Jaŋalif

Cyrillization

In 1930s Turkey became one of the numerous potential enemies of the Soviet Union. Even though Atatürk's alphabet was different from Jaŋalif, for Soviet officials the Latin alphabet was a symbol of the outer, bourgeois world. In 1939 Cyrillization of USSR was initiated. As by Stalin's statement, Russian people is the leader of socialistic peoples, so all peoples of the country should know Russian and tend to be assimilated with Russians. As was said, alphabet was switched to Cyrillic "by labor's request."

There are also several projects of Cyrillization. Ilminski's alphabet was already forgotten and it couldn't be used, due to its religious origin.As early as 1938 professor M. Fazlullin introduced an adaptation of the Russian alphabet for the Tatar language, without any additional characters. Specific Tatar letters should be signed with the digraphs, consisting of similar Russian letters and the letters Ъ and Ь.

In 1939 Qorbangaliev and Ramazanov offered their own projects that planned to use additional Cyrillic characters. Letters Ө, Ә, Ү, Һ were inherited from Jaŋalif, but Җ and Ң were invented by analogy with Щ and Ц. Гъ and Къ should be used to designate Ğ and Q. By this project "ğädät" ("custom") was spelled as "гъәдәт", "qar" ("snow") as "къар". In Ramazanov's project W (Jaŋalif V) was marked by В before the vowel, and У, Ү in the end of syllable. Jaŋalif: vaq - вак; tav - тау; dəv - дәү. In May 5 1939 this project was established as official by the Supreme Soviet of TASSR. Surprisingly, "Tatar society disagreed to this project" and during 1940 July conference Cyrillic alphabet was finally standardized. January 10 1941 this project was passed. According to this version, "ğädät" was spelled as "гадәт", "qar" as "кар". The principles were following: if га/го/гу/гы/ка/ко/ку/кы/ is followed by "soft syllable", containing "ә, е, ө, и, ү" or soft sign "ь", they are spelled as ğä/ğö/ğü/ğe/qä/qö/qü/qe, in other cases as ğa/ğo/ğu/ğı/qa/qo/qu/qı. гә/гө/гү/ге/кә/кө/кү/ке are spelled as gä/gö/gü/ge/kä/kö/kü/ke. Similar practice were applied for е, ю, я, that could be spelled as ye, yü, yä and as yı, yu, ya. Examples: канәгать - qänäğät (satisfied); ел - yıl (year); ямь - yäm (charm). So, in Tatar Cyrillic soft sing hasn't sense of iotation, as in Russian, but a sense of vowel harmony. Unlike modern Russian, some words can end with ъ, to sing a "hard g" after the "soft vowel", as in балигъ - baliğ (of the full legal age).

All Russian words are written as in Russian and should be pronounced with Russian pronunciation.

In 1955, 1958, 1959 and 1989 some people tried to initiate the reform of Cyrillic alphabet, as to add letters Қ, Ғ and Ў, to sign sounds [q] , [IPA|ɣ] (ğ) and [w] and make Tatar spelling WYSIWYS. Some offered to use V instead of Ў. In 1990s those attempts failed, because at that period many Tatarstan statesmen wanted to restore the Jaŋalif.

А Ә Б В [Ў] Г [Ғ] Д Е (Ё) Ж Җ З И Й К [Қ] Л М Н Ң О Ө П Р С Т У Ү Ф Х Һ Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я

[] letters that should be added in 1989. However, Tatar Parliament resorted Cyrillic alphabet in January 1997.

А Ә Б В Г Д Е (Ё) Ж Җ З И Й К Л М Н Ң О Ө П Р С Т У Ү Ф Х Һ Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я

Restoring of Jaŋalif

In the 1990s some wanted to restore Jaŋalif, or Jaŋalif+W, as being corresponding to modern Tatar phonetics. But technical problems, such as font problems and the disuse of Uniform Turkic alphabet among other peoples forced to use "Turkish-based alphabet". In 2000 that alphabet was adopted by the Tatarstan government, but in 2002 it was abolished by the Russian Federation.

Inalif

The "Internet-style" alphabet named "Inalif" after "Internet" and "älifba" was convented in 2003 and partly it was inspirited by Jaŋalif. The main purpose of this alphabet was a standardization of texts, which are written only with English keyboard, without any diacritical marks. But this is not a simple transliteration of non-English symbols of Jaŋalif or modern alphabet. Non-English letters are represented like digraphs, soft vowels are represented like combination of the pairmate and apostrophe, excluding "y", that firstly in Tatar writing represent ı (ы), probably under the influence of Transliteration of Russian and grammar of the Slavic languages. Like in Jaŋalif, j represent [j] , and zh is used for j of modern and Unicode| ƶ of Jaŋalif. X isn't used in Inalif and kh uses instead of them. Other changes include: Ä - A'; Ö - O'; Ü - U'; Ç - Ch; Ğ -Gh; Ñ -Ng; Ş -Sh. The sorting of Inalif isn't published, but computer sorting consider to use English sorting. Inalif is used only on the Internet. [ru icon ]

ource

ee also

* Tatar alphabet
* Tatar language
* Uniform Turkic Alphabet