Tat writing

The first monuments of Tat (mountain-Jewish) writing date back to the late 1870s - early 1880s, when Rabbi Yaakov Yitzhaki compiled the first Tat book “Treasury of the Words of the Jewish-Tat Language”. This book used Hebrew writing adapted to the needs of Tatian phonetics. At the beginning of the 20th century, Tat writing on a Jewish graphic basis received wider application - books began to be published on it, and in 1915 an attempt was made to publish a newspaper. In 1921, the first primer "Taza School" was published on this alphabet. In 1927, at the All-Union Conference on Cultural Work among the Tat, held in Moscow, it was decided to reflect on the letter all the vowels of the Jewish-Tat dialect (א [æ], אַ [a], אָ [about], י [i], ו [v], וּ [u]). However, at that time, the process of switching the Tat language to the Latin script began, which made the reform irrelevant ^[1] .

The Hebrew-Hebrew alphabet based on Hebrew writing looked like this ^[2] :

In the 1920s, the process of Latinization of writing was going on in the USSR . In May 1925, Y. Agarunov composed the first draft of the Latinized alphabet for Mountain Jews. On May 15-20, 1926, at the regional congress of Mountain Jews in Nalchik , it was decided to translate the Tat writing on a Latin graphic basis. Since that time, preparatory work on Latinization has begun in the North Caucasus and Azerbaijan. In 1928, a number of draft new scripts were submitted to the Committee for the New Alphabet. So, the project of Z. Yu. Khudainatov included the following letters: A a, B c, V v, G g, D d, H h, Z z, Ӡ ӡ,   ħ, I i, J j, K k, X x, L ʟ, M m, N n, S s, Y y, P p, F f, C c, Ç ç, ꜧ, R r, Ş ş, T t, O o, U u, Ú ú, E e ^{[3] [4]} .

On April 28-30, 1929, the All-Union Conference of the representatives of the Mountain-Jewish people was held in Baku . It was finally approved by the new Mountain-Jewish alphabet proposed by Boris Miller. It had the following form ^[5] :

This alphabet has been used extensively in education, book publishing, and the media. In 1932, the first normative grammar of the Tat language was published on it ^[1] .

In later editions in Latin, the letter Đ đ is absent, but is present (only in borrowings) E e ^[6] .

The question of translating the Tat language into the Cyrillic alphabet was raised in 1937. The Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Dagestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic instructed the Institute for the Study of National Cultures of Dagestan to start developing this version of the letter. A new version of the alphabet was published on February 15, 1938 in the newspaper “ Dagestanskaya Pravda ”, from July 1, all periodicals were translated into it, and from September 1, instruction in the Cyrillic alphabet was started in schools ^[7] . Later, some changes were made to the alphabet (the letter J. is excluded. The letter YӀyӀ has been replaced by Yyyy , and ХӀ хӀ by Хь хь ). As a result, the alphabet began to look like this ^[4] :

In the Azerbaijan SSR in 1938, the Tat (Mountain-Jewish) language was withdrawn from all official fields of activity - the publication of books, newspapers, and school instruction was discontinued. Therefore, the alphabet adopted in the Dagestan ASSR did not find application in Azerbaijan. However, instead of it, a separate version of the Tat Cyrillic script spontaneously arose, which was closer to the Cyrillic version of the Azerbaijani alphabet . In the late XX – early XXI centuries, he also found some application among the Tats who emigrated to Israel ^{[8] [4]} : A a, B b, C c, D, D e, E e, Ҹ ҹ, Z s, I and, Yy, K k, Ҝ ҝ, L l, M m, N n, O o, P p, R r, C s, T t, Һ һ, Ћ ћ, Ԧ ԧ, U y, F f, X x, H h, W sh, Ә ә, Ү ү . There are other versions of this alphabet that differ in the order of letters and the replacement of the letter th by Ј ј ^[9] .

In the 1990s, an alphabet based on the Latin basis was created for the Muslim Tats of Azerbaijan. It published several textbooks ^[10] : A a, B b, C c, Ç ç, D d, E e, Ә ə, F f, G g, Ğ ğ, H h, X x, I ı, İ i , J j, K k, Q q, L l, M m, N n, O o, Ö ö, P p, R r, S s, Ş ş, T t, U u, Ü ü, V v, Y y, Z z .

In a number of scientific publications and dictionaries of the Mountain-Jewish language of Azerbaijan, a different version of the Latin alphabet is sometimes used ^{[11] [4]} : A a, B b, C c, Ç ç, D d, E e, Ә ə, F f, G g , Q q, H h,   ħ, Ⱨ ⱨ, İ i, I ı, J j, K k, L l, M m, N n, O o, P p, R r, S s, Ş ş, T t, U u, Ü ü, V v, Y y, X x, Z z.

Compiled by ^[2] , ^[4]