Tatar language

Tatar (татарча, tatarça, تاتارچا)
Spoken in: Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, China, Finland, former Soviet Union
Total speakers: 8 million 
Ranking: 95
Language family: Ural-Altaic (disputed)
 Altaic (disputed)
  Turkic
   Northwestern (Kipchak-Bolghar)
    Uralian
     Tatar 
Official status
Official language of: Tatarstan
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: tt
ISO 639-2: tat
ISO/DIS 639-3: tat 
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

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.

Contents

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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.

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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.

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Official status

Bilingual guide in Kazan Metro.

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

The Tatar language was used as official since 1917 first after Kazan Khanate was adsorbed to Russia in 1552, but only in Tatar-Bashkir Soviet Socialist Republic. Tatar is also considered the only official language in Idel-Ural State.

In the Soviet period the term official language wasn't in use, but the same meaning was a language could be used in trial in some republics. In Soviet epoch Tatar was a language could be used in trial in Bashkortostan, Mari El and other regions of RSFSR.

Since 1930s use of the Tatar language declined. In the 1980s it wasn't studied in city schools even for Tatar pupils. In rural schools it was used, but Tatar-speaking pupils had no chance to enter university, because all higher education was only in Russian.

In the beginning of the 1990s most Russian republics declared titular nation's language as official. In Bashkortostan Tatar population exceed Bashkir, but Tatar language doesn't 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.

Today the Tatar language is not viewed by some people as an endangered language, but it is viewed as a low prestige language. High education in Tatar only takes place in Tatarstan and only for humanitarian sciences. In other regions Tatar is a spoken language firstly, the number of speakers as well as quality of knowledge outside Tatarstan tends to decrease. As a written language Tatar is popular only in Tatar-speaking areas where schools with Tatar language lessons are situated. On the other hand, in pure Tatar rural districts of Tatarstan Tatar language is, in fact, the only language in use.

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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.

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Mişär

In the Western (Mişär) dialect Ç is pronounced as [ʧ], C as [ʤ], [ʦ] sound also pronounced. 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 hasn't special letters for q, ğ and w)

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Middle

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Minzälä

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

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Rural or Keräşen

In come cases Y[j] is pronounced as C ([ʓ]) before a consonant (rural speech). Keräşen Tatars uses this tendention as literary. In their alphabet Russian letter ж (zh) represent this vowel instead of җ that represent those vowel in standard Tatar Cyrillic.

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Slang

In bilingual city people's slang there are differences between x and h, q and k, ğ and g, v and w - which are less pronounced than they used to be. This can 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. Verbs appears originally: Russian verb + itärgä. Some English words and phrases are also incorporated.

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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.

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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.

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Phonology

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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 convented! Sometimes ıy, a, ya, yo, yu and e are used instead of them.

Some of them could be found only in Slavic loanwords, such as é, ó, long o, long ı. Acute in á, ó, ú means palatalisation, but sometimes palatalisated consonate is marked by following y before the vowel. This problem is only 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.

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Consonants

The consonants of Tatar
Bilabial Labio-</br>dental Dental Alveolar Post-</br>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</br>approximant l [l]

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

The phonemes /f/, /x/ and /ʒ/ were loaned from European and Arabic languages in the Middle Ages, while /v/ was loaned in the beginning of 20th century. Difference 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.

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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.

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Palatalisation

Palatalisation is not common in the Tatar language. As a result, Tatar speakers have no problem using the Arabic and Janalif scripts, both of which have no palatisation indicators.

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 alphabet version palatalisation is sometimes represented by an acute diacritic under the vowel.

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

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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)
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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]

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Grammar

Like other Turkic languages, Tatar is an agglutinative language.

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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)
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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 system was legased from Bolgar language, which used Orkhon script before 920s and Arabic script later.

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Pre-1928

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

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1927-1938

In Soviet Union Tatar has been written with a Latin alphabet named Janalif.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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
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See also

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External links

Wikipedia
Tatar language edition of Wikipedia
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Language studies

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Forums

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History and literature

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Dictionaries