A. V. Dybo

The Phonetic Features of Bulgar Languages From the Data of Loan-Words

50^th Annual Meeting of the PIAC, Kazan 2007

Quite complete material collected by now on Turkic borrowings in Slavic languages lets us assert that Bulgarisms in Slavic can be divided in two categories: 1) Words borrowed from Danube-Bulgar to South Slavic languages (not to Proto-Slavic, like it is sometimes supposed — it is chronologically impossible) and thus turned to be a pertinent of Old Slavonic, with which (being the literary language of the Slavic world) they had distributed to East Slavic and partially to West Slavic languages. Historical data allows to date such borrowing as VII–IX cc. A.D.  2) Words borrowed from Volga-Bulgar to East Slavic languages (on the Volga Trade Way) and from there partially borrowed to West Slavic (mainly to Polish). It seems these borrowing can be dated a little later — the period of rise of the Volga-Bulgar state.

On the other side, Bulgarisms in Hungarian can be divided in two groups based on their phonetic features. In one group, the supposed appearance of Turkic prototypes has little difference from Proto-Turkic state (with the exception of the “Chuvash palatalization” — the transition *s- > s- in front of *i, *y). In the other group the prototypes show significant similarities to the prototypes of borrowings from Danube-Bulgar to South Slavic languages. So, we can relate the first group of borrowings in Hungarian to “the Pre-Conquest Layer” ([Rona-Tas 1988, 752]) — these borrowings most likely took place on the territories of Volga-Kama habitat, or, as A. Rona-Tas prefers to consider now [Rona-Tas 2005, 436–438], Don-Kuban habitat (V–VII cc. A.D.). The second group of Bulgarisms in Hungarian are borrowings from Danube-Bulgar, which took place on territories near today’s Hungary; the rules of their phonetic adaptation in Hungarian match the rules of adaptation of early Slavic borrowings, which appeared in Hungarian language in the period “chronologically near to the conquest of Middle Danube (895-900)” — see these rules in [Хелимский 2000, 422].

Here the features of Old Bulgar, Danube-Bulgar and Volga-Bulgar languages are examined on the example of development of the first syllable’s vocalism.

References

1. Хелимский, E. A.: Венгерский язык как источник для праславянской ре­конструкции и реконструкции славянского языка в Паннонии // Е.А.Хелимский. Компаративистика, уралистика. – М.: Языки русской культуры, 2000. – С. 416–432.
2. Rona-Tas, A.: Turkic influence on the Uralic languages. // Sinor D. (ed.) The Uralic languages: Description, History and Foreign Influences. Leiden e.a., 1988. – P. 742–780.
3. Rona-Tas, A.: Néhány megjegyzés faneveinkről (Bükk, dió, gyertyán, gyümölcsény, gyürüfa, éger, kőris, mogyoró, tölgy). П Magyar Nyelv. 2005: 419-438. Budapest.