Jaŋalif

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Jaŋalif, Janalif or Yañalif ([jʌŋɑˈlif]; Cyrillic: Яңалиф; Tatar: new alphabet — jaŋa əlifba/yaña älifba -> jaŋalif/yañalif) was the first Latin writing system used during the Soviet epoque Tatar language in the 1930s. It replaced Yaña imlâ Arabic script-based alphabet in 1928 and was replaced by Cyrillic alphabet in 1939.

There were 33 letters in Jaŋalif; 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 Ŋ ŋ 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.

[edit] Alphabet

[edit] 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 alphabet. 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 some modern alphabets use 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 modern Cyrillic alphabets were first invented then. But Ilmiski's alphabets 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 alphabet 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 invented 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 alphabet. Since April of 1926 the Jaŋa tatar əlifbasь/Yaña Tatar älifbası (New Tatar alphabet) society started its work at Kazan.^[2]

Since July 3, 1927, Tatarstan officials have declared Jaŋalif as the official script of the Tatar language, replacing the Yanga imla script. The first variant of Jaŋalif (acutes-Jaŋalif ) 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 Jaŋalif.^[1]

In 1928 Jaŋalif 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 Jaŋalif most of the books which were printed in the Arabic alphabet were withdrawn from libraries.

[edit] Decline

In 1939 the Stalinist government prohibited Jaŋalif, although it remained in use until January 1940. Jaŋalif 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 Jaŋalif 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 alphabet, Arabic alphabet (and not only Yaña imlâ, but İske imlâ too) also were used. So, one of the Musa Cälil's Moabit Notebooks was written in Jaŋalif, but one was written in Arabic letters. Both notebooks were written in German prison, after 1939, the year when the Cyrillic alphabet was established.

[edit] Cyrillization

Nazis used the Latin and Arabic alphabets for propaganda in the Crimea, totally ignoring the Cyrillic. Crimean Tatars also used own version Jaŋalif for their language in that period.

An example of sporadically used Latin alphabet in the early 1990s. It shared some orthography with Janalif alphabet, but also with the newest one: it was not convented and used technically available characters, never used before and later, such as Č.

In 1930s Turkey became one of the numerous potential enemies of the Soviet Union. Even though Atatürk's alphabet was different from Jaŋalif, for Soviet officials the Latin alphabet was a symbol of the outer, bourgeois world. In 1939 Cyrillization of USSR was initiated. As by Stalin's statement, Russian people is the leader of socialistic peoples, so all peoples of the country should know Russian and tend to be assimilated with Russians. 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 letter Ъ.^[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 Jaŋalif, 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 (Jaŋalif V) was marked by В before the vowel, and У, Ү in the end of syllable. Jaŋalif: vaq - вак; tav - тау; dəv - дәү. In 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 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 sing hasn't sense of iotation, as in Russian, but a sense of vowel harmony. Unlike modern Russian, some words can end with ъ, to sing 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 initiate the reform of Cyrillic alphabet, as to add letters Қ, Ғ and Ў, to sign sounds [q], [ɣ] (ğ) and [w] and make Tatar spelling WYSIWYS. Some offered to use V instead of Ў. In 1990s those attempts failed, because at that period many Tatarstan statesmen wanted to restore the Jaŋalif.

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 should be added in 1989. However, Tatar Parliament resorted Cyrillic alphabet in January 1997.

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]

[edit] Restoring of Jaŋalif

Cyrillic Ь-like letter, in some fonts also looks like Ƅ, and is not currently represented in Unicode. Only some Tatar fonts use this glyph.

N-descender, a variant of Ŋ, that was used in Jaŋalif and is not currently represented in Unicode. Only some Tatar fonts use this glyph at the position of Ñ.

In the 1990s some wanted to restore Jaŋalif, or Jaŋalif+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 Tatarstan government, but in 2002 it was abolished by Russian Federation.^[1]

[edit] Inalif

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

[edit] 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) "Jaŋalif/Яңалиф". Tatar Encyclopedia. (2002). Kazan: Tatarstan Republic Academy of Sciences Institution of the Tatar Encyclopaedia. 
3. ^ (Russian) ru:Inalif

[edit] See also

• Tatar alphabet
• Tatar language
• Uniform Turkic Alphabet