The Chuvash people are an Orthodox Christian Turkic people numbering about 1,5 million people, and are native to Volga region of Russia. They speak an unique Turkic language related to the Bulgars, Kutrigurs and Utigurs.

24 comments

  1. What is interesting about the Chuvash language is that it is the most distinct of all still existing Turkic languages as they are divided into the Oghur branch of which only Chuvash remains and into Common Turkic, which includes all other Turkic languages.

  2. > related to the Bulgars, Kutrigurs and Utigurs

    no proof, Chuvash have never been Bulgars, but a different tribe from the Volga confederation.

    It has a big Finno-Ugric influence.

  3. Note that due to the close affiliation with Oghurs, Hungarian has many Turkic words that predates Cuman or Ottoman:

    * Hung. tenger, Oghur. *tengir, Comm. *tengiz ‘sea’
    * Hung. gyűrű, Oghur. *ǰürük, Comm. *yüzük ‘ring’
    * and terms of equestrian culture ló ‘horse’, nyereg ‘saddle’, fék ‘bridle’, ostor ‘whip’.
    * A number of Hungarian loanwords were borrowed before the 9th century, shown by sz- (< Oğ. *ś-) rather than gy- (< Oğ. *ǰ-), for example Hung. szél, Oghur. *śäl, Chuv. śil, Comm. *yel ‘wind’, Hung. szűcs ‘tailor’, Hung. szőlő ‘grapes’.

  4. How do people who speak such local languages deal with the 21st century? It must be infuriating to monolingual and not be an english speaker in a world as connected as ours.

  9. Chuvash folk music and Hungarian folk music (and Mari folk music as well) comes from the same roots. Best music I’ve known. Always keep singing!

    ^(edit: typo)

  12. I wonder if 150 years ago those round metal pieces would all have been silver coins (everywhere arab coins spread through trade it used to be common to make jewelry out of dirham coins. Partially because they were made from very pure silver, partially because they’re very small and thin).

  20. From Merriam Webster:

    > Choosing between the indefinite articles a and an is determined by the sound of the following word. If the word begins with a consonant sound you would use a, such as “a dog” and “a balloon,” as well as “a one” and “a unicorn.” If the word begins with a vowel sound, use an, such as in “an honorable man,” and with spoken acronyms like “an FBI agent.” Words like historic, with a pronounced “H,” can use either a or an.

    > The rule that many people vaguely remember is that one uses a if the word that follows it begins with a consonant, and one uses an if the following word begins with a vowel. That would be so easy, wouldn’t it?

    > It would, which is why that is not the way that the rule for using a or an works.

  22. Those people have nothing to do with Bulgarians. 14 centuries ago tribes from the dying Huns split in many directions. Some tribes went to Volga river, thus the name, and were converted to muslims in the 9th century. Other tribes went to present Ukraine, present Bulgaria, present South Italy etc. The mixture of people in present Bulgaria done in the next 1400 years have change the DNA massively.

    I’ve been seeing these based posts recently in r/europe from certain users which are in my opinion paid political posts and should not be approved here, but whatever.

Leave a Reply