JOURNAL OF EURASIAN STUDIES

January-March 2011 JOURNAL OF EURASIAN STUDIES Volume III., Issue 1.
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OBRUSÁNSZKY, Borbála
Hunnic Linguistic Issues
The research regarding the language of the Huns began in Europe after the French missionary
Deguignes had translated in the 18 th century Chinese sources which recorded the deeds of the Huns. The
French scholar stated that Xiongnu in Far-Eastern sources is the same as Huns or Hunas in the European
and Central Asian records. He also stated that the heritage of the Huns can be found in the living
languages of their descendants: Turkic peoples, Hungarians and the Mongols. The Hungarian aspects
were then elaborated by George Pray. During the same century, the research of the Hun tribes continued
and several scholars investigated many ancient historical sources. Generally speaking until the mid 19 th
century, the above mentioned research was based solely on historical sources, and linguistic discussions
followed that pattern.
The linguists of that time associated the language of the Huns not with a single ethnic group, but to
those ones, who lived on the vast territories of the Eurasian steppe and who were traditionally related to
Huns. At that time the artificial theory of language families had not been widespread, therefore the
researchers believed that the root of the Turkic, Mongolian and the Hungarian languages was the
language of the Scythians or Huns.
From the end of the 19 th century onwards only a very few linguists thought in such a comprehensive
way, the majority of the linguists accepted a linguistic concept, which was based on Darwinism and
created so-called “family trees” with languages that had no real historical connections with each other. 1
Based on this new linguistic concept, they were busy reconstructing the proto-languages. According to
Gábor Bálint this was completely unnecessary. Among the historians positivism became widespread,
which rejected all the legends and stories of the steppe tribes; hence they did not accept their historical
tradition.
During this period the previously admired Hun people became monsters and barbarians and scholars
were obliged to write only in negative terms like barbarians or savages, etc. In publications on Huns they
were described as not having permanent houses, or cities, that they could not write, and that they just
learned everything from the "civilized" people, i.e. Indo-Europeans. The "new" historical approach and
the linguistic theories completely clouded the results, and its negative impact, unfortunately, is still felt
today, especially in the official Hungarian scientific circles, which is still dominated by these outdated
theories.
While the Western European languages are not really affected by the new linguistic classification, those
nations, which had Hun heritage, especially Hungarians, had been listed as Siberian clans with unknown
roots.
1 Marcantonio, 2006.
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