Tatar ( ; Tatar: , or , ) is a Turkic language spoken by the Tatars mainly located in modern Republic of Tatarstan, wider Volga-Ural region, as well as many other regions of Russia. Tatar belongs to the Kipchak branch of Turkic languages, the same branch as Bashkir, Kazakh, Nogai and Kyrgyz.
The two main dialects of Tatar are the Central Dialect (urta / qazan; most common), and the Western Dialect (könbatış / mişər). The literary Tatar language is based on the Central Dialect and on a local variant of Türki. Tatar should not be confused with Crimean Tatar or Siberian Tatar, which are different languages, although also part of the Kipchak language group.
Like other Turkic languages, Tatar was traditionally written in the Arabic script for most of its history. Since 1939, the alphabet has been Cyrillic, though a number of Latin-based versions have also been used over the years.
Geographic distribution The Tatar language is spoken by about 5 million people. Most speakers live in Russia, but there are also communities in Azerbaijan, China, Finland, Georgia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Turkey, Ukraine, the United States, Uzbekistan. Mordva's Qaratay group also speak a variant of Kazan Tatar.
In the 2010 census, 69% of Russian Tatars claimed at least some knowledge of the Tatar language.Russian Census 2010. Владение языками населением In Tatarstan, 93% of Tatars and 3.6% of Russians claimed to have at least some knowledge of the Tatar language. In neighbouring Bashkortostan, 67% of Tatars, 27% of Bashkirs, and 1.3% of Russians claimed to understand basic Tatar language.Russian Census 2010. Владение языками населением наиболее многочисленных национальностей по субъектам Российской Федерации [Language proficiency of the population of the largest ethnic groups by federal subjects of the Russian Federation]
Official status
Tatar, along with Russian, is the official language of the Republic of Tatarstan. The official script of the Tatar language is based on the Cyrillic script with some additional letters. The Republic of Tatarstan passed a law in 1999, which 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. Unofficially, other scripts are used as well, mostly Latin and Arabic. All official sources in Tatarstan must use Cyrillic on their websites and in publishing. In other cases, where Tatar has no official status, the use of a specific alphabet depends on the preference of the author.
The Tatar language was made a de facto official language in Russia in 1917, but only within the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Tatar is also considered to have been the official language in the short-lived Idel-Ural State, briefly formed during the Russian Civil War.
The usage of Tatar declined during the 20th century. By the 1980s, the study and teaching of Tatar in the public education system was limited to rural schools. However, Tatar-speaking pupils had little chance of entering university because higher education was available in Russian almost exclusively.
As of 2001, Tatar was considered a "potentially endangered language" while Siberian Tatar received "endangered" status. 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.
Since 2017, Tatar language classes are no longer mandatory in the schools of Tatarstan. According to the opponents of this change, it will further endanger the Tatar language and is a violation of the Tatarstan Constitution which stipulates the equality of Russian and Tatar languages in the republic.
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,Tatar language – Princeton University as have the Arabic, Persian and Russian languages. Татарский язык в Интернете: информация о методах и средствах обучения [The Tatar language on the Internet: information about teaching methods and tools]
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.Leitzinger, Antero: Mishäärit – Suomen vanha islamilainen yhteisö. Kirja-Leitzinger, 1996. . (p. 41) 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.Махмутова Л. Т. Опыт исследования тюркских диалектов: мишарский диалект татарского языка. — М.: Наука, 1978
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.Information about Siberian Tatar
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). Front Back R− R+ R− R+ High Normal i ü ï u Short e ö ë o Low ä a
Poppe (1963) proposed a similar yet slightly different scheme with a third, higher mid, height, and with nine vowels.
Front Back R− R+ R− R+ High i ü u Higher Mid e ö ï o Low ä a
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). Front Central Back Front Back R− R+ R− R+ R− R+ R− R+ High i ü ï u Mid e ö ë o Low ä a
The mid back unrounded vowel 'ë is usually transcribed as ı, though it differs from the corresponding Turkish vowel.