Everything about the Tatar Language totally explained
The
Tatar language (
Tatar tele,
Tatarça,
Татар теле,
Татарча) is a
Turkic language spoken by the
Tatars.
Classification
Tatar is a
Turkic language, which is considered part of the disputed
Altaic language family.
Geographic distribution
Tatar is spoken in
Russia,
Central Asia,
Ukraine,
Poland,
China,
Finland and
Turkey.
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. 94% of ethnic Tatar and 7% of the people of other ethnicities living in Tatarstan claimed knowledge of Tatar language during the
2002 census.
Official status
Tatar is the official language of the
Republic of Tatarstan. The
official script of Tatar language is based on the
Cyrillic alphabet with some additional letters not used in Slavic languages. 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 annexed by Russia), but only in the
Tatar–Bashkir Soviet Socialist Republic. Tatar is also considered the official language in
Idel-Ural State.
One should note, however, that
Bolshevist Russia didn't 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 area of modern-day
Russia).
The usage of Tatar declined from the
1930s onwards. In the
1980s it wasn't 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.
According to some, Tatar is no longer an endangered language, although it's 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 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)
This is the dialect spoken by the Tatar minority of
Finland.
Middle
Minzälä
In the Minzälä subdialect of the Middle Dialect
z is pronounced as [ð], as opposed to other dialects where it's silent.
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 Russian language. 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.
There was a distinct
cryptolect the
Gäp, spoken predominantly in
Kazan, but now it's extinct or near the extinction.
Siberian Tatar
The
Siberian Tatars use a
different dialect from literary Tatar. 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 some 5,300,000 Tatar speakers in Russia. Only about 4,500,000 of them are Tatars. 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 isn't 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 are considered to be short vowels. They also could mean a long vowels, but only in loanwords. [ə] and [ʌ] are not considered to be independent vowels. Loaned vowels are considered to be back vowels.
Consonants
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 between /h/ and /x/ appeared in the 10th century with the appearance of the word
Allah and the strongest influence of Arabic and Persian languages. During the
atheistic
Soviet period, the occurrence of /h/ greatly reduced.
Pronunciation of loanwords
While the consonants [ʒ], [f] and [v] are not native to Tatar, they're 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 isn't 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
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 alphabet was also used, as well as the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets.
Pre–1928
Before 1928 Tatar was written with a variant of the Arabic alphabet (Iske imla ...- 1920; Yanga imla 1920-1928).
1927–1938
In the 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 Cyrillic.
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're also partly derived from the ancient Volga Bolgar language.
The Tatar language strongly influenced most of the Caucasian, Slavic and Finno-Ugric languages in the Volga River area.
Examples
äye – yes
yuq – no
isänme(sez)/sawmı(sız) – hello
sälâm – hi
saw bul(ığız)/xuş(ığız) – bye bye
zínhar öçen – please
min – I
sin – you
ul – he / she / it
bez – we
sez – you
alar – they
millät – nation
İngliz(çä) – EnglishFurther Information
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