Tatar language

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Spread of the Tatar language in North Azerbaijan and South Daghestan. Map of the Lomonosov University Linguarium project

The Tatian language ( Tatisch ) is a southwest Iranian language within the Indo-European language family , which is mainly spoken in northeastern Azerbaijan on both sides of the eastern foothills of the Caucasus and in the republic of Dagestan , which is part of Russia to the north . Tatisch is very close to Persian , but has some structural similarities with Middle Persian , some of which have been abraded by centuries of contact with New Persian , some special developments and a strong influence of Azerbaijani . Tatisch should not be confused with the north-west Iranian language Tati spoken in the Iranian province of Zanjan and the surrounding area .

Spread and language situation

While Tatisch is a recognized minority language in Dagestan, it was not taught as a written or school language in Azerbaijan during the Soviet Union . The written language here is the Turkic language, Azerbaijani. Independent Azerbaijan changed its policy in 1996. Since the 19th century, Tatisch has been on the decline, especially in the south, and is increasingly being assimilated by Azerbaijani . In fact, in the 19th century, both the native Muslim population of the old khanates Shirvan (or named after the capital Schemacha , here already heavily displaced by Azerbaijani) and Quba , as well as a Jewish population mainly in Quba, Derbent and in the area of ​​the Tabassarans, were in fact the mother tongue of a native Muslim population and Darginer in Dagestan and a smaller Armenian Christian community in Shirvan. Therefore, the literature also distinguishes between Muslim Tat (also called Southern Tat), Judaeo Tat (also called Northern Tat) and sometimes Armeno Tat, which some linguists also regard as separate languages. Like many Islamic languages, Muslim-Tat has a proportion of Arabic loanwords , Judaeo-Tat, like many Jewish languages, a large proportion of Hebrew and Aramaic , Armeno-Tat a proportion of Armenian loanwords. In pre-Soviet times they were also written in various scripts, Arabic script , Hebrew script and Armenian script and their relatives called themselves porsi (Persians), juhuri / juvuri (Jews, spelling also dschuhuri ) and ermeni (Armenians ). In the nationality policy of the Soviet Union , on the other hand, they were treated as a uniform nationality of the deeds and given them an initially Latin , later Cyrillic script . While Muslim-Tat was on the decline as early as the 19th century, Judaeo-Tat was expanding at the same time. A few communities, which had previously spoken Circassian dialects or Chechen , often adopted the Tatic language through immigration from Dagestan and Azerbaijan, which the colloquial language of the mountain Jews developed not only in Azerbaijan and Dagestan, but in the entire North Caucasus . During the Soviet period, however, Judaeo-Tat was also pushed back by the colloquial languages Russian and Azerbaijani; since the 1980s, their use has also declined due to emigration, mostly to Israel . Most of the few Armenian-Christian spokespeople for Tatar left Azerbaijan during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict .

Number of speakers

Tatisch (orange and hatched for mixed languages) in Azerbaijan

There are estimates of approx. 96,000 speakers of the Judaeo-Tat, approx. 22,000 speakers of the Muslim-Tat in 1990, the speakers of the Armeno-Tat are likely to be only a few hundred to a few thousand. In the 2009 census of Azerbaijan, around 25,200 residents described themselves as "deeds" and 9100 residents as "Jews". The speakers are almost always bilingual Azerbaijani and Tatar, which suggests a decline in language use. In the 2010 census of Russia, 1,595 people referred to themselves as “deeds” and 762 as “mountain Jews”; in 2012, Tatisch was their mother tongue. In Israel, where most Tatish speakers live with over 70,000 people, they are not collected separately, nor in Armenia. In both countries, Tatisch will gradually be replaced by New Hebrew or Armenian. Minorsky quotes several census results with up to 135,000 acts according to the Great Russian Encyclopedia 1901, which proves linguistic assimilation especially against the background of the general population growth of the last 100 years. Even today, Tatar language skills are lower in the settlements, especially among women and younger children.

Linguistic particularities

Tatisch often did not understand the frequent change from p to f in New Persian (see e.g. porsi for "Persian", instead of New Persian farsi ). In addition, the Ezafe connection typical of New Persian is very rare in Tatisch. Numerals are always mentioned first. The inflections are even stronger than preserved in New Persian. Typical of Tatisch is also a pronounced Rhotazism , which replaces the neo-Persian d with r. In contrast to Armeno-Tatic, Muslim and Judeo-Tatic have the two pharyngals ʕ and ħ, which do not appear in Persian and e.g. B. Minorski suggested that it originally came from the Arabic-speaking area, but is rejected by other researchers as a thesis that is too far-reaching.

Term and origin

The term tat probably originally comes from Turkic languages ​​and primarily designates people who do not come from the tribal association, the secondary settled population and the tertiary Persian population, especially in Central Asia and Azerbaijan. According to Miller and Minorski, it probably has the same origin as the term used by the Tajiks and only became established in the 19th century and never fully among the people concerned.

According to Muslim sources, Chosrau I. Anuschirwan probably settled the Zoroastrian and Jewish population from the south in pre-Islamic times to secure the border fortifications against the Khazars , because he mistrusted the Christianized population of Albania and thus anchored the Tatar language in the region. However, there are still discussions about the assignment.

Muslim-Tatisch

According to Grjunberg, there is a northern dialect of Muslim-Tatic spoken by Sunnis in Quba, a central and southern dialect in Shirvan, both spoken by Shiites . Haciyev counts the central to the southern dialect. A very different dialect is spoken in the village of Lahıc . B. Huseynova also belongs to the southern dialect. Miller, on the other hand, sees Lahıc-Tatisch as a separate dialect and draws the dialect borders not so much along the religions, but regionally and particularly points out great similarities between the Shiite, Sunni and Jewish dialects of the Abşeron Peninsula .

Judaeo-Tatic

Taty inscription in Hebrew letters in Derbent 1904

Judeo-Tat is divided into four dialects: the Kaitag dialect from the east of Dagestan, which spread to the rest of the North Caucasus, the Derbent dialect, the Quba dialect in northern Azerbaijan with the settlement Qırmızı Qəsəbə and that almost entirely from Azerbaijani displaced the Wartaschen dialect from Oğuz , formerly Wartaschen and the surrounding area. Judäo-Tatisch / Juhuri today has the most speakers of all Tatisch variants and the broadest literature, which, however, is almost no longer printed.

Armeno-Tatisch

Some linguists, such as Gjunberg, assign Armeno-Tatic to middle and southern Muslim-Tatic, although the pharyngals are missing here and the å becomes an a. It was spoken in only a few northeast Azerbaijani villages and the last speakers today mostly live in Armenia.

literature

  • Chen Bram: The Language of the Caucasus Jews: Language Preservation and Sociolinguistic Dilemmas before and after the Migration to Israel . In: Irano-Judaica 6 (2008).
  • Michael Chlenov: Tats in the Caucasus: the twisted fate of an ethnicon. In: Euro-Asian Jewish Yearbook 5768 (2008/2008 [publ. 2009]), pp. 50–62 ( PDF in the Internet Archive )
  • John M. Clifton / Gabriela Deckinga / Laura Lucht / Calvin Tiessen: Sociolinguistic Situation of the Tat and Mountain Jews in Azerbaijan , online ( PDF ).
  • AL Grjunberg, L. Ch. Davydova : Tatskij jazyk. Moscow 1982. online (Russian).
  • Gilbert Lazard: Judeo act . In: Encyclopedia Judaica, Vol. 10, Jerusalem 1971, pp. 441-442.
  • Vsevolod F. Miller : Tatskie etjudy. V. Gatcuk, Moscow 1905.
  • Vladimir Minorsky : Act in: Encyclopedia of Islam first edition, Leiden 1903-36 online
  • Christopher Moseley: Juhur , in: ders., Encyclopedia of the world's endangered languages , Routledge, London u. a. 2007.
  • Igor Semenov: The Mountain Jews in the Caucasus: Certain Aspects of Ethnic Identification. In: Central Asia and the Caucasus 3 [21] (2003), pp. 165-173 ( online )

Web links

Test Wikipedia on Muslim-Tatisch
Test Wikipedia on Judaeo-Tatisch

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Clifton et al. P. 4.
  2. ↑ See e.g. B. Article by Minorski in EI1.
  3. ↑ estimate z. B. at Ethnologue .
  4. ↑ estimate z. B. at Ethnologue .
  5. ↑ Penultimate table in the sub-window “Political division, population size and structure” ( Memento of the original from December 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.stat.gov.az
  6. ^ Fifth Excel table (Russian), lines 56 and 159.
  7. ↑ Sixth Excel table (Russian), line 215.
  8. ↑ See Minorski p. 699, right column.
  9. ↑ See Clifton et al. P. 20.
  10. ↑ Both pharyngals can also be heard clearly when the speaker on the right speaks Judeo-Tat / Juhuri.
  11. ↑ See e.g. B. Article in the EI2 , which indicates that Muslim-Tatisch also has these non-Persian sounds and indicates that they can be used e.g. B. could come from neighboring Dagestani languages .
  12. ↑ See Minorski pp. 697-698.
  13. ↑ See Minorski p. 700, left column.
  14. ↑ Clifton et al. Pp. 3-4.
  15. ↑ See e.g. B. Bram, p. 340
  16. ↑ Clifton et al. P. 4 and 25.
  17. ↑ Minorski pp. 699-700.