Jaꞑalif

Jaꞑalif, Janalif or Yañalif (Tatar jaꞑa əlifba/yaña älifba → jaꞑalif/yañalif [jʌŋɑˈlif], Cyrillic Яңалиф, "new alphabet") was the first Latin alphabet used during the Soviet epoch for the Tatar language in the 1930s. It replaced the Yaña imlâ Arabic script-based alphabet in 1928 and was replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet in 1939.

There were 33 letters in Jaꞑalif; nine were for vowels. The apostrophe was used for the glottal stop (həmzə/hämzä) and was sometimes sorted as a letter. Other characters were also in use for foreign names. The small letter B looks like ʙ (to prevent confusion with Ь ь), and the capital letter Y looks like У. The letter Ꞑ ꞑ looks like N n/ŋ which has a descender as in Cyrillic letters Щ, Җ, Ң. The letter no. 33 (similar to Zhuang Ƅ) isn't represented in Unicode, but it looks like Cyrillic soft sign (Ь). Capital Ə also looks like Russian Э in some fonts.

History

The earliest example of the Kypchak language, the main ancestor of the modern Tatar language and written with Latin characters is the Codex Cumanicus. These letters could be used for Catholic devotions among Turkic Catholics within the Golden Horde. Nevertheless, the culture of Catholic Hordians disappeared and this alphabet was lost.

For centuries the Tatar language as well as other Turkic languages used a modified Arabic alphabet, İske imlâ. The alphabet was far from perfect, both technically and logically (different initial, medium, final and stand-alone forms, no glyphs for short vowels). Because of this some Turkic intelligentsia tended to use the Latin or even Cyrillic script. The first attempts appeared in the mid-19th century among Azerbaijanis.^[1] At the same period the Russian missionary Ilminski, along with followers, invented the modified Russian alphabet for all peoples of Idel-Ural. Nevertheless modern alphabet uses other glyphs: (Ә instead of Ӓ, Ө instead of Ӧ, Ү instead of Ӱ, Җ instead of Ж, Ң instead of Ҥ), the principles of the modern Cyrillic Tatar alphabet was first invented then. But Ilmiski's alphabet were used for the purpose of Christianization and Muslim Tatars didn't use his alphabet. Ilminski's alphabet is still used among Keräşen Tatars. Interestingly, this alphabet still uses pre-revolutionary Russian spelling of Orthodox names, using Fita and Ukrainian I.

In 1908–1909 the Tatar poet Säğit Rämiev started to use the Latin script in his own works. He offered the use of digraphs: ea for ä, eu for ü, eo for ö and ei for ı. But Arabists turned down his project. In the early 1920s Azerbaijanis devised their own Latin alphabet, but Tatarstan scholars set a little store to this project, preferring to reform the İske imlâ. The simplified Iske imla, known as Yaña imlâ was used from 1920–1927.^[1]

But Latinization was adopted by the Soviet officials and the special Central Committee for a New Alphabet was established in Moscow. The first project of the Tatar-Bashkir Latin alphabet was published in Eşçe (The Worker) gazette in 1924. The pronunciation of the alphabet was similar to English, unlike the following. Specific Bashkir sounds were written with digraphs. However, this alphabet was declined.^[1]

In 1926 the Congress of Turkologists in Baku recommended to switch all Turkic languages to the Latin script. Since April 1926 the Jaꞑa tatar əlifbasь/Yaña tatar älifbası/Яңа татар әлифбасы (New Tatar alphabet) society started its work at Kazan.^[2]

Since July 3, 1927, Tatarstan officials have declared Jaꞑalif as the official script of the Tatar language, replacing the Yanga imla script. The first variant of Jaꞑalif (acutes-Jaꞑalif ) is shown below. There weren't separate letters for K and Q (realized as K) and for G and Ğ (realized as G), V and W (realized as W). Ş (sh) looked like the Cyrillic letter Ш (she). C and Ç were realized as in Turkish and the modern Tatar Latin alphabet and later were transposed in the final version of Jaꞑalif.^[1]

In 1928 Jaꞑalif was finally reformed (the table is shown before) and was in active usage for 12 years. Some sources claim, that alphabet had 34 letters, but the last was a digraph Ьj, used for corresponding Tatar diphthong.^[1] Another source states that the 34th letter was an apostrophe. They also give another sorting of the alphabet. (Ə after A, Ь after E)^[2]

After the introduction of Jaꞑalif most of the books which were printed in the Arabic alphabet were withdrawn from libraries.

Jaꞑalif as published in the Eşçe newspaper

The original "acutes" version of Jaꞑalif

Decline

In 1939 the Stalinist government prohibited Jaꞑalif, although it remained in use until January 1940. Jaꞑalif was also used in Nazi gazettes for prisoners of war and propaganda until WW2 ended. However, the alphabet served until 1950s, because most of the schoolbooks were printed before World War II. Some Tatar diasporas also used Jaꞑalif outside of the Soviet Union, for example the Tatar bureau of Radio Free Europe.

It should be noted that for 12 years of usage the Latin script, Arabic script (and not only Yaña imlâ, but İske imlâ too) also were used. So, one of the Musa Cälil's Moabit Notebooks was written in Jaꞑalif, but one was written in Arabic letters. Both notebooks were written in German prison, after 1939, the year when the Cyrillic script was established.

Cyrillization

In 1930s Turkey became one of the numerous potential enemies of the Soviet Union. Even though Atatürk's alphabet was different from Jaꞑalif, for Soviet officials the Latin script was a symbol of the outer, bourgeois world. In 1939 Cyrillization of USSR was initiated. 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.^[1]

In 1939 Qorbangaliev and Ramazanov offered their own projects that planned to use additional Cyrillic characters. Letters Ө, Ә, Ү, Һ were inherited from Jaꞑalif, 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 (Jaꞑalif V) was marked by В before the vowel, and У, Ү in the end of syllable. Jaꞑalif: vaq – вак; tav – тау; dəv – дәү. On 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 a 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 sign hasn't sense of iotation, as in Russian, but a sense of vowel harmony. Unlike modern Russian, some words can end with ъ, to sign a "hard g" after the "soft vowel", as in балигъ – baliğ (of the full legal age).^[1]

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 create a new Tatar Cyrillic alphabet, adding letters Қ, Ғ and Ў, to write the sounds [q], ɣ (ğ), and [w] and make Tatar spelling phonetic. Some offered to use V instead of Ў. In 1990s those attempts failed, because at that period many Tatarstan statesmen wanted to restore Jaꞑalif.

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 were scheduled to be added in 1989. However, the Tatar Parliament resorted the Cyrillic script in January 1997 (without adding these letters?).

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 ^[1]

Restoring Jaꞑalif

In the 1990s some wanted to restore Jaꞑalif, or Jaꞑalif+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.^[1]

Inalif

The "Internet-style" alphabet named Inalif after Internet and älifba was convented in 2003 and partly it was inspirited by Jaꞑalif. 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 Jaꞑalif 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 Jaꞑalif, j represent [j], and zh is used for j of modern and ƶ of Jaꞑalif. 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.^[3]

Source

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i} (Russian) М.З. Закиев. Тюрко-татарское письмо. История, состояние, перспективы. Москва, "Инсан", 2005
2. ^ ^{a b} (Tatar) "Jaꞑalif/Яңалиф". Tatar Encyclopedia. Kazan: Tatarstan Republic Academy of Sciences Institution of the Tatar Encyclopaedia. 2002. 
3. ^ (Russian) ru:Inalif

See also

• Tatar alphabet
• Tatar language
• Uniform Turkic Alphabet