A ndrâs Ro na -Tas | Â rpâd B erta with the assistance of L âszlo K âr o ly WEST OLD TURKIC TURKIC LOANWORDS IN HUNGARIAN Par T I: Introduction , Lexicon »A-K« 2011 Harrassowitz Verlag • Wiesbaden Türk Dilleri Kütüphanesi
The main aim of this work is to contribute to the reconstruction of West Old Turkic.
Old Turkic refers to those Turkic languages which were spoken approximately between the 5*^ and the early 12*^ centuries.
In the 5*^ century independent sources such as Chinese, Greek and others report about new peoples who start to play important role in Eurasia.
They spoke closely related idioms which were the forerunners of the later Turkic languages.
In the Eastern part of Eurasia the Turks founded an Empire in 553 A.D. in the territory which is now Mongolia.
Even earlier, in 463, Greek sources inform us about the names of Turkic newcomers in East Europe.
From the middle of the 6*^ century Central Eurasia, from the Danube to the Yellow river was under Turkic rule or influence.
This lasted until the Mongolian invasion in the early 13*^ century.
We use Old Turkic to denote all varieties of Turkic spoken in this large territory and during this long period.
Until recent times it was customary to call Old Turkic (Alttürkisch, drevnetjurkskij) all languages and dialects of this period.
In practice, however, this term covered only those languages spoken in the East of Old Turcia.
The ever growing amount of East Old Turkic sources and its deepening research made this understandable.
Our aim is to contribute material to the research of the varieties of Turkic languages spoken in the West of Old Turcia, West of the Ural mountain range and the Ural river.
The Turkic peoples of East Europe in the Old Turkic times exerted great influence on other peoples living in the area.
Among them were the Hungarians, who lived with and among Turks from the 5*^ to the end of the 9*^ century, and did not loose contacts until the Mongolian inva sion of Hungary in 1241, and perhaps even later.
These close contacts are mirrored in a great number of loanwords, and we offer here the results of our research on these loanwords as a contribution to the reconstruction of West Old Turkic.
As a second aim of this book I would mention our contribution to the etymological studies of Turkic.
We try to reconstruct the form which has been copied by Türk Dilleri Kütüphanesi V III Preface the Hungarian speakers.
In addition we analyse the morphological structure of the Turkic word, as far as our knowledge permits.
If a word is a loan in Turkic, we make attempts to trace its origin.
The main body of the text is organized around lexical entries that reflect Turkic influence on Hungarian.
The lexicon covers several dozen letters and a broad spectrum of semantic fields.
The Lexicon 4 Lexicon »A -K «................................................................................................................. A, Â ................................................................................................................................. B ....................................................................................................................................... C ..................................................................................................................................... C s ..................................................................................................................................... D ..................................................................................................................................... E, E ................................................................................................................................. G ..................................................................................................................................... Gy ................................................................................................................................... H ..................................................................................................................................... I, ^ ................................................................................................................................... J ....................................................................................................................................... 474 K ..................................................................................................................................... 478 Türk Dilleri Kütüphanesi
Preface The main aim of this work is to contribute to the reconstruction of West Old Turkic.
The Hungarians lived with and among Turks from the 5*^ to the end of the 9*^ century, and did not loose contacts until the Mongolian invasion of Hungary in 1241, and perhaps even later.
These close contacts are mirrored in a great number of loanwords, and we offer here the results of our research on these loanwords as a contribution to the reconstruction of West Old Turkic.
The third aim is to contribute to the history of the Hungarian language and people.
Turkic loanwords have long been used in the reconstruction of the history of the Hungarian language.
In light of the great amount of new results in Turkology, the earlier studies need an urgent revision.
On the other hand we would like to facilitate the use of the Hungarian data for Turkologists to whom the literature in and on Hungarian is difficult to access.
Language contacts mirror historical contacts, thus we try to exploit the material also for the cultural history of East Europe at the same time.
Last but not least we would like to offer this book to PhD students in Turkology and East European studies.
Arpâd Berta and I gave lectures on this topic to our PhD students at our University in Szeged.
Many of our students had great fun with these types of research and after a time they became our helpers and collaborators.
Below we shall give their names.
We hope that we can entice new young scholars into this fascinating work.
It is always very difficult to write a book in a team or in a co-authorship.
On the other hand it becomes more and more difficult to work isolated and alone.
The co-operation of the authors run as follows: Professor Arpâd Berta was one of my first students when I begun to teach Altaic studies at the University of Szeged.
He first graduated in German and Slavic studies and after having joined the courses of the Department of Altaic studies also graduated there.
After having defended his PhD in Turkology he became a faculty member of the Department.
He defended his Doctor of Sciences dissertation in 1996 at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and became full professor in the same year.
He led the Department of Altaic studies, founded by me in 1974, until his untimely death in 2008 March.
Our co-operation in writing this book has lasted since the middle of the nineties.
We published a paper in which we outlined our undertaking and gave a few sample articles.
This appeared in Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae (BertaRona-Tas 2002).
