Khazarian/Bulgar (was: Words for "boredom")

Hello,

> Could you give me some details too?
> One of my not-at-all-worked-on conlang ideas is a modern Khazarian
> language, but i haven't found anything at all about the
> Khazar language
> besides old books from the fifties that say things like "at
> this point we
> don't really know anything about the language(s) of the Khazar
> Kaghanate".
Here goes. This is a quote from The Linguistic Encyclopedic Dictionary,
date of issue 1990. Translation mine

Khazarian language
[snip ethnographic stuff]
The data about Kh.l., preserved in Byzantic, Arabic, Jewish and other
historical sources, as well as ethno- and toponymic data, allow us to
postulate its relationship to the Turkic family and its proximity to
Bulgar language.
Medieval historians note the proximity of the Khazar language to the
language of the Bulgars (al-'Istahri) ad the Pechenegs (Mahmud
Kashgari). It was postulated as Turkic by V.V.Grigorjev, A.A.Kunik, A.
Vamberi, V.V. Barthold, and the latter noted its genetic relationship to
Chuvash, which has linguistic foundations: e.g., the name o the Khazar
town of Sarkel, which the contemporaries translated as 'White Fortress',
correlates to mod. Chuvash _šura( kil/gil_ [the first is an s-hacek, and
a( is an a-breve] 'white house'. N.A.Baskakov sees the toponyms Itil,
Sarkel, Semender, Balanžar [it's a z-hacek], Bek Tarluv as the earliest
extant Khazar words. Scientists find traces of Khazar influence in
modern Turkic languages: in the language of the Crimean Qaraim(s) :-)
(K.M.Musaev), Kumyk (I.Kerimov), northern dialects of Azerbaijani
(N.Z.Gadzhieva, V.L.Gukasyan).
However, the identification of the Khazar language is not a closed
problem yet, and much is currently only hypothetic. There have been
attempts (Gadzhieva, B.A.serebrennikov)to reconstruct the Khazar tense
system using the methods of comparative and areal linguistics. Such
attempts are based on 1) the structure of this system in the closely
related Chuvash language and 2) traces of Khazars influence in various
dialects of Azerbaijani. Thus, the paradigms of the present tense in -at
is common to Chuvash and some dialects of Azerbaijani; the same can be
said of the Azerbaijani present-past in -y/-i [y is the Cyrillic /bl/]
(in dialects) and the Chuvash future in -y, of the past continuous in
-atdy/-atty and so on [gah! :-(]. The important thing here is not the
similarity of formats, but the proximity of the systems.
Bibliography:
Artamonov M.I. Istoriya xazar. L[eningrad]., 1962 [update: there has
been reprint last year in Moscow, this one has long been out of print]
Baskakov N.A. Vvedeniye v izuchenie tyurkskix yazykov. M[oscow]., 1969
Pletneva S.A. Xazary. M., 1976
Gadzhieva N.Z., Serebrennikov B.A. Areal'naya lingvistika i problema
vosstanovleniya nekotoryx chert ischeznuvshix yazykov. 'Sovietskaya
tyurkologiya', 1977, #3.
Zajczkowsky A., Ze studiów nad zagadnieniem chazarskim. Kr[aków], 1947.
Goldin P.B. Hazar Studien, Bdpst, 1980.

And of interest perhaps...

Bulgar language
[snip ethnographic stuff]
Data are very scanty and may be found mainly in toponyms and names in
V-XIV centuries authors, in Finno-Ugric and Slavic borrowings, a Bulgar
list of rulers. Standalone lexemes are to be found in ibn Fadlan (X
century) and Mahmud Kashgari (XiI c.). Most of the data are tombstone
carvings (XII-XIV), mostly uniform and poor in content. Written in Arab
letters. The inscriptions reflect a relatively early stage of the
language. Traces of t-, dZ- and j- dialects can be found, and latter is
a reflection of a koine which has been the base for the literary
language - a local variant of Türki. The B.l. is characterized by
rhoticism and lambdaism, and differs from the closely related Chuvash in
several phonetic and morphological aspects [gah! :-(]
Bibliography:
[the same opus by Baskakov]
Xakimzyanov F.S. Yazyk epitafiy volzhskix bulgar. M., 1978
Pritsak O. Die bulgarische Fürstenliste nd die Sprache der
Protobulgaren. Wiesbaden, 1955
Benzing J.Das Hunnische, Donaubolgarische und Wolgabolgarische //
Philolofiae Turciae Fundamenta, t. 1, Wiesbaden, 1959.

That's all I can find, being no Turkologist...

Hope this helps,
Pavel
--
Pavel Iosad               pavel_iosad@mail.ru

'I am a philologist, and thus a misunderstood man'
                 --JRR Tolkien, _The Notion Club Papers_