3 summer 2011 - Prince Claus Fund

030–053talattekin_alt:turklergaram 29.11.2007 9:21 Uhr Seite 37Mongol armies with Muslim Volga Bulgarians who hadchanged their language.The great majority of Tatar speakers live in the TatarstanRepublic, although there are also fairly large Tatar communitiesin various regions outside Tatarstan, such as the AutonomousRepublics of Bashkir, Chuvash, and Mordov, as well as in theoblasts of Gorkiy, Tambov, Penze, Ryazan, Ulyanov, Kuyb›shev,Orenburg, Volgograd, Saratov, Astrakhan, Chelyabin,Novosibirsk, Om and Tom, Tümen, Perm, and Kirov. Accordingto the 1989 census, there were 6,645,588 Tatar speakers in theformer Soviet Union. At the present time, apart from theRussian Federation, there are small Tatar communities in variousother countries: Romania (24,000), Bulgaria (11,000),Turkey (10,000), Finland, and the United States.The Tatars are Sunni Muslims, but some of the Tatarcommunities adopted Christianity in the period under the tsars.These are known as Kreshen or Kreshen Turks.At the end of the nineteenth century, Tatars who hadused Chaghatay as their written language until the middle ofthe previous century abandoned Chaghatay as their writtenlanguage and, under the leadership of intellectuals such asKayyum Nasiri, began to write in their own dialect—i.e., KazanTatar. The famous poet Abdullah Tukay, who was born beforethe Soviet era and died at an early age, wrote his poems inKazan Tatar.Until 1927, Tatar was written in the Arabic alphabet; from1927 to 1939, it was written in the Latin alphabet, which wasreplaced by a new alphabet based on Cyrillic in 1939. Thereare several dialects of Cyrillic, which can be classified into threegroups: (1) The Western dialects (Mi_er, etc.), (2) the Centraldialect (Kazan Tatar, etc.), (3) the Eastern dialects (WesternSiberian dialects: Tobol, Tevriz, Baraba, Kazanl›k, Tümen, Tara,Tom, and Buharl›k). The Tatar written language was based onthe Central dialect, Kazan Tatar.The most important features of Tatar consist of vowelchanges. These changes can be grouped into four categories:1. The broad /o, ö/ vowels are narrowed to /u, ü/: bol-> bul- “to become,” okı- > ukı- “to read,” tok > tuk “satiated,”kör- > kür- “to see,” köz > küz “eye,” söz > süz “word,” etc.2. As opposed to this, the initial narrow, rounded /u,ü/vowels are converted into the broad but weak vowels /o, ö/:kuş > koş “bird,” tur- > tor- “to stop,” yut- > yot- “to swallow,”kün > kön “day,” küz > köz “autumn,” süz- > söz- “to filter,” etc.3. The conversion of initial open /ä/ and closed /e/ to/i/: män > min “I,” sän > sin “you,” be:r- > bir- “to give,” käl- >kil- “to come,” ke:t- > kit- “to go,” käräk > kiräk “necessary,” etc.4. On the other hand, the long and short /i/ vowel ischanged to a short, weak /i/. (In writing, this is represented bythe letter /e/.): bi:r > bir “one,” biz > biz, ilk > ilik “first,” isig >issi “hot,” kiçig > kiçi “small,” sämiz > simiz “fat,” etc.5. One of the most important features of Tatar is theconversion of the initial /og, u€, ov, uy/ groups to /u/: boğ- >bu-, soğıq > suık “cold,” tuğ- > tu- “to be born,” qov- > ku-, suv> su, uv- > u- “to rub,” etc.6. The initial /i€/ group in Tatar is modified to /iy/ or /›/:sığır > sıyır “cow,” yığ- < cıy-, yığla- > yıla- “to cry,” etc.7. The initial /y/ in Tatar, more frequently before /›, i/and less frequently before /e/, /a/, and /ä/, is modified to /c/:yılığ > cılı “warm, hot,” yığ- > cıy-, yır > cır “song,” yel > cil“wind,” ye:ti > cide “seven,” yer > cir, ya:y > cäy “summer,” yay-> cäy-, yadağ > yayağ > cäyäw “pedestrian,” etc.A few sentences in Tatarca: Bezneng uram zur uram “Ourstreet is a large street”; Ana şatlığınnan cılap cibärde “The motherwept for joy”; Atlıyk dustlar alga taban! “Let’s go, friends.Forward!” Anıng maturlığı mine tangga kaldırdı “Her beautyamazed me”; Bay bay öçen tırışa, yarlı yarlığa bulışa “The wealthywork for the wealthy, the poor help the poor”; Cılı söyäk sındırmıy,suık cannı tındırmıy “Heat breaks no bones, cold cannotgive comfort.”B. The Bashkirs and Their LanguageBashkir, as an ethnic term, is first encountered in theMahmut Kashgarl› dictionary in the forms Başgırt and Başkırt.The map of the Kashgarl› Turk peoples shows the Bashkirsoccupying a territory more or less identical with the one theyPRESENT-DAY TURKIC PEOPLES AND THEIR LANGUAGES3747 · Prince Claus Fund Reader #3 · Summer 2011