The following citation from the V.S. Taskin's translation of the Chinese annals related to the nomadic people in and around China addresses specifically the linguistic portion attested by the only surviving Hunnic phrase. The phrase is cited and analyzed in the Introduction section of the 1990 publication focused on the Jie tribe. Of the two aspects, the language and the relationship between the Huns and Jie (in English gee-eh),  V.S. Taskin started with the definition of who Jie are, and then proceeds with their phrase, citing the previous scholarship by reference. For the purposes of this posting, the sequence is reversed, first is given the linguistic portion, and then the analysis of the Jie, where is a wide consensus that Jie were one of the 18 Hunnic tribes and spoke the Hunnic language. V.S. Taskin concludes the analysis of the Jie name with a statement that Jie “is only a geographical definition, not a self-name of the nomadic union”. However, since the Chinese used Jie as a name of the tribal union, it is apparent that with time the geographical definition attained a political semantics. The pre-Hunnic ancestry of the Jie lacks any annalistic information, and all scholarly suggestions are purely speculative, including the suggestion, based on the phonetical reconstruction of their ancient Chinese pronunciation as Kiat, that Jie were a splinter of the Türkic pre-historic dynastic tribe known in the earliest historical records as Kai in the east and Gilan in the west.

For expanded reading of the Hunnic phrase refer to Hunnic Oracle Phrase

The posting's notes and explanations, added to the text of the author and not noted specially, are shown in (blue italics) in parentheses and in blue boxes. Page numbers are shown at the beginning of the page in blue.

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INTRODUCTION

It is hardly necessary to cite other numerous examples that prove that the Chinese held Jie as the Huns, but we can not bypass one very important linguistic evidence which helps to identify ethnicity of the Jie themselves, and of the Huns to which they belonged. It is a phrase, uttered in the Jie language by a native of India, Buddhist monk Fotu Den (Buttocho 佛図澄, pinyin: Fu Tucheng; Wade–Giles: Fu T'u-ch'eng,  ca. 235-348), who served for Shi Le and was spreading Buddhism in China. This only phrase in the Hun language that reached us has meanings of its words and a general  translation.

In 328 sparked a war between Shi Le and Liu Yao, the Emperor of the Former Zhao dynasty. Defeating the Shi Le army at Gao-Hou, Liu Yao came to Luoyang, and besieged a town Tszinyon near the Gao-Hou. Shi Le wanted to come to the Luoyang aid, but high officials were persuading him not to do that.
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Then Shi Le turned for advice to Fotu Den, who said in the Jie language, referring to the sound of the pagoda bells (presumably, the transcription is correctly adjusted to the phonetics of the 4th c. AD):

According to the explanations, süčy means “army”; tiligan is “send”, “move”; pugu is Hu's title that Liu Yao had, and qüytudan is “seize”, “catch”. And is given a translation of the whole phrase: “Move the troops, will catch Liu Yao” [20, Ch. 95, pp. 12-b-13-a (20. Fang Xuanling. Jin-shu (History of Jin Dynasty). Peking, Bo-na, 1958)].

As I.N Shervashidze pointed out, [3, p. 3-9 (3. Shervashidze I.N. Verb forms in the language of the Turkic runiform inscriptions. Tbilisi, 1986)], there are three major attempts to interpret the text, all based on the assumption of its Turkic origin (V.S. Taskin is citing the previous scholarship by reference, the contents of the references are compiled in the following table)

As can be seen, each interpreter has good reasons to link the two phrases uttered by Fotu Den with the ancient Türkic language (it works).
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5

INTRODUCTION

On the Jie ethnogenesis

This issue assembled materials relating to the nomadic tribe Jie (羯). They are selected from the “History of Jin dynasty” (Jin-shu 晉書), the authorship of which is attributed to the Tang Emperor Tai Zong (626-649), in reality it was written by a group of authors headed by a high official Fang Xuanling (房玄齡, 578-648).

What kind of people were Jie, and what was their ethnic origin? The question is not hollow, since the Soviet historical literature has no clear answer. M.V. Krukov, not touching on the Jie ethnogenesis, only noted briefly: “Most of the modern researchers believe that the Jie are from the territory of Middle Asia; to the Central China Plain they came together with the Huns” [2, p. 72], he also stresses: “In the process of “Migration of Peoples” to the territory of the Northern China in addition to the Huns, Syanbi (pl. Syanbis, like kiwi ~ kiwis), Qiangs (Kians, Tibetans, or Kian-Tibetan dual exogamy marital couple) and Di (pl. Dis, like kiwi ~ kiwis) also happen to come the Jie (pl. Jies, like tui  ~  tuis, die  ~  dies), natives of the Western Region” [2, p. 256].

L.N.Gumilev addressed Jie in more detail, although basically referring to E. Chavannes: “Another large tribe were Jielu, who lived on the banks of the river Hey-shui. That tribe was formed of the Huns' slaves, freed by the disintegration of the Hunnic society (25-85 AD). Their main occupations were animal husbandry and hunting. They are not identical with the tribes in the West, who belonged to Beibi (Syanbi). They are not of a single race, among them were Tunhu (Mongols) and Dinlins (Tele, aka Ch. Di) and Qiangs (Kians, Tibetans), who lived with them. And that is because originally, they were the slaves of the Huns” [1, p. 28].

Based on that evidence, L.N.Gumilev mistook Jielu for an ethnonym, and states that the word, supposedly pronounced qul and in the modern Turkic languages it means “slave”, in the 6th-8th cc. it had a very different meaning: “alien” or “submitting to foreign state,” without any shade of personal bondage.

Identification of the Jielu, or quls with Jie is clearly erroneous and apparently is due to the misreading the French transcription in the works of the Western authors. In the works of L.N.Gumilev such occasions are not uncommon. So, he reads Sima Chjie [1, p. 51] instead of Sima Chi, Li Kung [1, p. 57] instead Lu Kung, Wan Dun [1, p. 73] instead of Wan Dung, etc. Similarly, in our case E.Chavannes is not talking about the Jie, but about the tsy, or tszylu, about whom the sources provide information.
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In the “History of Southern Qi dynasty” (Nan Qi-shu 南齊書) we find: “Henans belong to the Hun group. During the Han dynasty in the era of Jian-wu rule (26-56 AD), several thousand of the Huns male and female slaves from different [ethnic] groups fled and hid in the Lianzhou area. In the language of the barbarians the slaves are called qy or alternatively qylu” (19, Ch. 59, p. 4-a]. Further, it says that the Henans lived to the north-west of Yizhou area, in the Lianzhou region, they were living of the nomadic pastoralism, and were subjects of Tuyuhuns, whose rulers since the Song dynasty (宋朝 420-479) received appointments and titles from the Chinese Court.

Comparing Nan Qi-shu with the stipulations of L.N.Gumilev, it turns out that tsy, or tszylu (qy, or qylu) is not an ethnonym, but the words that in the language of the barbarians mean “slave”. And an ethnonym  is the word Henan (literally, “living south of the river [Huanhe]”), that arose from the fact that the escaped Huns' slaves settled on the lands south of the river Huanhe. The sources do not mention any evidence of Henans' involvement in the events that took place in the northern China during the Former and Later Zhao dynasties.

It should be noted that the historical sources are not uniform in covering the ethnic origin of the Henans. According to the Nan Qi shu, Henans included various ethnic groups, among which a most numerous was apparently the Hun group, which gave a reason to attribute all of them to the Huns. At the same time, the “History of Southern Dynasties (Nan shi 南史) attributes the Henan rulers to the Syanbis: “The ancestors of the Henan rulers come from Syanbi clan Mujun (aka Murong; Murong is a pinyin version of the Syanbi clan Mujun/Muyun). In the past, the Mujun chief Ylogan had two sons, the eldest called Tuyuhun was born of a concubine, and the youngest called [Mujun] Gui was born of his lawful wife. After the Ylogan death, Mujun Gui inherited the throne. Wishing to secede from Mujun Gui, Tuyuhun moved west to Shanlun, crossed Fuhan, went into the south-western part of Lianzhou, and came to the river Chishui, where he began to live. Those lands are located to the south of the river [Huang He], so he adopted the name of the place as the title [Henan-wan]” [12, Ch. 79, p. 9-a]. Apparently, the Henans, composed of different ethnic groups, were too weak, so the author of the Nan-shi calls their rulers Syanbis, meaning Tuyuhun and his descendants (Syanbi was a Mongol tribe that in the 3rd c. BC escaped Hun's control, and consequently retained their original culture until they conquered a significant number of the Huns in 160 AD. After that, under a common name Syanbi must be discriminated the Mongol Syanbis and the Türkic Syanbis. The tribe Toba was a Türkic Syanbi tribe [ref. P.Budberg, L.Bazin, and V.P.Yudin]).

According to numerous direct and indirect evidence, Jie were a community that owned one of the Huns' 19 pastoral routs, they were a splinter from the parental tribe Qianqui (orig: Цянцзюй, also spelled Kangqu) that owned a pastoral rout mentioned in the Jin-shu among the 19 Huns' pastoral rout communities that lived in the Chinese territory (i.e. inside the border walls or fortified lines; the Qianqui is a transcription that may be a derivative of Kang/Kangar Kyankyui Kyangaoi Qiang Qu, Kian ~ Kiat ~ Gilyan ) [20, Ch. 97, p. 11-b].
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The ethnonym Qianqui (also spelled Kangqu) can be thought of as associated with the name of Qianqui, a Shanuy of the Southern Huns, who held this post from 179 to 188 AD [21, Ch. 89, pp. 32-a - 32-b]. The Wei-shu says: “Ancestors of Shi Le belonged to a separate Huns' pastoral rout, dispersed in the Shendan district, in the Usyan county, in the Qeshi area, after the name of which they started to be called Qeshi Hus (pl. of Hu)” [7, Ch. 95, p. 9-a]. Consequently, the ethnonym Jie is associated with the name of the Qeshi area (modern Yuyshe county in the Shanxi province) (Jinzhong Shi, Yuci 榆次区 district), and thus the Jie is only a geographical definition, not a self-name of the nomadic union.

The sources usually call the Huns “Hus” (sing. Hun ~ Hu). Still Jia Yi (201 -169 BC) in his treatise “On the errors of the Qin house” wrote about the Qin Emperor Shi-Huang: “He sent Meng Tian to the north to build the Great Wall, and hold firmly the lines along it. [Meng Tian] pushed the Huns out for 700-plus li, after which the Hus no longer dared to come down to the south to graze their horses there, and their soldiers did not dare to tension their bows to avenge the insults [18, Ch. 6, p. 44-a]. It is clear that for Jia Yi the Hus and the Huns are one and the same people. In 89 BC Shanuy Hulugu, having won a great victory over the Han troops, sent to the Emperor Wu an ambassador with a letter stating: “In the south is the great state of Han, in the north lay the powerful Hus” [4, Sec. 94-a, l. 29-b], i.e., he himself called the Huns Hus. Since Jies are Huns, the Jin shu ordinarily calls them Hu, and only in rare cases they appear under the name Jie.

In particular, when Shi Le was a boy engaged in street vending in Luoyang, he was standing and whistling by the city wall, when a Jin high official Wang Yan saw him and, startled by his appearance, said: “In my opinion, the voice and the look of this Hu's milk-sucker ... display his extraordinary ambitions.” Zhang Bing, a closest ally of Shi Le, was saying about him: “I've seen a lot of military commanders, but only with this Hu can a great cause be successfully completed.”

It is hardly necessary to cite other numerous examples that prove that the Chinese held Jie as the Huns, but we can not bypass one very important linguistic evidence which helps to identify ethnicity of the Jie themselves, and of the Huns to which they belonged. It is a phrase, uttered in the Jie language by a native of India, Buddhist monk Fotu Den, who served for Shi Le and was spreading Buddhism in China. This only phrase in the Hun language that reached us has meanings of its words and a general  translation.

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