Tatar language is spoken by Tatar people and belongs to the Kipchak brunch of the Turkic languages family. Like all Turkic languages, Tatar is characterized by vowel harmony and  agglutinative nature of grammatical relations between the words.

For many centuries, Tatar language has been instrumental in connecting various Turkic people to carry on businesses and innovations. It has served as an intermediary between Turkic languages-speaking people populating EurAsian continent and has been promoting successful collaborations and opportunities. Based on the lexicostatistical matrix of Turkic languages and according to the to recent article in Journal of Language Evolution, Tatar language exhibits more than 50% of basic lexical similarities with at least 12 Turkic languages (Azeri, Bashkir, Crimean Tatars, Kazakh, Karachi, Khakas, Kyrgyz, Turkish, Turkmen, Tuvan, Uyghur, Uzbek). Tatar language has several dialects (Volga/Kazan, Astrakhan, Siberian, Mishar). Crimean Tatar language is much closer grammatically, phonetically and lexically to Turkish language than to literary (Volga) Tatar language. The modern written Tatar language is based on the Cyrillic script since 1938. Prior to that, it was Latin (1927-38), Arabic scripts- and Turkic runes- based.

There are between 2-5 million Tatar language speakers worldwide with most of them residing in the indigenous lands that are part of the Russian Federation. The number of Tatar language speakers has been rapidly declining due to minority status, urbanisation, assimilation and popularity of English and Russian languages as lingua franca. Resources and efforts for Tatar language instructions are becoming limited. It is essential these days to take efforts to keep ancestral language utilized, as a heritage language is the most critical marker of the health of the community and versatility of the world. It is important for Tatar language – as well as for any other endangered languages – to have opportunities and supportive environment to be unitilized.

Join the community of Tatar speakers! Consider introducing yourself to Tatar language and culture to broaden your horizons!

Take 8 weeks Tatar Language and Culture exploration course. It will be taught this summer (May 30-July 14, 2023) at Arizona State University and online. Anyone who applies by January 27 is eligible for scholarship. Take a dive to learn a new minority language: https://melikian.asu.edu/cli/tatar!

If you cannot make it to Arizona State University or have other things to do this summer, then check out some resources available all year around online.

Learn

• Take online individual Tatar sessions with Alima Academy
• Tatar Alphabet, Tatar Phonetics and Pronunciation (with English pronunciation parallels)
• 500 Tatar words: online, for iPhone. Sounds of Tatar speech
• Online dictionary: English-Tatar: GoogleTranslate. Russian-Tatar: Ganiev.org, Translate.Tatar
• Engaging Learning materials: AnaTele, Әйдә!Online, Language Heroes ,Tatar with Petrov, Tatar with Ләйсән
• Tatar Grammar: MustGo, Electronic Textbooks by N.Poppe (1963), by G.Burbiel (2018)
• Corpus of Written Tatar (Corpus’ User’s Manual)
• Collection of softwares, applications localized for Tatar language – TatSoft.Tatar 
• Fun linguistic experiment on comprehension of Tatar sentences by Turkish speakers
• Tatar Dictionary

Read, Listen, Watch

• Animated children’s stories and cartoons: Bala.ru
• Talks on various topics: Elbette.ru
• Electronic books: Baigysh.tatar, WikiBooks
• Audiobooks: Azatliq.org, Tatkniga, Tatar Virtual School
• Internet radio with Tatar classic, folk music and literature citing: Tatarstan Avazy
• Internet and online radio, audio and video podcasts: Kitap.fm
• Internet radio with Tatar modern pop and folk music: Tartip FM
• Online radio of alternative Tatar music: UrbanTatar
• Daily news podcasts on Tatar: TRT
• Documentary of round-abouts and perceptions of Nurbek Batulla’s artistic work “әlif” about Tatar letters that were lost during painful alphabet transition from Persian-Arabic script to Latin to Cyrillic that happened within 10 years span.

Listen to Tatar Music

• Iconic Tatar singer Ilham Shakirov sings song “Chulpan” (“Morning Star”)
• Beautiful songs by Saida Mukhametzyanova in the capturing Tatar settings
• Fun folk song “Almagaschlarim” (My Lovely Apple Trees) and dance by ZuLayLa
• Lesson on how to dance Tatar Folk dance 
• Elsa Zayari and Artur Islamov concert with numerous beautiful Tatar songs
• Folk song “Su Buylap”(“Along the Idel river”)
• Tatar classical music by DuoMong
• Works by Tatar composer, multi-instrumentalist Adeliia Faizullina 
• Beautiful Soviet-era Tatar song “Min sine shundyi sagyndym” (“I missed you so much”) in modern interpretation of young singers Saida and Ilnar with views of Kazan city
• Tatar Folk songs Interpretations by cellist Elena Korableva
• Soulful interpretation of “Qaytu” (“Returning”) song by Bulat Shaymi
• Original works of young Tatar poet and singer Shirin Al Ansi on her YouTube channel.