Tatar Language - Writing System

Writing System

Tatar has been written in a number of different alphabets.

Writing was adopted from the Bolgar language, which used the Orkhon script, before the 920s. Later, the Arabic script was also used, as well as Latin and Cyrillic.

Before 1928 Tatar was written with an Arabic alphabet (Iske imla to 1920; Yanga imla 1920–1928).

In the Soviet Union after 1928, Tatar was written with a Latin alphabet called Jaꞑalif.

In 1939, in Tatarstan (a republic of Russia where Tatar is most commonly used) and all other parts of the Soviet Union a Cyrillic script was developed and is still used to write Tatar. It is also used in Kazakhstan.

In 2004, an attempt to introduce a Latin-based alphabet for Tatar was aborted when the Constitutional Court ruled that the 15 November 2002 federal law mandating the use of Cyrillic for the state languages of the republics of the Russian Federation does not contradict the Russian constitution. In accordance with this Constitutional Court ruling, on 28 December 2004, the Tatar Supreme Court overturned the Tatarstani law that made the Latin alphabet official.

In China, Tatars still use the Arabic script.

• Tatar Cyrillic alphabet (letter order adopted in 1997):

• 1999 Tatar Latin alphabet, made official by a law adopted by Tatarstani authorities but annulled by the Tatar Supreme Court in 2004: