Oghuric

The Oghuric or Bulgar languages are the earliest branch to split from the Turkic family, marked by r where the later Common Turkic languages have z. They were carried by the steppe confederations of the Onogurs, Bulgars and Khazars, and Oghuric served as the lingua franca of the Khazar state.

After Old Great Bulgaria broke up in the seventh century, Bulgars under Asparukh reached the Danube and eventually adopted a Slavic language, while the followers of Kotrag settled the Volga and Kama rivers, built Volga Bulgaria and adopted Islam in 922. The Mongol invasion of 1223 to 1236 destroyed that state and carried its Bulgar language into the Golden Horde.

Volga Bulgar speech lived on in Chuvash, while the extinct Bulgar and the poorly attested Khazar survive only in fragments and loanwords, including early Turkic borrowings in Hungarian.