New Turkic alphabet

The earliest example of recording the Turkic language in the Latin alphabet is the Codex Cumanicus (Kuman Codex), written in the Kypchak language . This writing was distributed only among the small Catholics of the Golden Horde and was soon forgotten after its disappearance, since Catholicism did not receive distribution among the Türks.

For many centuries, the Tatar language and a number of Turkic languages ​​of the Caucasus and Central Asia used the Arabic alphabet , which extremely imperfectly conveyed Turkic phonetics - in particular, it did not reflect the vowel harmony characteristic of most Turkic languages. Attempts to improve it arose quite late, in the 19th-20th centuries, relying on similar spelling reforms in the Ottoman and Persian languages . At the same time, in the middle of the XIX century, attempts began to write the Turkic languages ​​in Cyrillic or Latin letters, especially in Azerbaijan ^[1] . At the same time, the Russian missionary N.I. Ilminsky, together with a group of like-minded people, developed an alphabet based on the modified Russian for all the peoples of the Volga-Ural region ( Tatars , Bashkirs , etc.). Although the modern Tatar alphabet differs in a number of characters from the Ilminsky project (Ә instead of Ӓ, Ө instead of Ӧ, Ү instead of Ӱ, Җ instead of Ж , Ң instead of Ҥ), the general principles were laid down by Ilminsky. Nevertheless, the Ilminsky project failed, because its goal was to spread Christianity among Muslim Turkic peoples, who for this reason refused to use the alphabet. Exceptions were grunts , among which the alphabet became widespread.

On the basis of the Old Turkic language , in the late XIX - early XX centuries, the Tatar written and literary language was formed based on the Arabic script.

Poems of Akmulla, works of writers and poets of the beginning of the 20th century - M. Gafuri , D. Yultiy, Sh. Babich and others were written in the Turkic literary language. Books, newspapers and magazines were published in the Tatar language, performances were staged in theaters, training was conducted in madrassas and schools. This largely contributed to the assimilation of the language of the Western Bashkirs.

Since the mid-19th century, attempts have been made to create writing in the Bashkir national language. In 1859, Mirsalikh Bikchurin in the southern dialect of the Bashkir language in Arabic script published "The Tale of the King - the Bogatyr". Later, the first primers in the Bashkir language were created on the basis of the Russian Cyrillic alphabet of Katarinsky V.V. “Primer for Bashkirs” ( 1892 ), Bessonova A.G. “Primer for Bashkirs” (1907).

Written in the national language of the Bashkirs on the basis of Arabic graphics was created only in 1924 . So, the first issue in the Bashkir language of the Bashkortostan newspaper, previously published in Tatar, was published in August 1924.

The written language in Bashkir in 1924-1929 was in Arabic, in 1929-1940 in Latin, from 1940 Bashkirs have been using Russian graphics.

- The article “450th anniversary of unity, fraternity, friendship, prosperity!”

In 1908-1909, the Tatar poet Sagit Ramiev began to use the Latin alphabet in his works. He suggested using digraphs : ea for ä, eu for ü, eo for ö and ei for ı. Arabists rejected his project. In the early 1920s, Azerbaijani scholars developed their own project based on the Latin alphabet, but he was not very interested in the Tatars - they preferred to use the reformed alphabet based on the Arabic (“old alphabet”) the alphabet ”), which existed in 1920-1927 ^[1] .

The first draft of the Tatar and Bashkir alphabet based on the Latin alphabet was published in the newspaper Esce (“Worker”) in 1924 . Digraphs were used for the unique sounds of the Bashkir language. However, this project did not receive support ^[1] .

In 1926, the Turkic Congress in Baku recommended that all Turkic languages be translated into the Latin alphabet . Since April 1926, the society Jaŋa tatar əlifвась / Яңа татар әлифбасы ("The New Tatar Alphabet") began to work in Kazan ^[2] .

Since July 3, 1927, the Tatar party leadership declared the “Yanalif” ( Jaŋalif ) as the official written language for the Tatar language in exchange for the Yaңa name based on the Arabic script. Below is the first version of yanalif. There were no separate letters for K and Q (both were designated as K), for G and Ğ (both were designated as G), for V and W (both were designated as W). Instead, Ş used the letter of the Cyrillic alphabet W. The letters C and Ç had the same meaning as in the Turkish alphabet, and were later transferred to the final version of Yanalif ^[1] . In the Soviet press, the alphabet was also called "October" ^[3]

In 1928, there was a final reform of the Yanalif (see table), which was actively used for the next 12 years. According to some sources, the alphabet included 34 letters, but in fact the last “letter” bj was a digraph for the corresponding Tatar diphthong ^[1] . Other 34 letter sources include the apostrophe . Sorting the alphabet in different sources varies (Ə after A, b after E) ^[2] .

Following the introduction of Yanalif, most books printed in the Arabic alphabet were removed from libraries. .

In 1939, the total cyrillization of the national scripts of the USSR began. As it was announced, the change of Latin to Cyrillic occurred "at the request of the working people."

Several cyrillization projects were proposed, but Ilminsky's project, “burdened” with its religious past, was not mentioned among them.

In 1938, Professor M. Fazlullin proposed an adapted Russian alphabet for the Tatar language without additional characters. It was proposed to designate special Tatar sounds by digraphs consisting of Russian letters with the addition of the letters b and b . ^[one]

In 1939, Gorbangaliev and Ramazanov proposed their own projects using additional Cyrillic letters. The letters Ө, Ә, Ү, Һ were inherited from Yanalif, and the letters Җ and Ң were invented by analogy with Щ and Ц. Digraphs Гъ and Къ were supposed to be used as analogues of Ƣ and Q. According to this project, the word “ƣədət” (“custom ”) Was written as“ gadd ”,“ qar ”(“ snow ”) as“ qar ”. In Ramazanov’s project, W (in Yanalif V) was designated as B at the beginning of the syllable and Y, Ү at the end of the syllable, e.g. vaq - vak; tav - tau; dəv - dәү. On May 5, 1939, this project was officially approved by the Supreme Council of the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Surprisingly, "Tatar society disagreed with the project" and at a conference in July 1940 the alphabet based on the Cyrillic alphabet was again reformed. January 10, 1941 this project was approved. According to the new version, “ƣədət” was written as “gadәt”, “qar” as “kar”.

For the Bashkir language, the letter Җ was not required due to the absence of a corresponding sound; Ҡ and Ғ were invented as analogues of Ƣ and Q, Ҙ and Ҫ as analogues of Đ and Ѣ. Thus, in Bashkir “ƣəđət” began to be written as “ғәҙәт”, “qar” as “ҡар”. In general, the Cyrillic project for the Bashkir language can be considered more successful in terms of transmitting the phonetics of a real sounding language than for the Tatar: for example, the word "səƣət" in modern. spelling is written accordingly as tat. burn and chump . c . As you can see, in Bashkir spelling the in-line harmony is completely preserved, and soft and hard signs are used only in borrowings from the Russian language.

In 1955, 1958, 1959 and 1989, there were unsuccessful attempts to reform the Tatar Cyrillic alphabet, namely, it was proposed to add the letters Қ , Ғ and Ў to convey the sounds [q], [ ɣ ] (ğ) and [w] to approximate the Tatar spelling to pronunciation. It was also proposed to use V instead of Ў.

A Ә B C [Ў] D [Ғ] D E (Y) F Җ Z I Y K [Қ] L M N Ң O Ө P R S T U Ү F X Һ C H W Y Z

The letters in square brackets are those that were proposed to be added in 1989. In January 1997, the Tatar parliament approved a new version of the Cyrillic alphabet.

A Ә B C D E F (Y) L Җ Z I Y K L M N Ң O Ө P R S T U Ү F X Һ C H W Y Z Y Y ^[1]

In the 1990s in Tatarstan, attempts were made to revive the Yanalif with the addition of the letter W to more fully reflect Tatar phonetics. However, the attempts failed due to a number of technical problems, in particular, due to the lack of the necessary fonts in printing houses and the withdrawal of Yanalifa from use. In 2000, a new Latin version was adopted in Tatarstan, close to the modern Turkish alphabet, but in 2002 it was banned for official use by the decision of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. ^[one]

In honor of the new alphabet, Bashkirs and Tatars named villages and streets .

• Single Northern Alphabet