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Tatar language

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The Tatar language (Tatar tele, Tatarça, Татар теле, Татарча) is a Turkic language belonging to the Altaic branch of the Ural-Altaic family of languages. It is spoken by the Tatars.

Classification

Tatar is a Turkic language, which is considered part of the disputed Altaic language family.

Other European (see Crimean Tatar), Caucasian and West-Siberian Turco-Tatar languages are quite similar to Kazan Tatar, but not necessarily mutually intelligible with it.

Geographic distribution

Tatar is spoken in some parts of Europe, Russia, Siberia, China, Turkey, Poland, Ukraine, Finland, Estonia and Central Asia.

Kazan Tatar is also native for 400,000 Bashkirs, especially those living in Ufa, and some thousands of Maris. Mordva's Qaratay group also speak Tatar. The Tatar language is an international communication language between Tatars, Bashkirs, Chuvashs, Kazakhs, Maris, Mordvins, and Udmurts.

Official status

Bilingual guide in Kazan Metro.

Tatar is the official language of the Republic of Tatarstan. The official script of Tatar language is considered to be the Cyrillic alphabet, but sometimes other scripts are used, mostly Latin and Arabic. All official sources in Tatarstan use Cyrillic at their web-sites and publishing. In other cases, where Tatar has no official status, the use of a specific alphabet depends on the preference of the author. Guides in Tatarstan are published in two alphabets.

The Tatar language was made a de facto official language in Russia in 1917 (for the first time since 1552, when the Kazan Khanate was integrated into Russia), but only in the Tatar-Bashkir Soviet Socialist Republic. Tatar is also considered the only official language in Idel-Ural State.

One should note however, that Soviet Russia did not recognize official languages as such; however, there were a number of languages that could be used in trial in some republics. In the Soviet epoch, Tatar was such a language in Bashkortostan, Mari El and other regions of the Russian SFSR (the Soviet Republic comprised of the the area of modern-day Russia).

The usage of Tatar declined from the 1930s onwards. In the 1980s it was not studied in city schools, not even by Tatar pupils. Although the language was used in rural schools, Tatar-speaking pupils had little chance to enter university, because all higher education was in Russian.

In the beginning of the 1990s most Russian republics declared their titular nation's language as official. In Bashkortostan, the Tatar population exceeds that of the Bashkir; however, Tatar does not have an official status, even though 0.5 million Bashkirs and all Bashkortostan Tatars speak it. At the last presidential election current president Murtaza Rakhimov was supported by Tatars only because he promised to make Tatar the third official language of Bashkortostan.

According to some, Tatar is no longer an endangered language, although it is still a low prestige language. Higher education in Tatar can only be found in Tatarstan, and is restricted to the humanities. In other regions Tatar is primarily a spoken language and the number of speakers as well as their proficiency tends to decrease. Tatar is popular as a written language only in Tatar-speaking areas where schools with Tatar language lessons are situated. On the other hand, Tatar is the only language in use in rural districts of Tatarstan.

Dialects of Kazan Tatar

There are 3 main dialects of Tatar: Western (Mişär or Mishar), Middle (Tatarstan's most popular language), and Eastern (Siberian). All of these dialects also have subdivisions.

Mişär

In the Western (Mişär) dialect Ç is pronounced as [ʧ] (southern or lambir mishars) and as [ʦ] (northern mishars or nizhgars). C is pronounced as [ʤ]. There are no differences between v and w, q and k, g and ğ in Mişär dialect. So, modern Tatar Cyrillic alphabet represent Mishar pronunciation WYSIWYS, but for the main speakers of the language Cyrillic has difficult rules to pronounce right. (Cyrillic Tatar doesn't have special letters for q, ğ and w)

Middle

Minzälä

In the Minzälä subdialect of the Middle Dialect z is pronounced as [ð], as opposed to other dialects where it is silent.

Rural or Keräşen

In come cases Y[j] is pronounced as C ([ʓ]) before a consonant (rural speech). Keräşen Tatars use this tendency in their literary language. In their orthography the Cyrillic letter ж (zh) represents this vowel instead of җ, which represents the vowel in standard Tatar Cyrillic.

Slang

In bilingual city people often pronounce x instead of h, k instead of q, g instead of ğ , v instead of w - or making the distinction is less common than it used to be. This could be viewed as an influence of the use of the Cyrillic alphabet. Another theory is that these cities were places where both the Western and Middle dialects were used.

The influence of Russian language is significant. Russian words and phrases are used with Tatar grammar or Russian grammar in Tatar texts. Some Russian verbs are taken entirely, un-nativized, and followed with itärgä. Some English words and phrases are also used.

Siberian Tatar

The Siberian Tatars use a different language than literary Kazan Tatar. Kazan Tatar was used as literary writing language before 1930, but since then only Russian has been used as a written language.

Siberian Tatars pronounce [ts] instead of ç, [j] instead of c and sometimes [p] and [t] instead of b and d. There are also grammatical differences within the dialect, scattered across Western Siberia.

The language of the Chulym Tatars is considered to be an independent language, as are the other "Tatar" languages to the East of them.

Tatar in Russia

There are ~5,300,000 Tatar speakers in Russia. Only ~4,500,000 of them are Tatars. (5,500,000 in Russia). Other speakers are Bashkirs (520,000), Russians (130,000), Chuvashs (70,000), Maris (42,000), Udmurts and Mordvins. There are local Tatar language speakers in Tatarstan, this number includes Azeri, Armenian, Kazakh and Jewish communities.

Phonology

Vowels

Tatar has 16 vowel symbols representing a variable number of sounds. As a Turkic language, Tatar exhibits vowel harmony, with some of the vowels considered front and others back.

Front vowels: ä [æ~ə], â [æ], e [e], é [ɛ], i [i], ó [ø], ö [œ], ü [y]

Back vowels: a [ɑ~ʌ], á [ɑ], í [ɯɪ], ı [ɯ~ɨ:], o [o~o:], u-ú [u]

The usage of í, â, á, ó, ú, é is not universal, and sometimes ıy, a, ya, yo, yu and e are used instead.

Some of them are found only in Slavic loanwords, such as é, ó, long o, long ı. Acute in á, ó, ú denotes palatalisation, but sometimes a palatalisated consonant is marked by following y before the vowel. This is only a problem for Russian loanwords.

The commonly pronounced 10 vowels are native Tatar vowels: a-ä, u-ü, í-i, o-ö, ı-e. The last two pairs considered to be short vowels. They also could mean a long vowels, but only in loanwords. [ə] and [ʌ] are not considered to be an independent vowels. Loaned vowels considered to be back vowels.

Consonants

The consonants of Tatar
Bilabial Labio-
dental 		Dental Alveolar Post-
alveolar 		Palatal Velar Uvular Glottal
Plosives p [p] b [b] t [t] d [d] k [k] g [g] q [q]
Nasals m [m] n [n] ñ [ŋ]
Fricatives f [f] v [v] s [s] z [z] ş [ʃ]
ç [ʃʲ] 		j [ʒ]
c [ʒʲ] 		ğ [ɣ] h [h]
Trill r [r]
Approximant y [j~ɪ]
Lateral
approximant 		l [l]

Most of these phonemes are common to or have equivalents in all Turkic languages.

The phonemes /f/, /x/ and /ʒ/ were borrowed from Arabic and European languages in the Middle Ages, while /v/ was borrowed in the beginning of 20th century. Differentiation betveen /h/ and /x/ appeared in the 10th century with the appearance of the word Allah and the strongest influence of Arabic and Persian languages. Interestingly, during the atheistic Soviet period, the occurrence of /h/ was greatly reduced.

Pronunciation of loanwords

While the consonants [ʒ], [f] and [v] are not native to Tatar, they are well established. However, Tatars usually substitute fricatives for affricates, for example [ʃʲ] for [ʧ], [ʒ] or [ʒʲ] for [ʤ] and [s] for [ʦ]. Nevertheless, literary traditions recommend pronunciation of affricates in loanwords.

[ʔ] (hamza) is a sound found in Arabic loanwords and Islamic prayers. It is usually pronounced as [e] in loanwords.

Palatalisation

Palatalisation is not common in the Tatar language. As a result, Tatar speakers have no problem using the Arabic and Jaŋalif scripts, neither of which has an accepted method for indicating palatisation.

In general, Russian words with palatalisation have entered into the speech of bilingual Tatars since the 1930s. When writing in the Cyrillic alphabet Russian words were spelled as they were in the Russian language. In today's Latin orthography, palatalisation is sometimes represented by an acute diacritic under the vowel.

Some Tatars speak Russian without palatalisation, which is known as a Tatar accent.

Syllable types

  • V (ı-lıs, u-ra, ö-rä)
  • VC (at-law, el-geç, ir-kä)
  • CV (qa-la, ki-ä, su-la)
  • CVC (bar-sa, sız-law, köç-le, qoş-çıq)
  • VCC (ant-lar, äyt-te, ilt-kän)
  • CVCC (tört-te, qart-lar, 'qayt-qan)

Phonetic replacement

Tatar phonotactics dictate many pronunciation changes.

Unrounded vowels may be pronounced as rounded after o or ö:

qorı /qoro/
borın /boron/
közge /közgö/
sorı /soro/)

Nasals are assimilated to following stops:

unber /umber/
mengeç /meñgeç/

Voicing may also undergo assimilation:

küzsez /küssez/

Unstressed vowels may be syncopated or reduced:

urını /urnı/
kilene /kilne/
bezne /bĕzne/
kerdem /kĕrdem/
qırğıç /qĭrğıç/

Vowels may also be elided:

qara urman /qar'urman/
kilä ide /kilä'yde/
turı uram /tur'uram/
bula almím /bul'almím/

In consonant clusters longer than two phones, ı or e (whichever is dictated by vowel harmony) is inserted into speech as an epenthetic vowel.

tekst → /tekest/
bank → /banık/ (not /bañk/)

Final devoicing is also frequent:

tabíb (doctor) → [tabíp]

Grammar

Like other Turkic languages, Tatar is an agglutinative language.

Plural

  • After vowels, consonants, hard: -lar (bala-lar, abí-lar, kitap-lar, qaz-lar, malay-lar, qar-lar, ağaç-lar)
  • After vowels, consonants, soft: -lär (äni-lär, sölge-lär, däftär-lär, kibet-lär, süz-lär, bäbkä-lär, mäktäp-lär, xäref-lär)
  • After nasals, hard: -nar (uram-nar, urman-nar, tolım-nar, moñ-nar, tañ-nar, şalqan-nar)
  • After nasals, soft: -när (ülän-när, keläm-när, çräm-när, iñ-när, ciñ-när, isem-när)

Writing system

Main article: Tatar alphabet
Some guides in Kazan are in Latin script, especially in fashion boutiques

Tatar has been written in a number of different alphabets.

Writing was adopted from the Bolgar language, which used the Orkhon script, before the 920s. Later, the Arabic script was also used.

Pre-1928

Before 1928 Tatar was written with a variant of the Arabic alphabet (Iske imla ...- 1920; Yanga imla 1920-1928).

1927-1938

In Soviet Union Tatar was written with a Latin orthography called Jaŋalif.

Cyrillic

In Tatarstan (a republic of Russia where Tatar is most commonly used) and all other parts of Russia a Cyrillic alphabet is used to write Tatar; also in Kazakhstan.

Modern Latin

A Latin alphabet-based system has been used mostly in Tatarstan since 2000 and generally on the Internet, although this has been less common more recently due to the Russian law that all languages of Russia must be written in the Cyrillic alphabet.

History

Tatar's ancestors are the extinct Bolgar and Kipchak languages.

The literary Tatar language is based on Kazan Tatar's Middle (Tatarstan) dialect and the Old Tatar language (İske Tatar Tele). Both are members of the Kypchak (or Northwestern) group of Turkic languages, although they are also partly derived from the ancient Volga Bolgar language.

The Tatar language strongly influenced most of the Caucasian, Slavic and Finnic languages in the Volga River area.

Examples

  • äye - yes
  • yuq - no
  • isänme(sez)/sawmı(sız) - hello
  • sälâm - hi
  • saw bul(ığız)/xuş(ığız) - goodbye
  • zínhar öçen - please
  • min - I
  • sin - you
  • ul - he / she / it
  • bez - we
  • sez - you
  • alar - they
  • millät - nation
  • İngliz(çä) - English

See also

Tatar edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Language studies

Forums

History and literature

Dictionaries

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