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Bulgar (also Bolğar and Proto-Bulgarian) was the language of the Bulgars, now extinct. Its classification is somewhat controversial: the most widely accepted theory places it among the Turkic languages,^[1][2][3] but some Bulgarian historians have recently linked it to the Pamiri languages of the Iranian language group instead.^[4][5][6] Bulgar is assumed to have been used in Great Bulgaria, later in Volga Bulgaria, as well as in Danubian Bulgaria. The language became extinct in Danubian Bulgaria in the 9th century as the Bulgar nobility became gradually Slavicized through intermarriages with the Slavic majority there. In Volga Bulgaria, it persisted longer (according to the prevalent theory of its Turkic affiliation) and ultimately gave rise to the modern Turkic Chuvash language.^[1][2][7]

The language of the Danube Bulgars (or Danube Bulgar) is recorded in a small number of inscriptions, which are found in Pliska, the first capital of Danube Bulgaria and in the rock churches near the village of Murfatlar, Romania. Some of these inscriptions are written with Greek characters, others with runes similar to the Orkhon script. Most of them appear to have a private character (oaths, dedications, inscriptions on grave stones) and some were court inventories. Although attempts at decipherment have been made, none of them has gained wide acceptance. These inscriptions in Danube-Bulgar are found along with other official ones written in Greek. The rulers of the First Bulgarian Empire preserved Greek as the official state language until the 9th century when it was replaced by Old Bulgarian.

The language of the Danube Bulgars is also known from a small number of loanwords in the Slavonic Old Bulgarian language, as well as terms occurring in Bulgar Greek-language inscriptions, contemporary Byzantine texts, and later Slavonic Old Bulgarian texts. Most of these words designate titles and other concepts concerning the affairs of state, including the official 12-year cyclic calendar (as used e.g. in the Nominalia of the Bulgarian Khans).

The language spoken by the population of Volga Bulgaria is known as Volga-Bulgar. There are a number of surviving inscriptions in Volga-Bulgar, some of which are written with Arabic characters, alongside the continuing use of Turkic runes. These are all largely decipherable. That language persisted until the 13th or the 14th century. It adopted a number of words and constructions from the Kipchak language and ultimately gave rise to the Chuvash language. Chuvash is classified as the only surviving member of a separate "Oghur-Turkic" branch of the Turkic languages, characterized by sound correspondences such as Bulgar r versus Common Turkic z and Bulgar l versus Common Turkic š.^[7] Likewise, the Old Tatar language, despite not belonging to the same branch as Chuvash and Bulgar, is believed to have absorbed elements of the Bulgar language; thus, the language spoken by the present-day Volga Tatars would represent a mixture of Kipchak and Bulgar.

• Britannica Online - The article describes the position of Bulgar and Chuvash in the classification of the Turkic languages.
• Sergei Starostin's Tower of Babel - A Russian Turkologist's take on Danube Bulgar inscriptions and the Bulgar calendar, in Russian. The article contains a tentative decipherment of inscriptions based on the Turkic hypothesis.PDF (346 KiB)
• Rashev, Rasho. 1992. On the origin of the Proto-Bulgarians. p. 23-33 in: Studia protobulgarica et mediaevalia europensia. In honour of Prof. V. Beshevliev, Veliko Tarnovo - A Bulgarian archeologist's proposal. The author concedes that the ruling elite of the Bulgars was Turkic-speaking as evidenced by the inscriptions etc., but stipulates that the bulk of the population was Iranian.