Treasure of Nagyszentmiklós and Buyla inscription: First Brave New Decipherments

What can be referred to as the Nagyszentmiklós inscriptions is not written in a single alphabet or a single language. The world's first decipherments of these inscriptions done by me that are far more coherent than all the previous interpretations existing (of those I'm aware of) reveal what these languages are.

Keywords: Nagyszentmiklós treasure, Nagyszentmiklós inscriptions, Buyla inscription, Hungarian inscriptions, Slavic inscriptions, Sauromatae, Cimmerians, Massagetae, Hunni

Narrated Text (minorly different from the real speech in the video, the textual version being primary; every new timestamp is a new slide on the screen):

(00:00:00) Hello everyone. This is the Video No.6, in which, as I promised before, I will show you why I think the Buyla inscription is written in a Slavic language. The previous time, I asked my viewers to invite as many scholars they know as they could, and if you are one of them or have just happened to come across my channel, please stay with me until the end of this video or spare the time to watch it in full later. Please listen to what I will be saying regardless of whether you like me or not.

In this video, we will be dealing with mediaeval inscriptions on my channel for the first time. As I previously explained, I've selected the Buyla inscription to be one of the earliest to provide my decipherment for because it's written in Greek letters so that there should be no debate on what these letters are. But the language of the inscription doesn't seem to perfectly match any modern language we know. So, maybe it makes sense to start with an inscription less legible in its signs but more comprehensible in its meaning. Such inscriptions (not just one) do exist. The ones I mean are inscribed on the vessels of the same Treasure of Nagyszentmiklós. Their signs resemble the Old Turkic script, but astonishing as it is, the language behind them, in my view, is Hungarian. Did you want to see my skills? I will show you now what I'm capable of. Let's get started.

To examine these inscriptions, we will be mainly referring to the book titled "Heritage of Scribes. The Relation of Rovas Scripts to Eurasian Writing Systems" authored by Gábor Hosszú. The first inscription to analyze will be the one on the Bowl No.8. (00:01:59) Gábor Hosszú and reportedly the Hungarian linguist Erzsébet Zelliger think that a possible interpretation of it is "The fermented woshudu for him to warm up". Not all people understand that such interpretations usually mean that the inscription is wrongly deciphered. What is the connection between the woshudu drink and this bowl? Was this bowl given together with some drink in another vessel? In this case, these signs should have been inscribed on that other vessel. Was the woshudu drink poured down the same bowl with the inscription? What for? Is it some rite of passing open vessels from one person to another with liquid inside? Is the woshudu drink the only drink that can be poured down this bowl? Is it dangerous to drink if it's not warmed up? Is this bowl not meant for drinking anything from it but only for warming up some stuff? Is it dangerous to drink from this specific bowl? Is it cursed? Are the woshudu drink and this bowl one and the same thing? There is no imaginable context where such an inscription could even have been written. The second big problem with this interpretation lies in the interpretation of the individual signs. Though not all of them resemble the Old Turkic script, the others definitely do. But the signs that do resemble are not interpreted as having the same phonetic values as their respective Turkic runes. And this is what we will be trying to avoid. What generally can be inscribed on a vessel? For instance, some text that mentions the type of this vessel. But if we follow this line of thinking for the inscription on this bowl, we will most likely fail. The text on a vessel should not even be necessarily a wish. It can be words of wisdom. Since we don't know yet what is written on the bowl, let's focus on the structure of the inscription in question. We can see that the whole text is split into four pieces by a cross-like separator. Every piece may be a separate lexeme or a sequence of lexemes where one of the two groups is function words. Function words are usually too short, so separating them with additional separators is at least inconvenient. (00:04:27) Assuming that the inscription is written in the right-to-left script, at the beginning of its two pieces there is a sign that doesn't seem to exist in the Old Turkic script. The sign it resembles the most is the Turkic rune with the phonetic value /k/ ("𐰚"). The signs are not the same, but it's possible that their phonetic values are similar or they correspond to related letters in the modern alphabet of the respective modern language. (00:04:54) If the inscription is written in the Hungarian language of those times, this sign could be the counterpart of the Modern Hungarian letter sequence "gy". Its presence at the beginning of the two words or phrases suggests that the inscription possibly contains at least one Hungarian article "egy". Let's try to read the last two pieces of the inscription (which are the left two). Assuming that the first word is the article "egy", there are still some signs that do not perfectly match any of the Turkic runes. The sign immediately following the article can be erroneously regarded as the rune that is read as /o/ or /u/ in the Turkic script. It's not that sign because that sign read in that way is found in the first piece of the inscription. As I spent some time with Turkic inscriptions that also have this sign, I can say that in this inscription this sign corresponds to the Hungarian letter "n". (00:05:57) The next two signs after the "n" are most likely the Turkic runes where the first is read as /m/ and the second as /s/ or /ʃ/ respectively. The value /ʃ/ for the second sign of these two is not mentioned by Wikipedia, it's part of my(!) knowledge. The first three consonant letters "n", "m", and "s" following the article "egy" suggest that the last letter is the vowel "i". The last cannot be deduced just by looking at tables of the Old Turkic script and should be explained. In the Hungarian lexicon, there are the words "nemes" and "nemesi". "nemes" is either the adjective "noble" or the noun "nobleman". The adjective "nemesi" derives from "nemes" and means "noble" or "nobiliary". In my view, there is some logic behind why the author of the inscription wrote "nemesi" ("nobiliary") instead of "nemes" ("noble"). (00:06:57) In the fourth and last piece of the inscription, it's mainly the first sign that raises doubts on how to read it. Its closest analogues in the Turkic script are read as /r/ or /t/. Considering the fact that the previous word is apparently "nemesi", to make the whole text coherent, the last part should be the Hungarian word "ereje" (or "erője"). (00:07:22) It's a possesive form of the Hungarian noun "erő" meaning "strength", "force", "power". "ereje" is literally translated as "his/her/its strength/force/power", whereas "egy nemesi ereje" means "a power of a nobleman's" or "one of a nobleman's powers". In this phrase, the possesive form "ereje" in itself does not require the replacement of the word "nemes" with "nemesi" (from the perspective of the Modern Hungarian language). If I correctly understand Hungarian grammar, the native Modern Hungarian speaker would more likely say "egy nemes ereje" instead. I think the reason why the author eventually wrote "nemesi" was to highlight the possesion: "a noble power" is not exactly the same as "a nobiliary power", "a power possessed by a nobleman". Also, it's still possible that Hungarian grammar worked slightly differently in those times, but I think that the form "nemesi" is more logical here - because of the preceding text. (00:08:32) If the sign we've interpreted as the Hungarian letter "n" is present in the first two pieces as well, what is the last sign of the second piece? Looking into tables of Turkic runes, we should consider the possibility that its phonetic value is also in some way close to the phone [n]. In the Hungarian language, some letters can be followed by an "y" that modifies (and which usually modifies) the original consonant pronounced without this additional letter. And that's probably why there are the two types of the signs in the inscription that can be both somehow related to the same phone [n]. The last sign in the second piece is not /n/ but /ɲ/ ("ny"). I don't see a way to interpret it otherwise, but at the same time, the only interpretation of the whole piece I managed to find is the sequence "egy önkény". The word "önkény" is what I didn't expect to see in this inscription, but I should try to explain it regardless and will do this in a moment. (00:09:38) As for the remaining piece, the first and the rightmost one, the only sign that raises doubts is the third one from the right. The same piece as a single phrase is apparently present on two jugs from the same Nagyszentmiklós treasure. The Hungarian archaeologist József Hampel, in his article "Treasure of Nagyszentmiklós. Study on the Art of the Migration Period" (in the original Hungarian - "A nagyszentmiklósi kincs. Tanulmány a népvándorláskori művészetről") from 1884, writes that on these two jugs, this phrase is inscribed on their bottoms. But on which side? If inside the jugs, then this might explain why there are no photos of these two inscriptions even in the book by Gábor Hosszú. We cannot verify these two and cannot say whether they are part of the original design or were inscribed some time later. We have no choice but to trust their copies provided, and as the same signs constitute the first piece of the first inscription in question, we may assume that all these three inscriptions are at least written in the same alphabet. (00:10:50) At the beginning, this strange third sign (from the right) reminded me of the Turkic rune "baš" ("𐱈"), which according to Russian Wikipedia can be read as /rt/ or /rd/ and according to English Wikipedia as /baʃ/. If it's indeed the "baš" sign, then I have to suggest that the phrase inscribed on each of the jugs is the word "jug" itself. (00:11:14) The problem is that in this case this word will be the Russian "кувшин", and the Russian language is the only Slavic language where this word is typically used with this meaning. This option is unlikely to be correct because if the first inscription ends with "egy önkény egy nemesi ereje", the first piece cannot be the word "jug". Having spent a lot of time trying to confirm that this strange sign is "baš", (00:11:42) I finally concluded that it's not and must be replaced with a letter "l". Moreover, the sign itself looks like two copies of the Turkic rune with the phonetic value /j/ attaching to each other in the way that their vertical lines become shared and then the common line becomes partly erased. This phrase that is present in all the three inscriptions is the Hungarian adverb or adjective "külön" - "separately", "apart", "specifically", "expressly"; "separate". A lexeme derived from "külön" can be found in such a Hungarian phrase as "különösen neked" which is translated as "especially for you". Initially I thought that the first inscription starts in a similar way and that the second piece contains a pronoun, but the first sign in this piece does not allow this. (00:12:36) In Modern Hungarian, the noun "önkény" (seemingly present in the inscription) means "arbitrariness", "wilfulness", "self-will", "despotism". It's compounded from the prefix "ön-" ("self-") and the noun "kény" which, (00:12:52) according to "New Hungarian Etymological Dictionary" ("Új magyar etimológiai szótár"), in different times, meant "will (volition)", "voluntary willingness", "delight", and/or "(sensual) pleasure". If I have correctly deciphered the second piece, the whole sentence "külön egy önkény egy nemesi ereje" is approximately translated as "particularly the wilfulness / self-will / self-volition is one of the nobiliary powers", or "particularly the wilfulness / self-will / self-volition is one of the powers possessed by a nobleman". I'm using the phrase "one of" because it may explain why in one sentence there are two indefinite Hungarian articles (because I doubt that Modern Hungarian works in the same way): the first one denotes that the noun "önkény" is referred to generically and performs the same function as does the definite English article when it describes a whole class of objects; the second one corresponds to the indefinite English article but whose indefiniteness is emphasized. What is the exact translation of the word "önkény" in the sentence - "wilfulness", "self-will", "self-volition" - is not clear. But what we probably can infer from this whole message to the recipient is that the author probably wanted to convey the following sense, "Do whatever you wish. And if you can always make this happen, if you have such power, you definitely belong to the noble / aristocratic society, you belong to high social rank." Even if the lexeme "önkény" appears in the historical record later than the lexeme "kény", in the times when the last lexeme existed, the existence of the first one is rather expected. The bigger concern of mine is what exactly is hidden behind the second piece of the inscription and what its exact meaning is.

(00:14:54) Why the word "külön" is inscribed on those two jugs seems to be explicable. Besides the lexeme "külön", the Hungarian language also has "külön-külön" which means "individually", "one by one". I think that on each of these two jugs, "külön" is one of the two pieces of "külön-külön". Both the jugs could have been meant for two different people, for instance, for a couple: one for the husband ("külön") and one for the wife ("külön"). "külön-külön": "one by one", "individually": "this one is for you, this one is for you".

To be sure that we've correctly interpreted the signs of the first inscription consisting of four pieces (even if we are wrong about the text), we need some other inscription to verify them. (00:15:44) Let's start from the inscription where there is a sign similar to the one that we've previously replaced with a letter "l" and a sign similar to the one that we've previously replaced with "i". I don't see any reason to regard this inscription as bilingual. In my view, the phrase written here is "alakja kincses" which means "its shape is treasured / full of treasure / precious". (00:16:10) "kincses" is an adjective deriving from the noun "kincs" ("treasure") and meaning "containing treasures". This interpretation suggests that the consonant /j/ is not represented by any sign. On the one hand, I might be wrong about the first part. On the other, this consonant is a semivowel, which is less critical to omit than a consonant of a different type.

(00:16:36) If our previous interpretations are correct, then this inscription should not be difficult to decipher. It appears on one horn, two bowls, and two cups, and is most likely part of the original design. There are only two new signs in it we haven't seen before, but they can be quite easily associated with the Turkic runes of similar appearance. The second sign from the beginning (from the right) is the Turkic rune "aš" whose phonetic values include /ɑʃ/, /ʃɑ/, /ʃ/. The inscription is split into two parts by some separator that represents either a space or is a punctuation mark. The sign before the separator is the Turkic rune with the phonetic value /t/. At the beginning I thought this sign is a ligature because it doesn't strictly match either the Orkhon or Yenisei variant of the respective Turkic rune. But then I realised that it's rather a mix of the two variants: the vertical line from the one variant and the bottom part from the variant without the vertical line, the top part being common. This inscription is also written in Hungarian and reads "ismét, gyönyör" - "again, pleasure", "pleasure again", "(it's a) pleasure again". The sign I've replaced with the digraph "ny" was replaced with a single "n" in the very first inscription we started from. But I don't think it's a mistake. I conjecture it's either because the difference between "n" and "ny" is only required to be respected within a single inscription but not between, or because the author was not fully literate. Whatever pleasure it is, "pleasure to see you", "pleasure to satisfy you", it doesn't matter what it means exactly. But the phrase is coherent and can be placed on any type of vessel - which actually happened.

(00:18:42) But there is(!) also an inscription that in my view speaks of a tool on which it's left. Such an inscription is found on two flat-shallow ladles or scoops. They are not exactly vessels and were possibly used neither for drinking directly from them nor for eating directly from them. All the signs are legible, but the word they read, oddly, is "kényelmek". The Modern Hungarian singular noun "kényelem", from which the plural noun "kényelmek" is grammatically derived, means "comfort", "circumstances, objects that ensure relaxation, rest, pleasant tranquility". But it's attested only from the early 19th century according to "New Hungarian Etymological Dictionary". When applied to a vessel-like tool, the plural noun "kényelmek" can be translated as "amenities", "conveniences". And this interpretation matches these ladles or scoops very well, perfectly. But when the inscription was made is unknown.

(00:19:48) Another inscription is left on one cup on which an instance of the "ismét, gyönyör" phrase is engraved. Its first four signs seem to also appear on one more vessel. Assuming that the same four signs on the second vessel in the bottom line continue the message in the line above, and since we expect that these four signs constitute a sequence of complete words (from the first sign of the first to the last sign of the last), assuming that the second sign of these four is "n" or "ny" and the third is "e" (albeit spelt like "j" on the second vessel), (00:20:30) noticing the space or punctuation mark in the first line, I read this text as follows: "szíves szent, kegy könnyez" or "szíves szent, kegy könnyező". "szíves szent" means "kind saint", "kegy" means "grace", (00:20:50) "könnyez" (the same as "könnyezik") means "(he/she/it) cries / weeps", or "(he/she/it) waters" as in "my eyes water", "könnyező" is the present participle from "könnyezik". (00:21:05) The Turkic rune with the phonetic value /b/ is used for the phoneme /v/, the rune with the value /ntʃ/ for the phonemes /nt/, and the last strange sign has the phonetic value /z/. In the word "szíves", both the "sz" and "s" are represented by the same sign possibly because the first phoneme /s/ is palatalised. And as it's not in the word "szent", the other sign is used. But which of the two signs is /s/ and which is /ʃ/ or the palatalised /s/ depends on the inscription and only matters within it, as in the case of "n" and "ny". The possible translations of the inscription are or include "kind saint, grace makes eyes water" or "kind saint, grace is eye-watering". The message is probably a prayer of thanks. And this might help us read those three signs on the edge of the vessel. (00:22:11) Among the options I have are the adjective "nyeles" meaning "with a handle" (this one is odd), the noun "nyelés" meaning "gulp" (more likely), the noun "nyalás" meaning "lick" (less likely), the adjective "nyálas" meaning "covered in saliva" (still less likely). If this piece is somehow connected to the prayer, it might denote the action after which or before which the prayer is said. "Nyelés! Szíves Szent, kegy könnyező. Nyelés!", "Gulp! Kind Saint, grace is eye-watering! Gulp!" (00:22:54) The first inscription of the two likely has the word "könnyező" (not "könnyez") as well. I think this participle describes the previous noun "gyönyör" ("pleasure"). Perhaps, it was put after the noun, not before, because there was no available space between the first two words that were already engraved. Why I think it is a participle is because the next and the last word written with four signs is a verb in the subjunctive mood. The third sign looks like the one for "l", but in this case I cannot read the inscription. In the photo the sign is illegible and thus I cannot verify it. That's why I've had to conclude that this sign is not "l" but "j". The first sign appears in several inscriptions, and everywhere it has been "k". But I think this case is different - the first sign here should be replaced with the letter "h". And here comes my interpretation: "Ismét, gyönyör könnyező hulljon!", "Let again the eye-watering pleasure flow!" Pay attention to the way how "n" and "ny" are transcribed in this inscription: in the opposite manner compared to the one we started from. I don't know whether such an order of words is acceptable in poetry, but in normal speech the sentence would probably be spoken as "Ismét, könnyező gyönyör hulljon!".

(00:24:30) On one bowl where the phrase "ismét, gyönyör" is present, the author of the book reports about one more short inscription of four signs. I have no better ideas but to read it as "igekor", "at the time of the Word", "at the time of the word of God". (00:24:49) 'If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you', the Gospel of Saint John, chapter 15, verse 7. Archimandrite Peter, abbot of the Monastery of St John the Baptist in Essex, UK - as of December 17th, 2022 - in his article "The Creative Word of God", explains this verse as follows:

"If the word of Christ abides in man, it will surely lead him to prayer: it comes as a light and in the light of this word, man sees the holiness of God, His ineffable love and therefore is naturally attracted to Him. Man also sees that he is fallen, distorted and not fit for this love of God, and this urges him to turn to God with a strong cry. The words of Christ were uttered in the power of the eternal Spirit of God, and if we allow this word to dwell in us, then our own prayer will be uttered, keeping the proportions, in the same power of the Spirit of God, for we will speak to Him in the same language He spoke to us. If Christ's word dwells in us, we shall turn to Him with prayer and whatever we shall ask, it shall be done unto us."

What I'm trying to convey is that if "igekor" is the correct reading (at the moment, we cannot verify it), then this extended inscription probably also implies the time of praying, as does one of the previous. Whenever "Christ's word dwells in us", we pray. And every prayer before and/or after the meal gives us pleasure, again and again. "Igekor(,) ismét, gyönyör." "At the time God speaks to us, at the time we respond to Him with a prayer, (it's a) pleasure again." Perhaps, because it's a pleasure to talk to Him.

All these decipherments should be enough to conclude that the language behind most (if not all) of the inscriptions written in the alphabet resembling the Turkic runes is Hungarian. (00:27:15) The remaining two short inscriptions provided by Gábor Hosszú in his book are unlikely to affect this conclusion. Plus, I only have some vague idea about one of these two - the one with two signs. (00:27:29) I can read it only as "iszik" ("he/she/it drinks"), "iszok" ("I drink", which could be part of the phrase "egészségére / egészségedre iszok", "I drink to your health"), "eszik" ("he/she/it eats"), "eszek" ("I eat" or "I like a certain feature about someone"), "hisz" ("he/she/it believes"), "esik" ("he/she/it feels"), "essék" (the third-person singular subjunctive present indefinite of "esik"), "essek" (the first-person singular subjunctive present indefinite of "esik"), or "kis" ("tiny", "small", "little"). But all of these are only guesses. No definite answer.

After I had deciphered these inscriptions, I was very interested to know whether there exists any paper or book with interpretations in any way close to mine. And guess what. I found nothing, zero. For many years, in front of Hungarian scholars, there were Hungarian inscriptions they didn't manage to correctly decipher. That's "awesome". That's not normal. And now imagine the whole picture. The Scythian language is Slavic. If you are new to my channel, in my previous videos I've provided a lot of linguistic evidence corroborating this statement. The only reason to not regard it as Slavic is perhaps formal terminology. A language can be called Slavic if it's the direct predecessor of a modern Slavic language and already crossed the hypothetical point of the hypothetical divergence, final or not, of all the modern Slavic languages to come on the timeline: the point after which all these languages or several groups of theirs started to develop their features independently. But the predecessors of the modern Slavic languages residing on the part of the timeline before this point of divergence, including hypothetical Proto-Slavic, is a different category. Formally, they are not Slavic anymore, and all of them are also hypothetical (though, for the sake of clarity, I do or may call the hypothetical or real Slavic-like languages starting from Proto-Slavic Slavic as well). What is much more important is that what we don't know, what we cannot state, what we cannot claim, is when this point of this unclearly specified divergence happened, let alone whether. There is not a single reason to even debate this because there is no evidence suggesting even an approximate date. That's why the Hunnic terms that have been preserved or survived in modern Slavic languages but do not exist in any other languages (at least European ones) are Slavic. "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck." The Scythian lexemes are Slavic because they behave "like a duck". When the hypothetical point of the divergence of Proto-Slavic was suggested, the knowledge about the Scythian language I've collected only in recent years did not exist yet. But the Scythian language is just one piece of this whole picture I asked you to imagine. The second piece is the Cimmerian language which I've proved to be Germanic (the corroborating evidence is also available on my channel). The Cimmerians neighboured the Scythians at least from the 8th-5th century BCE and possibly until the very Middle Ages: those Germanics whom we call the Crimean Goths are probably the descendants of the Cimmerians. The Cimmerian language is not simply Germanic. Lexically, it's closer to the North Germanic languages and English. Besides the Slavic and Germanic names, appellations, and/or lexemes, Herodotus also mentions at least one Northwest Caucasian term that according to his account was spoken by the Argippaeans. The Issedones mentioned by Herodotus dwelt in present-day Azerbaijan. The land of Oium mentioned by Iordanes is the Crimean Peninsula. Several Khazar titles and names we analysed turned out to be Slavic. Several Hunnic terms mentioned in the historical record are Slavic, though some names of theirs might be Germanic. The Bulgars mentioned by Ibn Rustah included the Balkars and the Bulgarians. The Guzs mentioned by him included or were the Hungarians that lived in the North Caucasus. The Burtas mentioned by him dwelt next to or not far from the Sea of Azov and were probably Christians as the Guzs. The Βοράδοι mentioned by Γρηγόριος ὁ Θαυματουργός and the Burtas mentioned by Ibn Rustah are probably one and the same people. And now - these Hungarian inscriptions which turned out to be so complicated for the Hungarian scholars, notwithstanding that they are written in the language they perfectly know. Looking at this incomplete list of the current problems in the humanities which I can extend even further, when I thought how to describe all of this in a single term, the only word that crossed my mind was "catastrophe". By the 21st century, scholars have not just failed to establish or correctly assess the languages spoken by various ancient peoples, but also haven't managed to draw the correct conclusions about their geographical locations. If you think that it's only the Hungarian inscriptions that are not properly deciphered, you are definitely mistaken. There is even a case where a Turkic inscription left on the territory of the present-day Russian Federation hasn't been properly deciphered by scholars through the lens of Turkic languages. Just wait for another video, "soon in IMAX".

My Hungarian decipherments of the Nagyszentmiklós treasure are far better than all the previous existing (unless I've missed a really good work on this subject). For this reason, they should be regarded as a reference point. The only thing that the relevant scholars can do with my interpretations is to minorly improve them or suggest anything much, much better (the last being most likely impossible). Furthermore, while I was dealing with these Hungarian inscriptions, I think I found one more stronger confirmation of the presence of Hungarian speakers in the North Caucasus at least as early as the times of Herodotus. In the Video No.4, I've suggested that "Massagetae" might be an Ingush appellation meaning "fast-flying". One of the problems with this idea is that I couldn't find similar lexemes in the Chechen language, the language of the Nokhchiy. A second problem is that the interpretation "fast-flying" itself is rather far-fetched, at least because "bees" do not fly fast. Obviously, this idea was the best I could provide at the time. But now I can reject it and replace it with a much better, much more logical one. And this one is probably the right answer. (00:35:13) The name "Massagetan" comes from the Hungarian phrase "hegyet mássza" / "mássza hegyet", "(he/she/it) climbs the mountain". It's not "mászik hegyet" because the mountain is definite: most likely, it's the Caucasus Mountains, which agrees with the fact that it's between them and the Caspian Sea that Herodotus's account places the Massagetae. But it was unlikely the Massagetae who called themselves "mountain-climbers". It's more likely that some other people, not the Massagetae, called the Massagetae this Hungarian name. "Massagetae" is an exonym and was probably used by the Sauromatae: in the past, we already suggested that the Sauromatae were Hungarian speakers. The Massagetae were called "mountain-climbers" because they were either a Caucasian people living in the Caucasus Mountains at some height from their foot, or Scythians and/or Cimmerians regularly crossing or being able to cross them (but not necessarily by climbing: the Sauromatae could have thought about climbing just because it's the first thought that comes to one's mind when one thinks about crossing a mountain). With these new data, the presence of Hungarian speakers in the North Caucasus in the 5th century BCE will be hard to deny. The fact that "Massagetae" cannot be a Hungarian endonym can be corroborated by the names of their rulers, "Τόμυρις" and "Σπαργαπίσης": when I tried to find any sensible Hungarian interpretation for each of them, I expectedly failed. Unfortunately, my past Slavic interpretations of these names are also wrong. The problem with them is that they can be well explained from the perspective of the historical context, but not from the linguistic point of view. I doubt that in modern Slavic languages there exist any examples of the same morphological structures that I suggested in those interpretations. This is a case where the historical context absorbed me, as when in the Video No.3 I suggested the very wild idea about the possibility of the number "twelve" in Slavic languages and the Ancient Greek term "δυναστεία" being in some way connected. Linguistically, the last will rather be impossible to prove: if they have anything in common, it will probably be no more than a single morpheme - this does not deserve our attention. It doesn't mean that the historical context is not important or is less important than the pure linguistic analysis. They are equally important and need each other. What may be hard to establish is what context is relevant to the case in question and what is not. As for the Massagetan names, I did try to find anything that could suggest they are Caucasian before publishing the Video No.4, but those attempts have not led to success either. And perhaps they were not successful for a very funny reason - at least one of these names is Germanic. When I switched to the Germanic languages, I resolved the linguistic problem of the Slavic interpretations, some of which I can confidently reject now. But this is not the most astonishing part of my long speech. (00:38:35) The name "Τόμυρις" derives from a Germanic lexeme whose form is closest to the Icelandic /ˈtʰouːmʏr/ ("tómur") and the Faroese /ˈtʰɔuːmʊɹ/ ("tómur"). But this form, which is used in the name, existed before the Old Norse "tómr" (because the period of Old Norse formally does not extend beyond the Common Era). It means that either the Icelandic and Faroese forms are more archaic than the Old Norse one so that the Old Norse form derives from those more archaic, or in the times when the original name that Τόμυρις bore was first pronounced, forms of both the types co-existed, without any clarity about what derives from what. If they co-existed but not in one language, then some divergence of the Germanic languages already happened in those times. The name "Τόμυρις", as its Icelandic and Faroese counterparts, means "empty", "without content". Why? Probably because she was a widow. This can be rephrased as "she lost her other half, a part of herself". And this connection with "emptiness" is possibly reflected in the name of her son, (00:39:48) "Σπαργαπίσης". Though the Slavic interpretation of his name suggesting he was an alcoholic resonates with Herodotus's account about Cyrus capturing him using wine, a transposition of two neighbouring letters is a very "expensive" operation and should be considered as a last resort. For the same reason, I cannot say with complete confidence that Bartatua in the Neo-Assyrian historical record and Προτοθύης in Herodotus's account are indeed one and the same person. The Germanic interpretation of the name "Σπαργαπίσης" doesn't work that badly. It divides the name into three parts. The last one is an adjective-forming suffix corresponding to the English suffix "-ish". The second part corresponds to the English noun "gap". The first part represents a verb corresponding to the Dutch verb "sparen" - "to spare", "to leave untouched" - or to the Middle English verb "spar" or "sparren" - "to close", "to hide", "to secrete", "to confine". The name is an adjective depicting its bearer as a one "keeping, hiding, or confining a gap", "Spargappish". He could have been called this name because he reminded his mother of his father: "the void her husband left her now lives in her son". Another explanation is that this nickname meant that Τόμυρις buried her son. (00:41:14) The idea of the son's funeral can be inferred after reading at least these two sources: the Tristia by Publius Ovidius Naso and the Getica by Iordanes. What they have in common is the mention of the city of Tomis, and both try to explain the origin of its name. According to the Tristia, the city is called so because here, Μήδεια "cut up her brother's body". This description indeed may point to a Greek folk etymology: some Greek speakers could have derived the name from the Ancient Greek "τόμος" ("slice", "piece"). It's unlikely it was derived, directly or not, from "τέμνω", but the main point is the same. The Getica conveys a different derivation. In the view of Iordanes's account, the city was named after Τόμυρις. And it makes sense. The city of Tomis connects the story about Μήδεια and the death of her brother with the story about Τόμυρις and the death of her son. The only missing component is the place where the son of Τόμυρις died. Iordanes doesn't mention it explicitly, but if the Tristia suggests a Greek interpretation of the name of the city that connects it to the death of the brother, the derivation of "Tomis" from "Τόμυρις" may suggest that a Germanic interpretation also exists. And we can find one. From the account of Iordanes, who himself was a Germanic speaker, we can deduce that the name "Tomis" derives from a Germanic lexeme corresponding to the English "tomb", Middle English "tombe", and Middle Dutch "tombe", except that the consonant /b/ in that lexeme was inaudible or barely audible. And you know what? Except the case where the Middle English "tombe" is another form of the lexeme "tome" meaning "empty", "hollow", all these words come from Old French, they are loanwords, and it's a third or fourth such word in the account of Iordanes. The first two and possibly one more are "gepanta", "Ansis", and "Antae": the first is connected to the Old French "pantoisier"; the second to the Old French "cheance"; and the third might be connected to the Old French "vanter" (the last is not certain). I envy neither the scholars who date the Getica to the mid-6th century CE, nor those who could never in their wildest dreams imagine the existence of borrowings from Old French in some Germanic languages of that time. These mistakes in the humanities can be discovered by an amateur. Dear historians and philologists (I'm talking not only about historical linguists), have you ever thought that your knowledge or understanding of historical linguistic processes falls behind the times, especially today given the technologies available?

All the English-wise, Dutch-wise, Norse-wise Cimmerian lexemes we have so far encountered in Herodotus's account probably belong to one and the same Cimmerian language: there were no separate Cimmerian English and Cimmerian Norse (especially if "Σπαργαπίσης" is indeed a Germanic name: because the name "Τόμυρις" doesn't seem to be possible to explain from the perspective of the West Germanic languages and the name "Σπαργαπίσης" fully from the North Germanic perspective). This also means that the classification of the Germanic languages into West, East, North, is highly artificial. Such languages as Proto-West Germanic, Proto-Norse, probably never existed and should be regarded not as languages but simply geographical spaces. Languages did not develop like trees grow. Cimmerian can be regarded as a Germanic language because it behaves "like a duck". But it's not West Germanic, nor North, nor East. It's also not the reconstructed Proto-West Germanic nor the reconstructed Proto-Germanic. This becomes particularly impossible if the name "Σπαργαπίσης" has a Germanic adjective-forming suffix similar to "-ish" / "-isch" or "-ische" in pronunciation instead of the Proto-West Germanic "*-isk" or the Proto-Germanic "*-iskaz". Moreover, as we remember from the previous video (Video No.5), the same suffix "-ish" is also possibly present in the name "Teušpa" ("Diggish Boar"). That's yet another confirmation that the reconstructions are either unreliable or useless. If the Proto-West Germanic "*-isk" is a correct reconstruction, some West Germanic languages possibly already diverged by the time of Herodotus. The fundamental problem of all the reconstructions in general is that most of them look like a single proto-form. But a language diverging from others doesn't have only one dialect once it diverges. It's already a dialect continuum that inherits dialects from the past stages of the language. This is what the reconstructions do not address. If a reconstructed proto-language correctly represents one of the dialects of the respective real language, one will not be able to further reconstruct the subsequent proto-language just as successfully, not to mention the fact that these intermediate proto-languages are not clear to what extent they are real and to what are not. Because at the very beginning, one has access to the data on the modern dialects (which are still limited), but the dialects of intermediate proto-languages are not accessible, they are what one is supposed to reconstruct. And if one of the dialects of a proto-language is reconstructed correctly, which dialect is it? In the centre, on the outskirts, or outside of the dialect continuum? Is it even a dialect? The mere having a large amount of data to reconstruct an intermediate proto-language is not enough. It's more important to have data from a lot of various sources and perhaps with different or specific types of dependencies. Instead of reconstructing intermediate proto-languages, I would personally prefer to focus on the identification of basic blocks every word in every language consists of by researching what sounds human beings have mimicked to create the world's first proto-languages (we devoted some time to this topic in the Video No.4).

What we also discussed in the Video No.4 is the possible ancestral relation between the Hunni and the Massagetae. If real, it gives us a new insight on the problem of why the historical record reports several Slavic words as Hunnic while the names of some Hunnic leaders seem to be Germanic - first of all, the names "Attila" and "Bleda". (00:48:18) In the 1603 edition of the History of Byzantium by Πρίσκος ("Ἱστορία Βυζαντιακή") provided by David Hoeschel in his Eclogae Legationum, except for a couple of cases where the name "Attila" is spelt with a letter "ι", both the names are spelt with a letter "η". For quite a long time I indeed thought that "Attila" is the Slavic name "Гатила" or "Гатило". But this interpretation does not address three problems. First, I don't recall any word or appellation quite reliably Slavic that is spelt with a letter "η" in Greek transliteration or transcription, not counting the Greek endings. Second, why is "Attila" spelt with a double "τ"? Third, "Bleda", "Blida", "Vleda", or "Vlida", is unlikely to be a Slavic name. These problems disappear once we view the names as Germanic. But this is true if we accept that the letter "η" in both the cases represents a diphthong /ej/. The real name of Bleda was possibly "Blade", the real name of Attila was possibly "Wagtail". And the link between the words "wagtail" and "blade" resembles the link between the names "Askold" and "Dir" mentioned in the Primary Chronicle: "speech" and "horns", "song" and "weapon". (Into the Ukrainian language, "wagtail" is translated as "плиска".) The pronunciations /ˈwæɡteɪl/, /ˈwæt.teɪl/ are similar enough: /ˈwæɡteɪl/, /ˈwæt.teɪl/, /ˈwæt.teɪl/, /ˈwæɡteɪl/. Hence the double "τ". These interpretations of mine are preliminary. Besides, my previous idea that the real name of Odoacer is Slavic may also be wrong.

(00:50:10) In the Video No.4 I've also said that the Cyrillic ⟨Б б⟩, the Glagolitic ⟨Ⰱ⟩, the Latin lower-case ⟨b⟩, and the Hebrew ⟨ב⟩ are the counterparts of the Egyptian "lower leg" hieroglyph. To this list, I would also add the Orkhon and Yenisei Turkic runes used to represent the phonetic value /b/ when surrounded by back vowels. If the Hebrew ⟨ב⟩ is indeed unrelated to the hieroglyph, then it's still likely that the Hebrew letter and the Yenisei variant have a common ancestor. The "lower leg" hieroglyph represents the sound /b/ because stamping a foot resembles it. This is an example of how the vocal mimicry of surrounding sounds can be reflected by human beings in scripts, writing systems. The sign with the phonetic value /l/ used in the Hungarian inscriptions of the Nagyszentmiklós treasure, in my view, indeed has this phonetic value because it depicts the human tongue with its end represented by the incomplete vertical line. But unlike the Egyptian hieroglyph being an instance of the portrayal of a sound mimicked after it was heard, the Hungarian sign, instead, links a sound with articulation itself.

Congratulations! If you have watched this video up to this point, then you are probably indeed interested to see how I'm going to decipher the Buyla inscription. (00:51:37) The text of the inscription contains clear separators, and where it begins is also clearly establishable (scholars made no mistake in this regard). One of the reasons why I think it's Slavic is because I see no way to interpret it as Greek, Hungarian, or Germanic, and the existing interpretations in other languages, including Turkic, are at least unconvincing. The inscription contains two words that are almost identical, "ΖΟΑΠΑΝ" and "ΖΩΑΠΑΝ". Many believe that these two words or phrases correspond to the Slavic title "župan". But I don't think it's possible. To demonstrate this, we will start from other fragments the inscription consists of. (00:52:23) The first one is the word or phrase "ΒΟΥΗΛΑ". Reading it as "bovyla", we can recognize a construction that existed in the Old Czech word "bóvyžehnaj": "bóh vy žehnaj", literally "God - plural you - bless", "God bless you". But in our case, the third part is the third-person singular present indicative (not imperative) form of the verb meaning "to pour". (00:52:52) It can be compared to the Polish verb "lać". The difference is that in Standard Polish this form is not "la" but "leje". "bóvyla" (or "bóh vy la") means "God pours you", with the word "God" immediately following the cross sign. But "pours" what? What "He pours" is represented by the next word, "ΖΟΑΠΑΝ", because the subsequent two after it constitute an adverbial phrase. (You may ask me why this inscription is Slavic if the author uses the letter "η" in its text. The observation I expressed before concerned the way in which Greek speakers transliterated or transcribed foreign words, not the way in which Slavic speakers used Greek letters.) "ΔΥΓΕΤΟΙΓΗ" being a part of this adverbial phrase has probably the most prominent counterpart in Slavic languages, (00:53:49) albeit of the 19th century - the Polish adjective "długociągły" which means "long-drawn", "long-lasting". The word "long" is translated into Modern Polish as the masculine adjective "długi" and adverb "długo", into Modern Czech, respectively, as "dlouhý" and "dlouho", into Modern Serbo-Croatian, respectively, as "dug" and "dugo". Unlike the Polish adjective "długociągły", the word "ΔΥΓΕΤΟΙΓΗ" has the interfix "-e-" instead of "-o-". This means that the most likely pronunciation of the previous consonant is not /g/ but /ʒ/ or /ʑ/. The second "γ" is also pronounced /ʒ/ but for a different reason: a possible Ukrainian morphological counterpart of the Polish "długociągły" that I can imagine is "довготяжий". In the original language, "ΔΥΓΕΤΟΙΓΗ" was probably pronounced something like /ˈduʒɛt͡ɕõ(ɲ)ʒɪ/, /ˈduʒɛt͡ɕõ(ɲ)ʑi/; or /ˈdw̩ʒɛt͡ɕõ(ɲ)ʒɪ/, /ˈdw̩ʒɛt͡ɕõ(ɲ)ʑi/ - the letter "ι" represents either a nasalisation or a voiced palatal nasal /ɲ/. Since in this word the phonemes resembling /ʒ/ are transcribed with the letters "γ", this is another reason why I don't think that "ΖΟΑΠΑΝ" is "župan". The adjectives "long-drawn" and "long-lasting" describe an object from the perspective of time. And guess what. (00:55:21) The word "ΤΕϹΗ" corresponds to the Old Czech plural noun "čěsi", "times" or "hours". The mid-16th century spelling of this form ("czyeſy") suggests that when transliterating, it's correct to replace the Greek letter "η" in "ΤΕϹΗ" with the Latin letter "y", with or without diacritics, not "i". This rule is applicable to all the instances of the letter "η" in the inscription. (00:55:50) Even to the phrase "ΗΤΖΙΓΗ" consisting of two words. The first one is the conjuction "i" / "y" translated as "and". In Modern Czech it's spelt with "i", but previously the letter "y" was used. The part "ΤΖΙΓΗ" is a plural adjective corresponding to the Czech "cizí", the Polish "cudzy" / "cudze", the Ukrainian "чужі". All the counterparts provided are also in the plural and in the nominative. In the singular, depending on the language, they are translated as "strange" ("not familiar"), "somebody else's", "foreign", "alien". However, it's also possible that "ΤΖΙΓΗ" in the inscription is translated as "other". The word "ΤΑΙϹΗ" is probably a counterpart of the Ukrainian plural noun "чанці", "small tubs", or the plural noun "танці", "dances". An approximate translation of the end of the inscription is either "and other vessels", "and strange vessels", or "and other dances", "and strange dances". (00:57:00) "ΤΑΓΡΟΓΗ" is also an adjective, and I think it relates to the noun "ΤΑΙϹΗ" just as does the adjective "ΤΖΙΓΗ". Its likely cognates are the Ukrainian verbs "чахрувати" ("to conjure", "to use magic") and "чарувати" ("to enchant"). The sequence "ΓΡ", in my view, is a digraph that corresponds to the Modern Czech letter "ř". If "ΤΖΙΓΗ" indeed means "other", then "ΤΑΓΡΟΓΗ" should perhaps be interpreted as "sacred" - "sacred and other vessels". But if "ΤΑΓΡΟΓΗ" means "enchanting", then we should probably translate "ΤΖΙΓΗ" as something like "strange", "quaint", "rum", "rummy", "curious", wonderful", "astonishing", "marvellous", or "miraculous". In some Slavic languages, the words that are translated as "someone else's" and "wonder" somewhat resemble each other. For instance, the Polish "cudzy" means "someone else's", but "cud" means "miracle". Though these words are not considered to be cognate (as far as I know), there is an associative link between them, "Every alien is a creature you've never seen before. Just as wonders, they surprise you with their sudden appearance for your very first time in your life in front of your eyes and with their personal appearances they always have that make your eyes and mind remember they are different from everyone and everything else surrounding you when you are at home." "sacred and other vessels" seems to be a less probable option than "enchanting and quaint vessels". I don't think that the last word in the inscription is "dances" because with this word in mind I barely can provide a reasonable interpretation of the whole inscription. Unfortunately, the word "vessels" does not simplify matters either. The remaining components of the inscription are the most difficult, and they are what prevents me from translating the whole text in a way that would satisfy me. (00:59:11) "ΒΟΥΤΑΟΥΛ" probably consists of two parts, the first being either "ΒΟ" or "ΒΟΥ". I'm not sure whether the first part refers to God or it's a conjunction "bo" meaning "because". But anyway, as of now, I deem the division into "ΒΟ" and "ΥΤΑΟΥΛ" to be correct. The only word that crosses my mind that can explain the second part is the Czech verb "vtáhnout" and its cognates and counterparts. Depending on the context, "vtáhnout" can be translated as "to pull in", "to inhale", "to soak up", "to absorb". The letter "Λ" suggests that the whole phrase "ΒΟΥΤΑΟΥΛ" rather indeed ends with a verb, and its form, using the terminology of the Czech grammar, is the masculine singular past active participle. If the inscription had been written in Modern Czech, instead of "ΥΤΑΟΥΛ", we would now see the form "vtáhl" if we've correctly identified the verb. What is not clear is why its root in "ΒΟΥΤΑΟΥΛ" - if the verb is correctly identified - is spelt differently than the exact same root in "ΔΥΓΕΤΟΙΓΗ". Both the spellings suggest that the root has a nasal vowel, which is good, but in one case the vowel is spelt with "ΟΙ", in the other with "ΑΟ". Perhaps the answer lies in the consonants that come immediately after. Moreover, that language might have had both the nasal vowel [ã] and the nasal vowel [õ], at least from the phonetic (not phonemic) perspective. (01:00:52) Previously I thought that "ΟΑ" in "ΖΟΑΠΑΝ" is also a nasal vowel, but now I doubt it's true. The inscription contains the word or phrase "ΖΟΑΠΑΝ" with an "Ο" and "ΖΩΑΠΑΝ" with an "Ω". I cannot firmly establish the difference between them but if there is one, I think it's not that big. Let's start from the first instance of this word or phrase. If "ΖΟΑΠΑΝ" has a nasal vowel, I would link it to the Polish "zupa" ("soup") or the Old Czech "žufeň" ("broth, decoction, invigorating drink, originally a strong wine soup"). If it doesn't, to the Macedonian (that is, the Slavic language called Macedonian) verb "залапа" ("(he/she/it) makes out with", "(he/she/it) starts making out with") whose imperfective counterpart "лапа" means "(he/she/it) eats gluttonously, gobbles", "(he/she/it) makes out with". Both the scenarios lead roughly to the same result - that "ΖΟΑΠΑΝ" is a liquid meal or a drink (because of "God pours you"). From this perspective, "žufeň" seems to be a good substitution. If the second "ΖΩΑΠΑΝ" also means "žufeň", the change from "Ο" to "Ω" may reflect a change in grammatical case or, alternatively, a tautology accompanied or not by a change in intonation. But I also consider a scenario in which the second "ΖΩΑΠΑΝ" is related to either the Old Czech perfective verb "zvábit" ("to attract", "to allure") or the Polish noun "zapach" and the Ukrainian noun "запах" ("smell"). (In Czech, "zápach" means "bad smell".) It's possible that the second "ΖΩΑΠΑΝ" is translated as "smell" or "aroma", and the letter "Ω" could have been used to symbolise the association between this noun and the verb meaning "to allure". In this case, the first "ΖΟΑΠΑΝ" could have been pronounced /ˈzõpanʲ/, whereas the second "ΖΩΑΠΑΝ" - /ˈzwapan/. Though we don't know whether these pronunciations are correct, we will still be using them simply to differentiate the words. (01:03:16) Thus, the whole text approximately reads in one of the following two ways. Here is the first way: /ˈboːvɪla ˈzõpanʲ ˈt͡ʃɛsɪ ˈdw̩ʒɛt͡ɕõʒɪː/, /ˈbovt͡ʃã(ː)ɦl̩ ˈzwapan ˈt͡ʃaːr̝oʒɪː ˈɪt͡sʲiʒɪː ˈt͡ʃaɲt͡sɪ/. The second way differs from the first in that the phonemes /i/ and /ɪ/ are swapped: /ˈboːvʲila ˈzõpanʲ ˈt͡ʃɛsʲi ˈdw̩ʒɛt͡ɕõʑiː/, /ˈbovt͡ʃã(ː)ɦl̩ ˈzwapan ˈt͡ʃaːr̝oʑiː ˈit͡sɪʑiː ˈt͡ʃanʲt͡sʲi/. The best translation I can suggest at the moment reads as follows: "God pours you wine soup for long-lasting hours, because the aroma has soaked up the enchanting and quaint vessels." Some might feel that the direction of causation and the direction of what soaks up what in the sentence are both reversed. To attempt to change their mind, I will rephrase it: "I see that God has been pouring you wine soup, but He has been doing this for a really long time. And why I think so is because I feel so much aroma that its amount is so big that it's no longer the vessels that are containing the wine soup giving off this aroma, it's already the aroma that is surrounding them. It means that God probably loves you very much." You know, such things also happen in our present-day life. If for some party, the organisers have provided snacks and beverages, at some point during the event one may notice that they are no longer available solely in the dedicated places, but on the tables, the floor, the walls, and sometimes on the ceiling. The rephrasing doesn't make my interpretation more correct, it's still possible that I've wrongly deciphered this inscription; I have more confidence about the Hungarian ones. But Slavic expressions written in Greek letters exist for sure. (01:05:20) One such case is the title "ΚΑΝΑΣΥΒΙΓΙ" that was borne by some Bulgarian rulers, such as Omurtag. The most adequate interpretations of this expression have been provided by the Bulgarian author Петър Георгиев (Peter Georgiev). He reads it as "КЪНѧЗЬ У БИЖИ" or "КЪНѧЗЬ БИЖИ". It means "knyaz' from God" or "God's knyaz'" which is the direct translation of the Greek phrase "ἐκ Θεοῦ ἄρχων" ("ruler from God"). And we saw this phrase, but not in inscriptions - (01:05:55) in the De Cerimoniis by Κωνσταντῖνος Πορφυρογέννητος (though in the Video No.2 I translated it in a different way). We know that in Standard Ukrainian the vowels /i/ and /o/ can alternate in the root between different grammatical forms of the same noun lexeme. More generally, the alternation of these vowels between cognate terms belonging to different parts of speech may happen in other Slavic languages as well. I'm clarifying this now because I think I haven't properly explained this fact before. But the alternation I've started with (and to which I often referred to), while it exists in Standard Ukrainian, does not exist in Standard Bulgarian, which is different to what we see in the expression "ΚΑΝΑΣΥΒΙΓΙ" where the word "God" is spelt with the vowel /i/ instead of /o/. (01:06:46) The first vowels /o/ in the Standard Bulgarian noun "бог" ("God") and adjective "божи" ("God's") are stable, they are not affected by case changes. It means that the frequency of occurrence of the vowel /i/ in such places in past Slavic languages was probably higher than today. The title "ΚΑΝΑΣΥΒΙΓΙ" before Omurtag's name doesn't call him a khan, it calls him a knyaz'. But as of now, this knowledge cannot be learned from Wikipedia.

The previous time I asked my viewers to invite scholars they know for watching this video because it's scholars who can formally assess the works like mine. It doesn't mean that I'm not confident in my discoveries - I definitely am. But their formal acceptance, at least at this stage in my life, is necessary for the incorporation of my knowledge into modern science. I can be a million times right, but this doesn't matter a lot if they do not agree or don't want to agree with this knowledge. And even if some of them agree, it may take many years before my thoughts are published in any paper. Why? My work in the current form is a constantly updated draft: it's still ongoing, and from time to time I have to change my previous interpretations. When my final interpretations will be ready is not clear. In such cases, a scholar may wait for the work to be completed in order to review, assess, and criticise it more fairly. Moreover, some other new knowledge may be discovered by that time and by other people. That's why I want scholars to be aware of my work as early as possible (especially given the pace at which I'm releasing my new videos) - I want to see their reactions while I'm alive. It shouldn't be necessarily a review. I also consider such forms of collaboration as co-authorship (this may be a faster way to disseminate my findings around the globe). But it takes two to tango, as you know. (Of course, more than two is also fine.) Co-authorship is a form of acceptance. And that's the main problem. Accepting my conclusions may require a lot of effort, at least from the standpoint of scholars. Because possibly they will have to admit that they did something wrong. And while a new scholarly consensus is not formed, scientists dealing with other topics and other people that can be referred to as science popularisers cannot reference or work with new materials. The last two types of people usually rarely doubt their knowledge, especially the second. I don't deliberately search for science popularisers, but in my practice, my discussions with them have not been productive. One case is worth mentioning because it's about one problem I'm trying to solve. In a discussion with one youtuber, we debated over the etymology of the Slavic title "knyaz'". His channel is primarily devoted to Germanic languages. (01:09:49) There exists an opinion that the Slavic terms "knyaz'" and "vityaz'" derive via borrowing from the respective Proto-Germanic terms, "*kuningaz" and "*wīkingaz". The model that that youtuber considered (or "popularised") was the transformations from "*kuningaz" via "*kъnędzь" into "князь" and from "*wīkingaz" via "*vitędzь" into "витязь". The fact that each of these chains has two reconstructions and complicated unsmooth phonetic transformations between all the stages made me disbelieve them. At that time, I told him that the derivation of the title "князь" from the Slavic term for "horse" that in Ukrainian is pronounced "кінь" is more likely - ("more likely" doesn't mean "correct", it means "more likely") - so that the term "князь", roughly speaking, means "horse rider" or "knight". He thought that I tried to confront him, and, as a result, the discussion was not healthy. But he was right about one thing, that there is no productive suffix "-яз" native to modern Slavic languages. What he was wrong about is that the root of the Proto-Slavic form "*kòňь" of the noun "horse" had the fixed vowel /o/. This is unlikely because stable vowels of this kind cannot develop into unstable reflexes. The "majority wins" and "economy" principles do not apply here. The principle that applies here is what American linguist Lyle Richard Campbell in his book "Historical Linguistics: An Introduction" calls "directionality". Reformulating it for our case, "Stable vowels are unlikely to become unstable, unstable vowels can become stable." And this is actually quite consistent with the way in which the word "God" is spelt in the expression "ΚΑΝΑΣΥΒΙΓΙ": with the vowel /i/, not /o/ - the stable /o/ is a later development. It doesn't seem possible that the Proto-Slavic "*kòňь" had the stable vowel /o/ because its root is probably onomatopoeic: it was likely mimicked from the sound of a horse's hooves beating the ground (or another surface). Of course, that youtuber insisted on the opposite knowledge. Comparing the problems arising in the model of the emergence of the term "knyaz'" that he believes or believed is true and the one I believed is more appropriate, the first model had more of them, in my view. Because the first one involves two unattested lexemes, whereas the second - only one unattested suffix. But it's not a proof that the second model is correct. In fact, both of them are at least unreliable. That's why at the moment I don't have a clear view on the etymology of the term "knyaz'". However, I can provide an etymology of the term "vityaz'" that does not purely rely on unattested reconstructions. If "vityaz'" is a loanword, it could have originated from the lexeme you all know. It's the same lexeme from which the English "victory" derives. (01:13:03) It's a Romance or Italic noun whose cognate is the Latin "victor" - "conqueror", "winner" - and this agrees with the meaning of the term "vityaz'" - "hero". Both "victor" and "vityaz'" are real words. To justify the selected pair being correct, we need to explain the phonetic or phonemic transformations between these two states. And it's very good that we are discussing this in the same video where just recently, we were deciphering the Buyla inscription. Because the Latin termination "-or" resembles the Czech noun-forming suffix "-ař" (and the Proto-Slavic "*-ařь"). It doesn't matter that the Latin word "victor" has the suffix "-tor", not "-or". From the perspective of the Slavic speakers who started to adapt this word for their speech, the replacement of "-or" with "-ař" (or another suffix or termination similar in pronunciation) was quite natural. Then this "-ař" could have been simplified to "-az" (or "-ěz", or something alike). At the same time, the disappearance of the sound /k/ can be explained by analogy with the Greek transcription of Attila's possible original name, "Wagtail". In linguistic terminology, such a process is called debuccalization or, more broadly, lenition. The transformation from "victor" to "vityaz'" is not just more realistic but is also much simpler phonetically than the transformation from "*wīkingaz" to "vityaz'". (01:14:35) Furthermore, the lexeme "vityaz'" (I'm not focusing on its exact pronunciation) almost certainly shares the same root with the Ukrainian "звитяга" ("victory"), Polish "zwycięstwo" ("victory"), Czech "vítězství" ("victory"), Slovak "víťazstvo" ("victory"), which are believed to either originate from that lexeme or be borrowed from a different Slavic language. As for the term "knyaz'", its etymology has yet to be established.

According to my personal observations, for science popularisers, the opinions of scholars are more relevant than the opinions of those who can say right things or have some experience, and my discussion with that youtuber clearly showed this: it looked as if to him, the very fact that a linguistic reconstruction or derivation is provided by a professional linguist was more important than its logicality and the real data contradicting or confirming it. He also believed or still believes that a professional linguist (the word "professional" was strongly emphasized by him in the following context) exactly knows in what time period every stage of every language they study existed. If one day he realises that the English-wise suffix "-ish" existed as early as the 5th century BCE, it may become a nightmare for him. My greetings to that person.

If you are a scholar and still listening to me, you might decide to watch all my previous videos to understand what I've already done so far. If you do, please keep in mind that I know, I'm aware that not everything I said in the previous videos is correct. I've already corrected some of my mistakes, but not all of them. So, in case you find watching my videos really hard, please try to keep your patience anyway. Because once you finish, I hope you will be satisfied with the whole big picture. And please be ready for very harsh criticism from me in some places. If you were in my position, you would probably react in the same way.

Now, an additional remark about the author of the "История Руси" YouTube channel I referred to several times in my previous videos. Though it's true that without my familiarity with his content, mine would be rather unlikely to exist (because I wouldn't have a triggering starting point), this doesn't mean that I agree with everything he says - there are things he is wrong about. By the way, the fact that at some point in time the number of my subscribers exceeded the eight hundred mark is his contribution as well.

I'm also open to the commentaries from the native speakers on my English. But if you want to give me some advice as one of them, when writing a comment, please specify which part of the Anglosphere you come from: whether your native English is British, American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, etc. - and please be prepared for a possible follow-up discussion with me. What I'm constantly struggling with the most are the choice of the article (especially before the plural nouns), the choice between "it", "this", and "that", and phraseology. Plus, my punctuation in the textual version of my speech in my blog also needs some guidance. On my channel, I try to speak British English with Received Pronunciation. But even if you are not from the UK (where people speak not only with Received Pronunciation), your advice still can be helpful or useful.

And that's it. You know what to do after watching my videos I publish on YouTube and Facebook, you know about my blog on Blogger, you know that I have a Buy Me a Coffee account, and you know where to find the links to these and other accounts of mine on the internet (for instance, in the so-called About section of my YouTube channel). If you didn't know all of that, now you will never forget all of this ... probably. And I hope all my work is not unfruitful.

My real name is Daniel Haidachuk, and on this channel I act the role of Daniel Poirot. Thank you for your visit and attention.

Links:

Gábor Hosszú. Heritage of Scribes. The Relation of Rovas Scripts to Eurasian Writing Systems (2013)

Wiki Articles (as of September 14th, 2025):

- Wikipedia: Old_Turkic_script (en), Древнетюркское_письмо (ru), Buyla_inscription (en), Kanasubigi (en), Канасюбиги (ru)