History
Chuvash is the most distinctive of the Turkic languages and cannot be understood by speakers of other Turkic tongues. Today, Chuvash is classified, alongside Khazar, Turkic Avar, Bulgar, and probably, Hunnic, as a member of the Oghuric branch of the Turkic language family. It is the only language of this family which is not extinct. The conclusion that Chuvash belongs to the Oghuric branch of Turkic arises from the reasoning that the vocabulary shows the language to belong to the r- and l- type which is typical for all languages of this branch. The rest of the Turkic languages (Common Turkic) are of the z- and ลก- type."
Since the surviving literary records for the non-Chuvash members of Oghuric are scant, the exact position of Chuvash within the Oghuric family cannot be determined.
Formerly, scholars considered Chuvash not properly a Turkic language at all but, rather, a Turkicized Finno-Ugric (Uralic) language.
Read more about this topic: Chuvash Language
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