Tatar Language Guide

Official language in
Russia
Script
Cyrillic

Where it's spoken

The Constitution of the Russian Federation makes Russian the state language throughout the country and says that the republics have the right to institute their own state languages, which are used alongside the state language of the Russian Federation in the bodies of state power, bodies of local self-government and state institutions of the republics. Under Article 8 of the Constitution of the Republic of Tatarstan, the state languages in the republic are the equal Tatar and Russian languages, and they are used on equal terms in state bodies, local self-government bodies and state institutions of the republic.

A grammar of the contemporary Tatar literary language by Burbiel describes this literary language as the one used in public offices in Tatarstan, in educational institutions, in literature, theatre and radio, in scholarly works and in the media. The grammar says that the dialect of the Kazan Tatars, also called the Central Dialect, forms the basis of the literary language, and that the great majority of its subdialects differ very little from the literary language. It places speakers of subdialects of this dialect in the Tatar, Mari, Udmurt and Bashkir republics and in a number of oblasts, and it says that the great majority of the Mishars live outside Tatarstan.

Sources

Script & pronunciation

Tatar is written in a modified Cyrillic alphabet, which the grammar describes as the Russian alphabet plus the letters Ә ә, Ө ө, Ү ү, Җ җ, Ң ң and Һ һ. A federal law of the Russian Federation states that the alphabets of the state languages of the republics are built on the graphic basis of Cyrillic, and that other graphic bases may be established by federal laws.

This app's cards give the Tatar text in Cyrillic together with a Latin-letter romanization, in which the extra letters appear, for example, as ә = ä in Рәхмәт (Räkhmät), ө = ö in сөйләшәсезме (söyläshäsezme), ү = ü in күрешкәнче (küreshkänche) and ң = ñ in миңа (miña).

Sources

Grammar essentials

The grammar describes vowel harmony in Tatar: the vowel in the first syllable of a native Tatar stem determines the quality of the vowels in the following syllables, so that, as a rule, all vowels in a native Tatar word are either back vowels or front vowels, and with a few exceptions the rule applies to Tatar suffixes too. A note on this app's card for Сез татарча сөйләшәсезме? ("Do you speak Tatar?") describes the ending -ча/-чә as giving "in the language of".

The grammar gives the interrogative particle as ±my/±me in its Latin transcription: with verbs it is attached to the personal endings, and where no copula is expressed after a predicate adjective or noun it is joined directly to the adjective or noun. In this app's cards it is -ме on the verb, written together with it, as in Сез инглизчә сөйләшәсезме? (Sez inglizchä söyläshäsezme?, "Do you speak English?").

The grammar says that negative verb stems are formed by joining -ma-/-mä- to affirmative verb stems, for example bar- "go" and barma- "not go". The note on this app's card Мин аңламыйм ("I don't understand") describes the present negative as stem + -мый/-ми + person ending, and says that the subject Мин can be dropped.

Sources

Politeness & etiquette

The grammar lists sin as "you" for one person and sez as "you" for several persons, and describes sez as both the familiar and the polite form used to address several persons. It says that sez is also the polite form used to address one person, in which case it stands for the singular but is used with the plural form of the verb. The grammar describes sin as the familiar form used to address a close relative or a close friend, a child, a pet or an animal, and says that in informal conversation an older person may use it to address a much younger person.

In this app's card Сез инглизчә сөйләшәсезме? ("Do you speak English?"), the pronoun Сез is glossed as "you (polite)" and the verb is broken down as сөйләш-ә-сез, with the ending -сез.

The grammar gives the second person plural of the imperative as formed with -gyz/-gez after a vowel (with exceptions) and -ygyz/-egez after a consonant, and says that in its description of the emphatic imperative an order or request may be directed to one or several persons in the polite form, or to several persons in the familiar form. Two of this app's polite cards end in the same plural endings in Cyrillic: Гафу итегез ("Sorry / Excuse me") and Сау булыгыз ("Goodbye (stay well)").

For greetings, this app's cards mark Сәлам ("Hello") as a casual greeting to friends and peers and Исәнмесез ("Hello / How are you? (formal)") as a polite greeting for strangers and elders.

Sources

Browse all TravelPhrases languages