda |year=1995 |location=Kazan |pages=195 |url=http://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/3751161 |authorlink=Turanian Writing |editor=Zăkiev, M. Z.}}</ref> Mukhamediev believes that one of the inscriptions refers to a "Khan Diggiz" and that this is reference to one of [[Attila]]'s sons, [[Dengizich]], thereby also implying that the language concerned is Hunnic.<ref name="Mukhamediev"/> Marácz noted that some Mongolian researchers collected alleged Hunnic runes.<ref name="Marácz"/>

Probably similar runic writing was preserved today by the Hungarians ([[Old Hungarian alphabet]]) and [[Crimean Tatars]].<ref name="Marácz"/>

==See also==
{{Portal|Language}}
*[[Hunnic Empire]]

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

;Sources
* {{cite book |last=Maenchen-Helfen |first=Otto J. |author-link=Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen |date=1973 |url=https://books.google.hr/books?hl=hr&id=CrUdgzSICxcC |title=The World of the Huns: Studies in Their History and Culture |publisher=[[University of California Press]] |isbn=9780520015968 |ref={{harvid|Maenchen-Helfen1973}}}}
* {{cite book |last=Pritsak |first=Omeljan |author-link=Omeljan Pritsak |date=1982 |title=The Hunnic Language of the Attila Clan  |url=http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/huri/files/vvi_n4_dec1982.pdf |publisher=[[Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute]] |place=Cambridge, Massachusetts |volume=IV |issue=4 |issn=0363-5570 |ref={{harvid|Pritsak1982}}}}
* {{cite book |last=Sinor |first=Denis|author-link=Denis Sinor |date=1990 |title=The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia |url=https://books.google.hr/books?id=ST6TRNuWmHsC |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=9780521243049 |ref={{harvid|Sinor1990}}}}
* {{cite book |last=Pronk-Tiethoff |first=Saskia |date=2013 |title=The Germanic loanwords in Proto-Slavic |url=https://books.google.hr/books?id=0iWLAgAAQBAJ |publisher=Rodopi |isbn=9789401209847 |ref={{harvid|Pronk-Tiethoff2013}}}}
* {{cite book |author=Hyun Jin Kim |year=2013 |title=The Huns, Rome and the Birth of Europe |url=https://books.google.hr/books?id=jCpncXFzoFgC |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=9781107009066 |ref={{harvid|Kim2013}}}}

[[Category:Extinct languages of Europe]]
[[Category:Extinct languages of Asia]]
[[Category:Unclassified languages of Europe]]
[[Category:Unclassified languages of Asia]]
[[Category:Huns]]