Tatar language

Tatar language (Tatar tele, Tatarça) is a very ancient Turkic language belonging to the Altaic branch of the Ural-Altaic family of languages.

It is the official language of the Republic of Tatarstan, and is also spoken in European part of Russia, Siberia as well as in China, Turkey, Ukraine, Finland, Estonia, and all over Central Asia.

With a few exceptions, the main features which distinguish the Altaic languages from Indo-European are as follows:

• Vowel harmony is a feature of all Ural-Altaic tongues
• No gender
• Agglutination
• Verbs come at the end of the sentence

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

Other European (see also: Crimean Tatar), Caucasus, and West Siberian Tatar languages are very similar to the Kazan Tatar language and are mutually intelligible with it.

The literary Tatar language is based on the Kazan Tatar language's Middle (Tatarstan) dialect and the Old Tatar Language (İske Tatar Tele). The Old Tatar language's ancestors are the Volga Bolgar language and Kipchak.

Kazan Tatar language 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.

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

Difficulties of Tatar pronunciation

• Natively Tatar words do not have the following consonants: [Z] (j), [f] and [v], but they are prounounced by Tatars well

• Kazan Tatars can not pronounce affricates at all. Mostly they pronounce Tatar [ʃ] (soft Esh) or instead of [ʧ] (Tesh), [ʒ] (Ezh) instead of [ʤ] (Dezh), [s] instead of [ts]. But pronouncing of afficates in loanwords is recommended by literary traditions: all loanwords are usually pronounced as in native languages.

• There are only 4 type syllables: c – consonant, v - vowel
  • c+v
  • v+c
  • c+v+c
  • c+v+c+c

• If there are more than 2 consonants, ı or e sounds are inserted into the speech. Sometimes this process occurs in non-Tatar words without any reason.

tekst (text) -> [tekest] bank -> [banık] (not [bañk])

• There are 5 pairs of vowels: a - ä, o - ö, u - ü, ı - e, í - i

• In the end of syllable without vowel after the last consonant:

b -> [p], g ->[k], ğ -> [q] or [x], v ->[f] tabíb (doctor) -> [tabíp]

• The Tatar language has vowel harmony

• For more about Tatar phonetic see Tatar alphabet

Dialects of Kazan Tatar language

In Western (Mişär) dialect Ç is prnounced as [tS], C as [dZ], [ts] sound also pronounced.

In Minzälä subdialect of Central Dialect [ð] is pronounced in some cases.

In come cases Y is pronounced as C before the consonate in all regions of Tatarstan.

In bilingually peoples' city slang differences between x and h, q and k, ğ and g, v and w is not so principial as it was earlier. This is harmful influence of Cyrillic alphabet.

Examples

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

See also

• Tatars
• Tatar alphabet

External links

• Dmoz.org: links about Tatar language (http://www.dmoz.org/Science/Social_Sciences/Language_and_Linguistics/Natural_Languages/Altaic/Turkic/Tatar/)
• Dmoz.org: links about Tatar language in Tatar (http://www.dmoz.org/World/Tatar%c3%a7a/F%c3%a4nn%c3%a4r/%c3%8dct%c3%adma%c4%9f%c3%ad_F%c3%a4nn%c3%a4r/Tel_w%c3%a4_Tel_beleme/Tatar%c3%a7a/)
• Dmoz.org: links to Tatar dictionaries (http://www.dmoz.org/Reference/Dictionaries/World_Languages/T/Tatar/)
• Dmoz.org: Web resources in Tatar (http://www.dmoz.org/World/Tatar%c3%a7a/)

Language studies

• Information about Tatar writing (http://www.omniglot.com/writing/tatar.htm)
• Tatar tele turında säxifä (Tatar dili hakkinda sahife) (http://tugan-tel.noka.ru/forum/)

Forums

• Tatar mailing list (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tatar-l/) (English)
• Tatar forum (http://tugan-tel.noka.ru/forum/) (Tatar)
• IRC channel #tatar on the FreeNode network

History and literature

• Tatar myths (http://www.alabuga.ru/City/History/TatarMyths/), including the story of tt:Şüräle (Russian)
• Tatar library (http://kitapxane.at.tt/?en)
• Links to other Tatar language resources (http://peoples.org.ru/eng_tatar.html)
• Tatars' history in the Turkic world perspective (http://www.turkicworld.org/) (Volga Bulgars links are under the "History" and "Genetics" tabs)

Dictionaries

• English-Tatar dictionary (http://agidel.virtualave.net/)
• Tatar-Russian-English dictionary (http://tugan-tel.at.tt/suezlek/tt-ru-en)

ast:Tártaru ca:Tàtar de:Tatarische Sprache fr:Tatar nl:Tataars ru:Татарский язык tt:Tatar tele tr:Tatarca zh:塔塔尔语

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