Crimean Tatar language: Encyclopedia II - Crimean Tatar language - History dialects and alphabet

Crimean Tatar language - History dialects and alphabet

The spoken language of the Crimean Tatars has existed since the 13th century, and consists of three main dialects: "Kypchak-Tatar" from the Crimean mountains, "Kypchak-Nogay" from the northern steppes, and the coastal "Crimea-Osman". The Chagatai language also served the Crimean Tatar as a Dachsprache. After Islamification, these people wrote with a Persian-Arab script.

In 1876 different Turkish Crimean dialects were made into a uniform written language, with a preference given to the more southern dialect in order to break the link between the Tatar and the Turks of the Ottoman Empire.

In 1928 the alphabet was replaced with the Uniform Turkic Alphabet, a combination of the Latin alphabet and the Cyrillic alphabet). The Uniform Turkic Alphabet was itself replaced in 1938 a modified Cyrillic alphabet.

Crimean Tatar was the native language of the poet Bekir Sidki Cobanzade.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History dialects and alphabet", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki