Yaña imlâ alphabet





Yaña imlâ (Yaña imlâ:, Яңа имлә, Yaña imlä, , lit. "New orthography") was a modified variant of Arabic script that was in use for the Tatar language between 1920 and 1927. The orthographical reform modified İske imlâ, abolishing excess Arabic letters, adding letters for short vowels e, ı, ö, o. Yaña imlâ made use of "Arabic Letter Low Alef" $⟨ࢭ⟩$ to indicate vowel harmony. Arguably, Yaña imlâ had as its goal the accommodation of the alphabet to the actual Tatar pronunciation.

There were some projects that were to simplify Yaña imlâ too. The unique separated Arabic was invented (so as to use typewriters). Separated Arabic was even incorporated in the early flag of Tatar ASSR, though it was not in real use.

As early as in 1924 the first projects of Latin script were introduced and in 1928 alphabet was switched to the Latin Yañalif alphabet.

Vowels
In Tatar Arabic alphabet, 10 vowels are defined. These occur in pairs, front and back vowels.

Similar to other Turkic languages, Tatar has vowel harmony rules. Tatar orthography has one-dimensional vowel harmony rules, front versus back vowels. There does exist vowel roundedness harmony in Tatar, but it is not reflected in Orthography.

Use of low alef
low alef ⟨ ⟩ has a unique role in Tatar, a role not seen in other Arabic scripts. Tatar Arabic script makes use of, and it can only ever come at the beginning of words. It never comes in the middle or end of words. low alef doesn't represent any sound in Tatar. Instead, it indicates that the vowels in the word will be the following back vowels:


 * Ы ы (I ı)
 * Ый ый (Í í)
 * О о (O o)
 * У у (U u)

The logic essentially is that low alef indicates that the vowels of the word are articulated in the same part of the mouth as an sound, which is written with an alif ⟨  ⟩, i.e. at back of the mouth.

Hamza plays a similar but inverse role in Kazakh Arabic Alphabet, marking that vowels in a word will be front vowels.

There are exceptions in Tatar orthography, meaning words that will have back vowels, but won't have low alef written for them. First are words that contain the vowel alef А а (A a) (shown in Arabic Script as ئا / ا / ـا). This vowel is a back vowel, and its corresponding front vowel pair is written with a different letter altogether. Thus, it is an unambiguous conclusion that any word containing alef, will have all its other vowels as back vowels too. Thus, the low alef will be redundant, and so it's not written.

For example, the word йорт (yort), meaning "house", is written with low alef, as ࢭیۇرت. But in its plural form, йортлар (yortlar  is written as یۇرتلار.

Inversely, words that contain the vowel Ә ә (Ä ä) (shown in Arabic Script as ئە / ـە / ە) are unambiguously words in which all vowels will be front vowels.

The second exception, is words that contain the following consonants:


 * Г г (G g) (گ)
 * Гъ гъ / Ғ ғ (Ğ ğ) (ع)
 * К к (K k) (ك)
 * Къ къ / Ҡ ҡ (Q q) (ق)

As per Tatar phonology, the letters Г г (G g) (گ) and К к (K k) (ك) can only be accompanied by front vowels. Thus there won't be any words containing these consonants that would need low alef. In contrast, the letters Гъ гъ / Ғ ғ (Ğ ğ) (ع) and Къ къ / Ҡ ҡ (Q q) (ق) can only be accompanied by back vowels. This means that they themselves act as indicators that vowels in a word are back vowels, thus eliminating a need for low alef. For example, the word җылы (cılı), meaning "warm", is written as ࢭجئلئ, whereas, a derived word, such as җылылык / cılılıq, meaning "heat", is written as جىُلىُلىُق.

Pursuant to these rules, suffixes are formed in pairs too. For example words with back vowels take suffixes -лык (‑لىُق) / -дык (‑دىُق) / -тык (‑تىُق), and words with front vowels, take suffixes -лек (‫‑لىُك‬) / -дек (‫‑دىُك‬) / -тек (‫‑تىُك‬).

Sample text
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: