Hunnic in Armenian | ||||||||||||||||||
Forum Discussion | ||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
Cultural History of the Steppes » Linguistic History » Hun Language? http://steppes.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=board22&action=display&thread=1369 |
||||||||||||||||||
Hun Language? Post by ardavarz on Feb 24, 2011, 5:30am Recently while searching the net I came across a stunning information. I found several posts in different forums dealing with the language of the Huns based on some documents allegedly discovered in Armenian monasteries. I was really stunned. How was possible that such a discovery has remained generally unknown? Hunnic language was a mystery for so long, but indeed there is stories in the old chronicles telling about Armenian missionaries gone amongst the Huns. For instance Zacharias Rhetor writes about the mission of Armenian bishop Kardost and his seven disciples who were amongst the Huns north of Caucasus in 515- 529 C.E. It is told that they have translated the Bible in Hunnic. So it sounds plausible that some information about Hunnic language (if not that very text or at least part of it) could survive amongst the unstudied books in Armenian monastery libraries. I have always hoped that these data will be found some day, that's why I decided to investigate this case. Unfortunately (for me) most of the information published online was in Hungarian and I had a hard time deciphering it by means of Google-translator and other online dictionaries. And here is what I found out so far: The information is somewhat inconsistent. It appears some manuscripts have been found in the monastery of Surb Khach (Saint Cross) in Esfahan (Iran). But it is also told that copies exist in Matenadaran (Armenia). Some studies of these texts have been published in Armenian and allegedly could be found in National Library in Yerevan. Some hint that there is a Turkish translation too. I am unable to confirm or deny any of these statements. I found a good article in English written by an Hungarian scientist - Béla Lukács -
discussing this topic: I generally agree with the conclusions of the author B. Lukács. However, this article was
written some time ago and it appears that some new data have been published, but again
only in Hungarian. They concern the works of the late scholar priest Vahan Anhaghth
Astvatzaturian. Here in his obituary notice can be found more information: And then I found a third source - another set of four "lessons" (again in Hungarian
transcription) published by another author - Pető Imre: It seems that all these texts are concerned with several closely related languages (I've noticed some differences in rendering of the words and the verbal conjugation) - V. A. Astvatzaturian calls them "Scythoid" although I don't think they have any direct connection with the language of the classic Scythians from Herodotus's time. This fits more the medieval loose use of the term "Scythian". But is this the long wanted Hunnic language? Of course, it would be difficult to say without a detailed study of the original Armenian texts which (as it seems) are still unpublished. Maybe this was the language of Sabirs as B. Lukács suggests (even though I've had the impression that Sabirs have spoken some Turkic language, but still there were also other Hun tribes around Caucasus). Or maybe we have some kind of common language used amongst different peoples in the Hun alliance loosely based on the original Hunnic? I tend to agree for the present with this latter conjecture. Here are some observations I made while trying to study these "textbooks": This "Hunnic" is an agglutinative language, but it doesn't seem to apply any vocal or
consonantal harmony (in this respect it resembles Ossetian). Most of its vocabulary has
cognates in Magyar (Hungarian), but it seems to contain a large amount of loanwords from
many different languages. Turkic: atha - "father" (< ata); jeti - "seven"; aji, haji - "moon" (< aj); qada - "duck" (< qaz); kapu - "gate" (< Old Turk. qapuγ). Mongolian: chun - "warrior, man" (~ Mong. hün - "human"?). Persian: azad - "free" (< āzād); mard - "man"; saath - "hundred" (< sad); hezer - "thousand" (< hezār). German: landa - "land" (= Goth. landa); thal - "valey"; Ballakhalu - "abode of gods" (~ Valhalla?; however in Norse mythology it's the castle of the fallen heroes which in Hunnic is called "hideovara", being different from Ballakhalu). Slavic: ladani - "palm" (= Rus. ladon'); serti - "heart" (~ Rus. serdtse); siri, shiri - "steppe, pasture" (~ Rus. shir' - "expanse"). Indian: shinga - "lion" (< Skt. siṃha); shend - "peace" (< Skt. śānti). Chinese: hwan - "ten thousand" (< wan); ten - "sky" (< t'ien) (in the compound tenmard - "celestial man, god"). Japanese: nishe - "west" (~ nishi); hideo - "hero" (~ hidoi - "severe, awful"). Armenian: azdigh - "star" (~ astġ ?; cf. astłik - "little star, Venus"); lezu - "language" (= lezou). Scythian: kutha - "dog" (< *kuti); bashte - "broad" (~ Oss. bästä - "land"); kuna - "book" (< *kunig). Greek: theos - "the Christian god". Latin: hovi - "sheep" (~ ovis). Avestan: vara - "castle" (= vara - "enclosure"). Especially interesting are numerals. They form two different sets - one based on decimal and another on vigesimal (base-20) number system. Similar is the situation in Ossetian and Welsh languages. In the textbooks are given fragments from more larger texts - epics dealing with historical and mythological subjects. Still, many things are unclear. For instance some of the texts in the "textbook" sound too modern - for instance from the lesson about astronomy (¹ 4 in Astvatzaturian 's textbook) it becomes clear that Earth is a planet and the Milky Way - a galaxy (azdighum - the word for "stellar cluster" is interpreted as "galaxy"). Are these texts really authentic or they have been designed today just to teach the language? Next Lesson 5 is about geography and it also contains several confusing passages. There is something which appears to be fragments from some obscure legend about the origin of Huns. Surprisingly it is related to a territory which seems to be Central or Western Europe (?!) - amongst the rivers mentioned are Rhine and Timish and the "oldest parts" were the "Big Peninsula", "Little Peninsula" and the "Islands". This country is called "Western Fatherland" (Nishi Athalanda) where the ancestors have lived in some big marshlands before being driven from there by a flood. Several names of "big tribes in the Fatherland" are given amongst which are clearly recognizable some Celtic tribes once lived in Britain and several Germanic from the continent. I doubt this legend refers to the time of Attila. Or maybe this is a disguised attempt to associate the origin of Huns with the myth of Atlantis (note the similarity with the word "Athalanda")? This really bewilders me and makes me unsure what to think about all these texts. Similarly in the Hun-Scythian-Hungarian dictionary by Pető Imre (see the link above; also in note 12 there) we can find the names of 25 Hun tribes - some of them can be understood etymologically through this language, but none is mentioned in any known historical source (at least as far as I know). All this is very puzzling. Still, I don't want to dismiss the case just because it is weird and doesn't concurs with the current ideas. In fact I am afraid that it can be as well ignored and forgotten by mainstream science precisely because some people have begun to form bizarre ideas based on these data. The linguistic material is quite abundant - it seems enough to start a project for reconstructing or even to revive this forgotten language which (for me at least) is a fascinating possibility. Still it takes me too much time to study those texts without a previous knowledge of Hungarian language. So I hope someone who speak Magyar would shed more light on this subject. Re: Hun Language? Its unknown for me, as I see, its 10 different ancient armenian sources (some in greek),
written in Hunnic language but mostly with armenian letters. Very interesting.
Re: Hun Language? Some examples : Hunnic : Asari Isechunkhkh (…) ontutta Asaret Asarasunihes (…) Asarinekh vikh amendachunkh voltukh. Chunkh ai anikh igebul vadoltuk. Isechunekh thaga Éjalana. Amenda azdigh chun ai ani. Asaront ai sertis okinta amenut. English : Asari Isechunkh created the world to Asarasunin. All the Hun people are sons
of Asari. The men and women are from the skies. The god's veil are the stars (the milky
way). The last phrase is hard to translate : something like the creation of the world is
the love of the stars, and the work of god together.
Re: Hun Language? I dont know what is true about all these sources, I will look after afternoon, but after some reading, its clear that the Hunnic words and phrases in these codexes are understandable in Hungarian, the relation is very close and obvious with ancient Hungarian. There are also hundreds of Turkic words as well. Hunnic can be a link between Finno Ugrian and old Turkic languages.
Re: Hun Language? So if anyone cares. The source of the Hun (askatan language b) scripts are from several ancient
manuscripts (like the codex of Isfahan, original in Iran) collected by the armenian
language institute, and they are mostly from armenian monasteries. Dr. Csaba Detre, a
hungarian linguist (he speaks fluent armenian) compared them with other sources found in
several countries, and were known as unknown scythian texts, for exemple the codex of
Crete, from Greece, and several others from Syria, Iraq, etc. Its commonly known among
linguists that armenian language sources of other languages used to be the most
phonetically equal to the original version. So what he tried is to read the armenian
words of scythian texts in Hungarian. He found several hundreds of words he understood.
The more interesting is that he found the grammar is closely related to ancient Hungarian
as well. Anhaght Astvatzaturian is an armenian priest scholar, born in Hungary, he spoked both language and he had better source for the manuscripts in the monasteries. According to him, there are at least 6 different scythian language in old armenian manuscripts. He found close relation between what he called Askatan a, b, and c language and hungarian. He died in 2009. Askatan b language has very high number of common words with the codex of Crete, wich tell us about the language of the Scythes who invaded europe (The Huns) the Codex of Crete is created around 700 AD. As I know, around 90% of the manuscripts in Armenia is not yet scientifically searched, so it may be an interesting topic for the future. So the possibilities are the following : 2. its true. Re: Hun Language? I've heard of this before. The subject came up on the Hunnic language talk page on the
English Wikipedia, as you probably saw:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Hunnic_language The problem is that no one has been
able to produce alleged manuscripts. They were conveniently "lost".
Re: Hun Language? Well, Yerevan is not on Mars, so I hope someone will check it once. But to be honest I
dont think many people exists who understand both old armenian and hungarian as well.
Re: Hun Language? http://hetivalasz.hu/english_hungary/academic-debate-25937 "The text is an Armenian-Hun glossary, and allegedly proves the relationship between
Hungarian and the Hun language. What weakens the sensational impact of this ‘proof' (the
research, theorising about the Hun language, is made on the basis of just a few words),
is that its "discoverer", Csaba Detre, a retired geologist of Armenian origin, published
the text in a children's colouring book. The source is said to derive from the Armenian
monastery Surb Khach, located in Isfahan, Iran. "As in most cities in Iran, Armenians do
live in Isfahan and its surroundings. However, such a monastery does not exist, and
nobody has ever seen the text on a photo, a photocopy or a microfilm" -Miklós Sárközy,
Iran expert and teacher at the Károli Gáspár University, told Heti Válasz. "
Re: Hun Language? Here's the link I was looking for: http://www.rmki.kfki.hu/~lukacs/DETREHUN.htm "PROTO-MAGYAR TEXTS FROM THE MIDDLE OF 1st MILLENIUM? or Are they published or not?"
Re: Hun Language? Yes, that was maybe the first webpage where I spotted this information. Then I found the article of B. Lukács (I think I did give the link above). About the monastery I cannot be sure. There is really a big Armenian community in Esfahan. I saw myself an Armenian church there while I was in Persia about seven years ago. Our guide was Armenian too. Also I knew an Armenian immigrant from Esfahan - his name was Leo - but unfortunately I have lost his contacts and now I cannot ask him about that. This situation resembles the case with some Volga Bulgarian sources like the chronicles "Jagfar Tārīhï" and the epic "Chulman Tolgau" the originals of which are not yet confirmed (we have only Russian translations). Nevertheless the information they contain has some interesting details which are very plausible. In fact - what I forgot to mention yesterday - I have found several close concurrences while comparing some allegedly Hunnic words in these sources with the vocabulary of those Armenian manuscripts. Thus according to "Jagfar Tārīhï" bir (var. mir) was Hunnic word for "king" (f.e. in personal names like Balamber/Balamir, Malamir, Chelbir etc.). Now according to V. A. Astvatzaturian birum in Scythian B means "empire" or "alliance". He also tells (in Lesson 2) that suffix "-um" is used for creating abstract nouns (f.e. mady - "big, great" madum - "greatness, grandeur"). Likewise we can conclude that if bir is "king", then birum would be "kingdom". Another Hunnic word from "Jagfar Tārīhï" is seber - "ally" (mentioned as explanation of the name of Sabirs). And here (in Pető Imre's dictionary) I found the word subir (shubir) - "összefogás" (alliance). In Volga Bilgarian epic "Chulman Tolgau" the word "Scythian" is rendered as "asket" and here it is "ashkata". Moreover the spirit of light and saviour of humanity in Tengrian pantheon of Volga Bulgars celebrated in the feast Nardugan (24/25 December) is called Mardukan. Through "Scythian B" this name could be explained as compound from mar - "human" and dogon - "spirit, moving force", thus meaning "human-spirit" ("anthropodaemon"). There is also other mythological parallels. In Lesson 7 of Astvatzaturian's textbook is given the legend about the founder of Scythian Kingdom (Ashkatan Birum) who united Scythian tribes (if I understand it correctly). His name is king Luvephej (lit. "horse-head") and the date is 5250 B.C.E. Now in Volga Bulgarian legends the first legendary pre-historic king is called Jam-Ijik, where "Jam" corresponds to Persian Jamshīd or Jam (= Avestan Yima, "Twin"), while the name Ijik means "horse". This legend has many variants and in some versions he is presented as several characters. One of them is called Ijik-Asparïk, where the second name is clearly a translation = Alanic name Asparukh which also means "horse head" (at least according some interpretations). The date of founding the Scythian Kingdom (Askïp) in the epic "Chulman Tolgau" is 5300 B.C.E. which, however mythical it may be, is very close to the above date from these Hunno-Armenian sources. I really hope that these texts would be translated and published in full. I wonder where the Astvatzaurian's works can be found?(Unfortunately I don't know French either...) But I found this notice about some publication in Russian in the bibliography of Pető Imre's textbook: - „Szkifo-grecseszkije textü” (oroszul, ZM-nek felajánlott kéziratok, eredetükről nincs közzétett információ – több mint 200 oldal Részletek még nem publikusak. Maybe at least this can be found?
Re: Hun Language? http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Eurasian_Nomads/message/89 Dear all, I had a telephone conversation with prof Csaba Detre, to whom the Hun word list on the Web is associated. He told me an interesting story about the manuscripts, some of which have the relics of Hunnish language. In fact the documents that appeared on the Web are not intended to publish this way. The story associated that is quite false. Several scientist have seen the manuscripts as early as the 1970's but in the communist regime it was a forbidden topic for Hungarian scientists. Since than the manuscripts disappeared from the Armenian monastery (in the Esfahan province of Iran), and appeared at rich Armenian and Russian men. Although prof Detre has some connections to them, he was not allowed to publish any part of the manuscripts. Some of the Hungarian scientists who were involved in the case have died in strange circumstances. As Detre said, we must understand, that in the eastern way of thinking, this is a great treasury and not a scientific discovery. And the owners are trying to sell it in the western countries for as high as possible, thus they strictly forbid any publication regarding the manuscripts. Perhaps if the deal will be done, the manuscripts can appear in print in 2008-2009. Although he did not mention the word mafia, I was aware what is he speaking about. There was a similar case two decades ago in Hungary. That time a young soldier found a large Roman silver hoard, later named the Seuso hoard near the lake Balaton. Seuso was the Roman prefect of Pannonia and his name is written on a bowl of the treasury. The soldier was killed, and the hoard disappeared, though several photos of the objects were found by the police. A few years ago the hoard reappeared at an auction in New York. It was obviously the same hoard as the one mentioned above, since the name of Seuso appered on one of the silver bowls, while on another the word Pelso (the Roman name of lake Balaton) was written. Of course the hoard was not returned to Hungary as it was regarded as having unknown origin, and now is privately owned... Gabor
Re: Hun Language?
Post by hjernespiser on Feb 25, 2011, 7:31am BTW, if you can read the archive on that Yahoo group, there's earlier messages from
scholar Peter B. Golden in there regarding this manuscript.
Re: Hun Language? Feb 25, 2011, 5:59am, ardavarz wrote:
Heh, just FYI "birodalom" means realm or empire in Hungarian...
Re: Hun Language? It is actually. Luvephej, is Lófej is hungarian, means horsehead.
Re: Hun Language? About Imre Peto's texts, I wouldnt take them that seriously, Im not sure if he is a known
scientist at all. Re: Hun Language? A chinese linguist Uciraltu from inner mongolia, has found 600 Hunnic words in chinese sources, he published his work in 2008. He says 60 of these words he found is proven to be Hunnic. Uciraltu found that the words has Hungarian connection, so he decided to learn the Hungarian language to continue his research, he said breakthrough in results can be expected not before 2012-2013, he needs at least 5 years to learn the language. Im not sure if anyone compared the words he found with the words Detre found, but it would be an interesting topic as well. Re: Hun Language? Feb 25, 2011, 11:23am, benzin wrote:
Yes, I agree. I have the same impression myself. Personally I think the texts of V. A. Astvatzaturian seem most credible. He at least gives the original Armenian transliteration of the Hunnic words and phrases. I hope his book about "Scythoid languages" can still be found (if not the original manuscripts). If that information is correct, it has been published in 1985 - it's a long enough time and I wonder why it isn't more known or translated so far. If one wants to investigate this case based on facts and not just rumors, this work would be a good starting point. This, I hope, would at least elucidate the circumstances about that discovery and give an overall picture, not just pieces of information. But where to find it? When something is too logical I usually become suspicious, since then it feels like
framed up. Here the information is really big and complicated, plus - as I wrote before -
I found some concurrences with other sources which, even though similarly unconfirmed,
have hardly been known to the authors of these Hunnic "textbooks". That's why I think
maybe there is something real behind all this story.
Re: Hun Language? Feb 25, 2011, 11:42am, benzin wrote:
That's interesting. I have read also about some findings in Mongolia containing specimens
of Hunnic/Xiungnu writing. But I have no definite information - the article in Wikipedia
gives only several examples compared with Chinese signs.
Re: Hun Language? Feb 25, 2011, 7:31am, hjernespiser wrote:
I couldn't access the archive so is it possible for you to post them here? Re: Hun Language? Post by hjernespiser on Feb 27, 2011, 10:34am OK. Technically you can just join the yahoo group, but it isn't very active and your forum here actually rivals that one Now if we can only get Peter Golden here? Here's what there is, not in any particular order: ------------------ Dear All, Frankly, this is all a bit suspicious. The words that jump out are all modern Hungarian forms or too close to them. Peter B. Golden On Aug 17, 2006, at 5:13 PM, Bihari Gábor wrote: Dear Etienne, So the whole codex is written in Old Armenian with Armenian letters. Perhaps this is why the locals did not recognise its content. The geologist I mentioned is a member of the small Armenian community of Hungary, and although an amateur in linguistics, he is very well trained in Armenian history. As the work of Moses of Chorene is a very important source material for the history of the steppe nations, I'm sure he knows it well, especially because one of his friends translated it to Hungarian - perhaps he also contributed for that? I do not know... Thus the 5th century Armenian text probably did not cause serious difficulties for him to understand and to copy by hand. Here follows the part for the celestial things:
The man itself is one of the best known Hungarian geologists, he Which is not a perfect proof, but enough to deal with the question. The other proof is, that there are too logical consequences of these words and a forger must be a genius to fabricate such a list. For example the Hunnish word for sword is "surr" which can perhaps be linked to the Hungarian werb "sur", meaning "to stick in(to)", and perhaps even to the Germanic words for sword and the Old High German word sweran "to hurt". At least these Germanic words have no cognates out of the Germanic group in other IE languages. I will send a part of the word list for discussion soon.
Best regards,
What is this codex ? How do we know that it is genuine ? Dear Peter, I do not know anything about the author of the manuscript. If anyone A possible link is: I think otherwise, that the case is more refined about the Ugrian The word "kutha" (dog) is probably an Indo-iranian loanword either As far as I can recall, the word "beka" have also a cognate in the The only Hungarian-like word left is really similar Viragh - but While it is true, about the third of the words in the list have While I do not know much about the Turkic languages so I cannot Soon posting another part of the list. Best, Gabor Hung. béka "frog" is ultimately part of the Altaic stock (see Starostin et al., "Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages," II, p.920). It is a borrowing from Turkic into Hungarian, Persian and some other languages (see Sevortian, "Etimologicheskii slovar' tiurkskikh iazykov," II (1978), pp.40-42). Benkő et al. "A magyar nyelv történeti-etimológiai szótára," III, p. 1151, consider virág ("flower") a variant of világ "light") and cite a variety of Indo-European semantic parallels light-flower. It is an interesting hypothesis. Khanty has been explained as deriving from a term meaning "person" *kunta etc cf. Hung "had" "army" (Khanty "xânt" "army"). Whether this has anything to do with word or ethnonym Hun (the original form of which is far from clear) is uncertain. Németh ("A honfoglaló magyarság kialakulása, 2nd ed. Bp., 1991), p. 57 attempted to connect hun, kun/qun, kün, kümün, xum, kum etc., all denoting, "person, people" etc. but this, as far as I know, has not found wide acceptance. In terms of the new codex, one would have to explain why there appear to be Turkic and Ugric (Hungarian) words in "Hunnic". This is possible, but it will require a great deal of argumentation, not to mention a recasting of early Hungarian history. I guess I will have to wait for the book - hopefully it will include a facsimile of the Armenian text. Best, Surprising but great news! Although I'm not linguist, and not even historian, I jumped into the nomadic topic a few years ago (I dealt with nuclear physics - radiometric dating methods and natural radioisotopes - before I became a freelance writer). My method is quite new in this field and quite close to the natural sciences and mathematics. I was trying to find correlation between place names and basic words of different languages / tribe names, etc. First I tested the method on basic Iranian words and Scythian tribe names, and I found interesting correlations between some groups of Iranian-like place names and the Szeklers. Which was only an interesting hint, until I realized that these place names draw up a special pattern on the map: the Roman road system of Pannonia and Dacia with some linking roads on the plains area between. I'm testing the method now on the Sarmatians / Alans - strangely nothing serious appearing in Britain, while the south of France and north of Spain seems to be heavily settled by them... I take it this is from a forthcoming book - which I will await with great eagerness. I tried to reach the geologist in question, but couldn't. I was working with him regarding the meteorite impacts, but since than he retired and almost disappeared from the scene - perhaps he is spending a lot of time in Armenia and Iran. A rushed look at the entries indicates to me a sizable number of words that are virtually identical with Modern Hungarian forms. While there are other words, that are quite different, although probably have Hungarian cognates. As a physicist, I know, my feelings must not be involved in the process, and I am not an expert, so I leave open the possibility of the fake. This does raise some questions. Although the question of Ugric- speaking groups in the Ponto-Caspian steppes and extending into the Caucasus in the 5th century is rather early for any of the reconstructions of pre-Conquest era Hungarian (honfoglalás elõtti magyarság) history, I would not automatically rule it out. But, I would expect forms of words that differ, in many instances, quite considerably, from the modern forms. You probably would find interesting the book (2005) of a member of the Academy. He supposed that the pre-proto-willbeonce-Uralic language was spoken by the group of Eastern Europeans of the Ice Age which have the characteristic Eu19 Y-cromosome haplotype. (The Western group is the closest relative, the Basque-like peoples of the Eu18 type.) If he is right, Ugrian languages were much more frequent a few thousand years ago, but almost became extinct for now with a few exception. Hung. béka "frog" is ultimately part of the Altaic stock (see Starostin et al., "Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages," II, p.920). It is a borrowing from Turkic into Hungarian, Persian and some other languages (see Sevortian, "Etimologicheskii slovar' tiurkskikh iazykov," II (1978), pp.40-42). Benkõ et al. "A magyar nyelv történeti-etimológiai szótára," III, p. 1151, consider virág ("flower") a variant of világ "light") and cite a variety of Indo-European semantic parallels light-flower. It is an interesting hypothesis. Well, difficult thing. My vote would go to link it with the words "virgacs" (birch, broom - a handful of tied small treebranches), and thus the werb ver (beat). Perhaps... Khanty has been explained as deriving from a term meaning "person" *kunta etc cf. Hung "had" "army" (Khanty "xânt" "army"). Whether this has anything to do with word or ethnonym Hun (the original form of which is far from clear) is uncertain. Németh ("A honfoglaló magyarság kialakulása, 2nd ed. Bp., 1991), p. 57 attempted to connect hun, kun/qun, kün, kümün, xum, kum etc., all denoting, "person, people" etc. but this, as far as I know, has not found wide acceptance. I think, the first part is OK, but the second is not. As far as I know, the name of the Cumans (quman) does not appear in the shorter form in place names in the East, and thus the longer form "quman" must be the original, instead of the "qun" form. Németh had several other serious problems, like not considering the V read of the Greek "beta" letter, reading it always to B in the late Roman, early MA Greek texts. In terms of the new codex, one would have to explain why there appear to be Turkic and Ugric (Hungarian) words in "Hunnic". This is possible, but it will require a great deal of argumentation, not to mention a recasting of early Hungarian history. The recasting process is already going on. Even the Academy seems to be in splitting, some of the members are defending the old theories, which was obviously supported by political reasons, and bleeding from thousand wounds, while others are considering also the new discoveries - like the highest incidence of the Eu19 haplotype in the Hungarians (you may know the Semino et al. article in Science, 2000). I guess I will have to wait for the book - hopefully it will include a facsimile of the Armenian text. It must be there otherwise it is difficult to take it seriously. Gabor --------------------- The whole of the region, extending into Ukraine and Southern Russia is filled with place names and river names of Iranian origin, cf. Danube, Dnestr, Dnepr, Don, Donets (all from Iranian dan/don < Old Iran. danu "water" dan- "to flow quickly" etc.). The area was successively the home to a number of Iranian peoples from the Scythians and Sarmatians up to the Alans. János Harmatta has done fundamental work on that. Modern Hungarian still retains traces of that interaction (eg. asszony "woman" < Alanic akhsin. hid "bridge < khid, kard "sword" < kart etc.). Similar borrowings are found in other Ugric languages and Volga Finnic. The Alanic tribes were widespread over the region and Iranian nomadic populations have been interested in the fur trade since the first millennium BC and were in contact with these peoples. You can get some sense of the interaction from Éva Korenchy's study, Iranische Lehnwörter in den obugrischen Sprachen (Budapest, 1972). The linguists have been up and down these paths for a long time - often with very good results. Archaeological finds, in the absence of written texts - even of the most primitive form - pose greater problems of interpretation as elements of material culture travel and groups of different ethno-linguistic origins will often share, archaeologically, many cultural markers. The growing study of DNA should tell us much more about these populations - although here too one must be very cautious. Although there are connections between DNA groupings and language families and I think that we are just beginning to learn more about this important topic, languages often move around and are adopted (for a variety of reasons) by groupings of peoples for whom they were not original tongues. Uralic-Basque connections would be a great stretch indeed. Best, Re: Hun Language? Many thanx
Re: Hun Language? Little update : I read the biggest forum about Hun language in here, and many people
tried to get some more information from Detre, who lives in Budapest, but he mostly
refused these inquiries. What we know now: The codexes were originally in a monastery at
lake Van. They were delivered to Isfahan by Abbas sahinsah to a monastery called Surb
Khac at the 17th century. At the moment the Iranian government takes the codexes as
national heritage, and the Armenian church in Iran supports them in that, so the codexes
are not visitable or searchable. At least thats what Detre says.
Re: Hun Language? Update 2 : The Iranian national museum sent a copy of the Isfahan codex last year to Dr.
Kiszely, a well known antropologist, according to him. A book about it was expected at
the end of 2010, but until now there is silence about the research.
Re: Hun Language? Heh, I don't know but it's most probably fake.
Re: Hun Language? Mar 8, 2011, 11:42am, admin wrote:
Until they dont come up with proofs, I have to say that too.
Re: Hun Language? Yes, that is probably the safest attitude for the present. Still, it's so tantalizing...
Re: Hun Language? Mar 9, 2011, 3:50am, ardavarz wrote:
That is my sentiment too. Given the comment from Peter Golden regarding the manuscript possibly being from a later
date and therefore not Hun, but Hungarian, that would be even more tantalizing. Perhaps
it is a record of the Savarti Asphaloi.
Re: Hun Language? Hi, feel free to ask Mar 20, 2011, 9:56pm, marcobello wrote:
That would be great! An English translation of Astvatzaturian's Hunnic textbook will be very much appreciated. (I mean this one from here: http://filozofia.wplanet.hu/tag_va.html which seems to be the fullest and most recently updated extract from his book). I think it would be good if these texts can be made available in English in a forum
where many people of various backgrounds could study them and contribute opinions. Thus
we may come nearer to solving all this mystery around them.
Re: Hun Language? Im not sure if he even existed. Only 85 findings to his name in google, and all of them
are Hungarian.
Re: Hun Language? Raises up even more suspicion.
Re: Hun Language? There is a way to check if he existed or not, because -according to his necrologue- he published some books, and he was member of the Armenian scientific academy from 1993 until his death. He is doctorate of Yerevan University. His main books : I think these could be checked even if its not easy if there is nothing about them on the
net.
Re: Hun Language? Yes. I have hoped that some person somewhere could have access to those books and provide
some more reliable information. Too bad I don't know French...
Re: Hun Language? He seems to have been, at least, a real person. They're selling the obit article on this
website:
http://www.matarka.hu/eng/cikk_list.php?fusz=80030 Noone took the time to write an email to the academy of sciences or the university if he
existed, everyone just asks it on forums. I think I write a few emails today if I have
the time.
Re: Hun Language? There's several things from the obit that should be verifiable: I had time to make some translation from Astvatzaturian's research. I skipped the 'bullnuts', and translated the words and the source only. Because its thousands of words, lets start with words starting with letter A. Signs: a és még,és pedig (and more, and plus) Just to make clear : first the Hunnic, second the Hungarian and then the (English
version)
Re: Hun Language? Thank you very much for this translation! This way is much easier to use the source without checking every word in online
dictionaries which takes enormous quantity of time. We can hope now to advance much
faster in studying these texts.
Re: Hun Language? Words starting with B baa 1. nagy emlõsállat (big mammal), 2. shuchy baa: szent állat (saint animal) In Old Bulgarian material was found the calendar term "verenialem" thought to be Hunno-Bulgarian name for "first" (alem) month in the year of Wolf (böri) or in another interpretation Dragon (or rather Lizard - varan). Here the Hunnic word for "first" is elenishi. There is also elyn meaning "one, alone", which is very close to Bulgarian alem or elem (from another source). Also "Vereni"(virtually identical with Bulgarian term!) is given as the name of the star Antares (Aplha Scorpionis). In Chinese astronomy Antares (or "Fire Star") is part of a constellation now related to the group of Rabbit but very close to the next belonging to Tiger (= Wolf in Hunno-Bulgarian). Maybe it's just a coincidence, but it seems interesting...
Re: Hun Language? The word elem exists in hungarian language as well, it means one piece of something, or
one part of something.
Re: Hun Language? Would somebody tell something about the content of this text: http://osmagyar.kisbiro.hu/modules.php?n....a-486cbedc7a0b7 It is supposed to be fragments from some Hunnic epic called "Dlimild Ashar" i.e. "Diamond World". It is really difficult for me to decipher it without proper knowledge of Hungarian (I use an automatic translator). Thanks in advance!
Re: Hun Language? Its some kind of poem about an Askatan attack where the two leaders Donud and Cerned starts to invade a swampland and makes the borders of scythia as wide as it has no any gates. the name of the land they starts to invad is Ghereghit. The second chapter is fully mistycal about the land of Gheregit. Stars became shining 2000 times more than the brightest ones before, light sheeps were rushing through the lands, and light birds were flying everywhere. The third chapter is about they find a big black mouth in Gheregit where is no god, and its the opponent of the world, nothing shines there. Noone came back from that big black mouth but Donud and Cerned. Sg. like this
Re: Hun Language? Mar 25, 2011, 10:37am, hjernespiser wrote:
He died 21st May 2008, in TYROS (Lebanon). (Was born in 2nd February 1932, Erzsébetváros, ERDÉLY, HUNGARY-Transilvany). He worked at Armenian University of Tyros.
Re: Hun Language? It seems that the materials on this site: I think this whole page is a fake, otherwise scholars would take much more effort to research the words. When these texts came up many people tried to get information from Csaba Detre, the author of the first Hunnic text books, but he never answered to the inquiries, where and how he got the words list from Armenia. Because of the weird circumstances these texts appeared no serious scholar researches them. That Armenian linguist (Astvatzaturian) is probably a fake person too.
Re: Hun Language? I think the same too.
Re: Hun Language? Benzin, Any more of your Hun/Magyar/Angol dictionary? Keep it coming! |
||||||||||||||||||
Links to dictionaries (in Hungarian) | ||||||||||||||||||
http://filozofia.wplanet.hu/tag_va.html
FŐOLDAL Vahan Anhaghth AstvatzaturianVahan Anhaghth Astvatzaturian professzor a nyelvtudományok legendás művelője, 1932. február 2-án látta meg a napvilágot az erdélyi Erzsébetvárosban, mint Szongott Dénes, Szongott Miklós történelemtanár fia, Szongott Kristóf, a híres szamosújvári örmény történész-tanár dédunokaöccse. 1945-ben a család szüleivel és nénjével Olaszországba menekül, s Velencében, az örmény kultúra nyugati fellegvárában települ le. Diákéveit ott tölti, majd beiratkozik a mechitaristák egyetemére. 1955-ben szerez doktori diplomát örmény nyelv- és történelemből. 1957-ben pappá szentelik, s belép a Mechitarista Rendbe. Ekkor veszi fel családja eredeti nevét (Astavatzaturian), amelyet II. József törölt el 1784-ben, s kényszerítette a családra annak német tükörfordítását: Sohn-Gottes. A rend 1958-ban Libanonba küldi, a Tyrosi Örmény Egyetemen örmény nyelvet és indogermán összehasonlító nyelvészetet tanít. 1961-ben közép-ázsiai, majd észak-afrikai kéziratgyűjtő és régészeti expedíciókban vesz részt, ahonnan 1967-ben tér vissza Tyrosba. Ekkor az egyetem professzorává fogadja. 1968-1970 között megújítja az ősi szervezet, a Société Arménienne de Zarytos történészi kutatásait. Itt mintegy 80 kiváló, többnyire örmény származású történész-régész-nyelvész kutatásait irányítja. 1973-1976 között libanoni kulturális attasé az Iráni Császárságban. Elképesztő nyelvtudása még ugyancsak polyglott munkatársait is elkápráztatta. Magyar és örmény anyanyelvén kívül az alábbi nyelveket beszélte magas fokon: Olasz, veneto-i, francia, spanyol, portugál, katalán, gallego, león-i, román, német, angol, holland, flamand, svéd, dán, izlandi, ír, kimru (welsh), finn, észt, lív, orosz, lengyel, ukrán, cseh, szlovák, szerb, bolgár, albán, új-görög, perzsa, kurd, hindi, grúz, csecsen, török (számos közép-ázsiai rokonnyelveivel), új-héber, arab, kopt. A kihalt nyelvek közül a pun nyelvnek elsőszámú tudora volt, de nagyon jól ismerte az ó-görög, latin, ó-örmény, ó-perzsa, ó-arab, szír, ó-héber, ó-egyiptomi, szanszkrit nyelveket is. A hun-szkíta nyelvemlékek felderítésében és összegyűjtésében oroszlánrészt vállalt. Foglakozott az etruszk nyelv problematikájával is. Nem szívesen publikált, nem maradt sok publikációja az utókorra, nem szerette tanulmányait kisebb cikkekben szétszórni, kizárólag összefoglaló, monografikus tanulmányokat jelentetett meg. Hallatlanul szerény, hallgatag ember volt, nem szeretetett "szerepelni." Művei közül kiemelkedik a Dynamique Évolutionnaire des langues (Zarytos-(Tyros, 1973) c. hatalmas nyelvfilozófiai monográfiája, a Lingua Punica (Venezia, 1981) nyelvészeti monográfia, valamint a szkitoid nyelvekről írt első átfogó publikáció: Les langues scythoides - (Zarytos-Tyros, 1985). 1993-ban az Örmény Tudományos Akadémia tiszteletbeli tagjává választotta, és a Jereváni Egyetem díszdoktorává avatta. 1992-ben járt utoljára Magyarországon, ekkor részt vett a Filozófiai Vitakör "Ember és Fejlődés" konferenciáján. Vahan Anhaghth Astvatzaturian 2008. május 21-én húnyt el a libanoni Tyrosban (a mai Tir). Letölthető dokumentumok: Hozzászólás Asztvatzaturian "Kormotheosz" c. munkájához Lezukuna, azaz Ashkatan Szkíta-Hun nyelvkönyv - 1. rész Lezukuna, azaz Ashkatan Szkíta-Hun nyelvkönyv - 2. rész
FŐOLDAL
|
||||||||||||||||||