Tatar language

History

The ancestors of Tatar are the extinct Turkic Bulgar and Kipchak languages.

The literary Tatar language is based on the Central Tatar (Kazan) dialect and on Volga Türki, also known as Old Tatar Language. Both are members of the Volga-Ural subgroup of the Kipchak group of Turkic languages, although they also partly derive from the ancient Volga Bulgar language. Kazan Tatars used to also write in Chaghatai language.

Crimean Tatar, although similar by name, belongs to another subgroup of the Kipchak languages. Unlike Kazan Tatar, Crimean Tatar is heavily influenced by Turkish (mostly its Ottoman variety with Arabic and Persian influences) and Nogai languages.

Influences in Tatar

Most of the Uralic languages in the Volga River area have strongly influenced the Tatar language, as have the Arabic, Persian and Russian languages.

Arabic and Persian

The Tatars joined the Islamic world in the 10th century, enabling Arabic and Persian influence on the language.

Loanwords have largely been filtered through Persian. The stock can be split into an everyday register and a literary register. The everyday register survived the Soviet era, while the literary register was replaced with Russian loans.

Pre-modern literary works used loanwords heavily, similar to Ottoman Turkish. In the early 1900s, reformist intellectuals led a movement to temper the usage of Arabic and Persian loanwords.

Tatar has merged many sounds of Arabic. Some sets of otherwise-homophonous consonants are distinguished by how they condition the backness or frontness of vowels. In Tatar, ع (ayn) and غ (ghayn) are both borrowed as ghayn, which is spelled with ğ (г).

In the Mishar Tatar dialect, ghayn is not pronounced, and is rendered as voiced velar plosive g or omitted altogether (شعر, шигырь, şiğer, "poem"; in Mishar dialect şigır or şiyır).

Long-A (alif) is realised as a, and short-A (fathah) is ä (عيسى, Ğäysä; آزاد, Azat). Alif with hamza (أ) is also ä, but Tatar İske imlâ spelling omits the hamza (امين / أمين, Ämin). Vowel harmony can also affect realisation (عبد الله, Ğabdulla; عبد الرشيد, Ğäbderräşit). This is also the case with ö/o (عمر, Ğömär; عثمان, Ğosman). However, this rule is often inconsistent when transliterating from Cyrillic to Latin. The spelling of borrowings is systematic; for example, سلام "hello" is written as сәлам (sälam), with a long-A, but pronounced as "сәләм” ("säläm").

During the Golden Horde (1242–1502), the ancestors of modern Tatars used Persian in addition to their Turkic language to a relatively significant extent, especially in poetry and even after the Golden Horde. For example, the long-serving Khan of the Kazan Khanate (1438–1552), Möxəmməd-Əmin, wrote poetry in Persian. In religious and legal matters Arabic was used. Many Persian and Arabic works are considered part of Tatar literature today.

Russian

From incorporation into the Russian Empire to present-day status as a part of the Russian Republic, the Russian language has also exerted influence on Tatar.

This accelerated dramatically during the Soviet era for political reasons, with Russian loanwords supplanting Arabic and Persian loanwords, such that up to half of a dictionary's words were Russian loans.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, learned speakers have endeavored to de-Russify by restoring Perso-Arabic loanwords, similar (yet directly converse) to Turkish post-Ottoman replacement of Perso-Arabic loanwords. These are not necessarily readily understood among the rest of the populace.

Diaspora language such as Finnish Tatar has been less affected by Soviet developments.

Dialects

There are two main dialects of Tatar:

• Central or Middle (Urta / Qazan)
• Western (Könbatış / Mişär)

These dialects also have subdivisions. Significant contributions to the study of the Tatar language and its dialects, were made by a scientist Gabdulkhay Akhatov, who is considered to be the founder of the modern Tatar dialectological school.

Spoken idioms of Siberian Tatars, which differ significantly from the above two, are often considered as the third dialect group of Tatar by some, but as an independent language on its own by others.

Central or Middle

The Central or Middle dialectal group is spoken in Kazan and most of Tatarstan and is the basis of the standard literary Tatar language. Middle Tatar includes the Nagaibak dialect.

Mishar

The Western (Mishar) dialect is distinguished from the Central dialect most clearly by the absence of the uvular q and ğ and the rounded å of the first syllable. Letters ç and c are pronounced as affricates. Regional differences exist also.

Mishar Dialect, and especially its regional variant in Sergachsky district (Nizhny Novgorod), is said to be "faithfully close" to the ancient Kipchak language. Some linguists, such as Radlov, Samoylovich, think that Mishar traditionally belongs to the Kipchak-Cuman group of languages, rather than to the Kipchak-Bulgar group.

Mishar is the dialect spoken by the Tatar minority of Finland.

Siberian Tatar

Two main isoglosses that characterize Siberian Tatar are ç as and c as , corresponding to standard and . There are also grammatical differences within the dialect, scattered across Siberia.

Many linguists claim the origins of Siberian Tatar dialects are actually independent of Volga–Ural Tatar; these dialects are quite remote both from Standard Tatar and from each other, often preventing mutual comprehension. The claim that this language is part of the modern Tatar language is typically supported by linguists in Kazan, Moscow and by Siberian Tatar linguists and denounced by some Russian and Tatar ethnographs.

Over time, some of these dialects were given distinct names and recognized as separate languages (e.g. the Chulym language) after detailed linguistic study. However, the Chulym language was never classified as a dialect of Tatar language. Confusion arose because of the endoethnonym "Tatars" used by the Chulyms. The question of classifying the Chulym language as a dialect of the Khakass language was debatable. A brief linguistic analysis shows that many of these dialects exhibit features which are quite different from the Volga–Ural Tatar varieties, and should be classified as Turkic varieties belonging to several sub-groups of the Turkic languages, distinct from Kipchak languages to which Volga–Ural Tatar belongs.

Phonology

Vowels

There exist several interpretations of the Tatar vowel phonemic inventory. In total Tatar has nine or ten native vowels, and three or four loaned vowels (mainly in Russian loanwords).

According to Baskakov (1988) Tatar has only two vowel heights, high and low. There are two low vowels, front and back, while there are eight high vowels: front and back, round (R+) and unround (R−), normal and short (or reduced).

Poppe (1963) proposed a similar yet slightly different scheme with a third, higher mid, height, and with nine vowels.

According to Makhmutova (1969) Tatar has three vowel heights: high, mid and low, and four tongue positions: front, front-central, back-central and back (as they are named when cited).

The mid back unrounded vowel ''ë is usually transcribed as ı, though it differs from the corresponding Turkish vowel.

The tenth vowel ï is realized as the diphthong ëy (IPA: ), which only occurs word-finally, but it has been argued to be an independent phoneme.

Phonetically, the native vowels are approximately thus (with the Cyrillic letters and the usual Latin romanization in angle brackets):

In polysyllabic words, the front-back distinction is lost in reduced vowels: all become mid-central. The mid reduced vowels in an unstressed position are frequently elided, as in кеше keşe > 'person', or кышы qışı > '(his) winter'. Low back is rounded in the first syllable and after , but not in the last, as in бала bala 'child', балаларга balalarğa 'to children'. In Russian loans there are also , , , and , written the same as the native vowels: ы, е/э, о, а respectively.

Historical shifts

Historically, the Old Turkic mid vowels have raised from mid to high, whereas the Old Turkic high vowels have become the Tatar reduced mid series. (The same shifts have also happened in Bashkir.)

Consonants

Notes

^* The phonemes , , , , , are only found in loanwords. occurs more commonly in loanwords, but is also found in native words, e.g. yafraq 'leaf'. , , , may be substituted with the corresponding native consonants , , , by some Tatars.

^† and are the dialectal Western (Mişär) pronunciations of җ ⟨c⟩ and ч ⟨ç⟩ , the latter are in the literary standard and in the Central (Kazan) dialect. is the variant of ч ⟨ç⟩ as pronounced in the Eastern (Siberian) dialects and some Western (Mişär) dialects. Both and are also used in Russian loanwords (the latter written ц).

^‡ In native words, and are allophones of and in the environment of back vowels, and written in Cyrillic with plain к and г. This is not the case in Perso-Arabic loanwords, where the difference is phonemic.

Palatalization

Tatar consonants usually undergo slight palatalization before front vowels. However, this allophony is not significant and does not constitute a phonemic status. This differs from Russian where palatalized consonants are not allophones but phonemes on their own. There are a number of Russian loanwords which have palatalized consonants in Russian and are thus written the same in Tatar (often with the "soft sign" ь). The Tatar standard pronunciation also requires palatalization in such loanwords; however, some Tatar may pronounce them non-palatalized.

Syllables

In native words there are six types of syllables (Consonant, Vowel, Sonorant):

• 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)
• VSC (ant-lar, äyt-te, ilt-kän)
• CVSC (tört-te, qart-lar, qayt-qan)

Loanwords allow other types: CSV (gra-mota), CSVC (käs-trül), etc.

Prosody

Stress is usually on the final syllable. However, some suffixes cannot be stressed, so the stress shifts to the syllable before that suffix, even if the stressed syllable is the third or fourth from the end. A number of Tatar words and grammatical forms have the natural stress on the first syllable. Loanwords, mainly from Russian, usually preserve their original stress (unless the original stress is on the last syllable, in such a case the stress in Tatar shifts to suffixes as usual, e.g. sovét > sovetlár > sovetlarğá).

Phonetic alterations

Tatar phonotactics dictate many pronunciation changes which are not reflected in the orthography.

• Unrounded vowels ı and e become rounded after o or ö:

коры/qorı > [qoro]

борын/borın > [boron]

көзге/közge > [közgö]

соры/sorı > [soro]

• Nasals are assimilated to the following stops:

унбер/unber > [umber]

менгеч/mengeç > [meñgeç]

• Stops are assimilated to the preceding nasals (this is reflected in writing):

урманнар/urmannar ( < urman + lar)

комнар/komnar ( < kom + lar)

• Voicing may also undergo assimilation:

күзсез/küzsez > [küssez]

• Unstressed vowels may be syncopated or reduced:

урыны/urını> [urnı]

килене/kilene > [kilne]

• Vowels may also be elided:

кара урман/qara urman > [qarurman]

килә иде/kilä ide > [kiläyde]

туры урам/turı uram > [tururam]

була алмыйм/bula almıym > [bulalmıym]

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

банк/bank > [bañqı]

• Final consonant clusters are simplified:

артист/artist > [artis]

• Final devoicing is also frequent:

табиб/tabib > [tabip]

Grammar

Like other Turkic languages, Tatar is an agglutinative language.

Nouns

Tatar nouns are inflected for cases and numbers. Case suffixes change depending on the last consonants of the noun, while nouns ending in for example p/k (п/к) are voiced to b/g (б/г) when a possessive suffix is added (kitap –> kitabım / китабым, "my book"). Suffixes below are in back vowel, with front variant can be seen at #Phonology section.

The declension of possessive suffixes is even more irregular, with the dative suffix -а used in 1st singular and 2nd singular suffixes, and the accusative, dative, locative, and ablative endings -н, -на, -нда, -ннан is used after 3rd person possessive suffix. Nouns ending in -и, -у, or -ү, although phonologically vowels, take consonantic endings.

Declension of pronouns

The declension of personal and demonstrative pronouns tends to be irregular. Irregular forms are in bold.

Verbs

Like some other Turkic languages, Tatar employs no proper articles to convey definiteness; instead, this semantic property is marked by different morphemes. Broadly speaking, definiteness corresponds to the English 'the', while indefiniteness corresponds to 'a' or 'an'. The verb conjunction is affected by the definiteness of the its arguments (subject or object).

The distribution of present tense suffixes is complicated, with the former (also with vowel harmony) is used with verb stems ending in consonants, and the latter is used with verb stem ending in vowels (with the last vowel being deleted, eşläw / эшләү – eşli / эшли; compare Turkish işlemek – continuous işliyor). The distribution of indefinite future tense is more complicated in consonant-ending stems, it is resolved by -арга/-ырга infinitives (yazarga / язарга – yazar / язар). However, because some have verb citation forms in verbal noun (-у), this rule becomes somewhat unpredictable.

Tenses are negated with -ма, however in the indefinite future tense and the verbal participle they become -mas / -мас and -mıyça / -мыйча instead, respectively. Alongside vowel-ending stems, the suffix also becomes -мый when negates the present tense. To form interrogatives, the suffix -мы is used.

Definite past and conditional tenses use type II personal inflections instead. When in the case of present tense, short ending (-м) is used. After vowels, the first person imperative forms deletes the last vowel, similar to the present tense does (eşläw – eşlim). Like plurals of nouns, the suffix -лар change depending the preceding consonants (-alar, but -ğannar).

Anomalous verbs

Some verbs fall into this category. Dozens of them have irregular stems with a final mid vowel, but obscured on the infinitive (uqu – uqı, uqıy; tözü – töze, tözi). The verbs qoru / кору "to build", tanu / тану "to disclaim", taşu / ташу "to spill" have contrastive meanings with verbs with their final vowelled counterparts, meaning "to dry", "to know", "to carry".

The verb дию (diyu) "to say" is significantly more irregular than any other verbs: its 2nd person singular imperative is digen (диген), while its expected regular form is repurposed as the present tense forms (dim, diñ, di…).

Predicatives

These predicative suffixes have now fallen into disuse, or rarely used.

Writing system

During its history, Tatar has been written in Arabic, Latin and Cyrillic scripts.

Before 1928, Tatar was mostly written in Arabic script (Иске имля/İske imlâ, "Old orthography", to 1920; Яңа имла/Yaña imlâ, "New orthography", 1920–1928).

During the 19th century, Russian Christian missionary Nikolay Ilminsky devised the first Cyrillic alphabet for Tatar. This alphabet is still used by Christian Tatars (Kryashens).

In the Soviet Union after 1928, Tatar was written with a Latin alphabet called Jaꞑalif.

In 1939, in Tatarstan and all other parts of the Soviet Union, a Cyrillic script was adopted and is still used to write Tatar. It is also used in Kazakhstan.

The Republic of Tatarstan passed a law in 1999 that came into force in 2001 establishing an official Tatar Latin alphabet. A Russian federal law overrode it in 2002, making Cyrillic the sole official script in Tatarstan since. In 2004, an attempt to introduce a Latin-based alphabet for Tatar was further abandoned when the Constitutional Court ruled that the federal law of 15 November 2002 mandating the use of Cyrillic for the state languages of the republics of the Russian Federation does not contradict the Russian constitution. In accordance with this Constitutional Court ruling, on 28 December 2004, the Tatar Supreme Court overturned the Tatarstani law that made the Latin alphabet official.

In 2012 the Tatarstan government adopted a new Latin alphabet but with limited usage (mostly for Romanization).

In 2024, the modified Common Turkic Alphabet replaced letter ä with ə, which was already in use in Azerbaijani, as well as among Tatar activists using the Latin alphabet.

• Tatar Perso-Arabic alphabet (before 1928):

• Tatar Old Latin (Jaꞑalif) alphabet (1928 to 1940):

• Tatar Old Cyrillic alphabet (by Nikolay Ilminsky, 1861; the letters in parentheses are not used in modern publications):

• Tatar Cyrillic alphabet (1939; the letter order adopted in 1997):

• 1999 Tatar Latin alphabet, made official by a law adopted by Tatarstani authorities but annulled by the Tatar Supreme Court in 2004:

• 2012 Tatar Latin alphabet

Sample text

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Tatar (Cyrillic):

Барлык кешеләр дә азат һәм үз абруйлары һәм хокуклары ягыннан тиң булып туалар. Аларга акыл һәм вөҗдан бирелгән, һәм алар бер-берсенә карата туганнарча мөнасәбәттә булырга тиешләр.

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Tatar (Latin):

Barlıq keşelər də azat həm üz abruyları həm xoquqları yağınnan tiñ bulıp tuwalar. Alarğa aqıl həm wöcdan birelgən, həm alar ber-bersenə qarata tuğannarça mönəsəbəttə bulırğa tiyeşlər.

International Phonetic Alphabet transcription:

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.