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As a native Hungarian speaker, I've always been fascinated by the history of my native tongue. As we all know, Friar Julianus found Hungarian speaking people in the Ural mountains in the 13th century. However, due to the Mongol invasions, these folks were swept away and brought to Inner-Asia. Even nowadays, there are people in that region with family names called "Mazhar", which is probably a cognate with the Hungarian word "Magyar". My question is that "are there any recordings in the tongue those people spoke whom Friar Julianus met with"?

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  • Mazhar has nothing to do with word magyar. It is from Arabic مَظهر meaning phenomenon. A common name in Muslim Turkic world.
    – kabraxis
    Dec 24, 2019 at 2:11
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    Why do you think we all know that Friar Julianus found Hungarian speakers? That it very presumptuous.
    – user6726
    Dec 24, 2019 at 2:32
  • Khanty and Mansi? Dec 24, 2019 at 8:14
  • @user6726: I'd not heard of this, but see here.
    – Colin Fine
    Dec 25, 2019 at 10:39
  • @AdamBittlingmayer: Khanti and Mansi appear to be too far East, and I'm dubious that they were regarded as comprehensible with Hungarian less than a thousand years ago. If Julian really did find a group speaking something close to Hungarian then, I think it must indeed have become extinct afterwards.
    – Colin Fine
    Dec 25, 2019 at 10:44

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If such a testimony of ancient Hungarian existed, I think handbooks would be very happy to show it. I'm afraid there's hardly anything older than the years 1600-1700 on most Uralic languages, when European travelers (Witsen) or soldiers (Strahlenberg) began assembling glossaries on Mordvin, Vogul-Mansi, Ostyak-Khanty, etc.

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