The language platform: what this software does

This platform is a tool for saving and keeping the language of the historical Estonian Tatars — Mišär Tatar. It brings together four things: recording the language, grammar analysis, a dictionary and language learning. Alongside these it researches the language's history and enriches the language — taking in new words from the Codex Cumanicus (1303), the greatest source of Cuman, Mišär's close relative.

Recording the language

The heart of the platform is a dictionary that records attested Mišär words in the Estonian Tatar alphabet. A language questionnaire (keeleankeet) gathers the native speaker's forms through rule-based prompts, so that paradigms and sentences are written down systematically. Every form is marked: whether it is community-confirmed or derived from a rule and awaiting confirmation.

The Estonian Tatar alphabet

The language is recorded in the Estonian Tatar alphabet — 28 letters, two of which (ts, ng) are digraphs. There are nine vowels (a ä e i o ö u ü õ), forming vowel-harmony pairs. Examples: tsäj (tea), jer (land), kõz (girl), dingez (sea), šähär (town).

A Ä B D E F G H I J K L M N NG O Ö P R S Š T TS U Ü V Õ Z

The nasal sound may be written ng or n' — whichever you prefer: the community often writes n' (e.g. sineng ~ sinen'), the platform recognises both; the dictionary's canonical form is ng.

Why it differs from the other Tatar alphabets:

• Kazan Tatar is officially written in Cyrillic; the Estonian Tatar alphabet is Latin — an iron rule of this project is that Cyrillic is never used.

• The special letters of the İdel-Ural Latin alphabet (ç, ş, ı, ñ, ğ, x, y, w, q) are absent — in their place stand õ, š, ts, j, ng, h, v and k, familiar to readers of Estonian.

• The spelling is phonetic and follows the community's Mišär ts-dialect (Sergatš type): literary Tatar ç is pronounced [ts] here and is written ts (tsäj, not çäy); this sound is a back throat-j by the community's decision — pronounced far back like the throat-k (jer, jide).

Grammar analysis

The grammar overview gathers what is known of the community's language — the alphabet and pronunciation, noun cases, verb conjugation, vowel harmony, pronouns and conjunctions — built from the native speaker's sentences. A “Sentence structure” page glosses example sentences word by word, showing how a Mišär sentence is put together.

An example from the sentence-structure page (confirmed by the native speaker):

The dictionary

The dictionary is trilingual: Mišär Tatar · Estonian · English. Words can be browsed by theme, with their inflections, etymology and links to the Kipchak-Cuman language of the 1303 Codex Cumanicus. Each word opens in a detail view; words can also be searched and translated.

Language learning

For learning there is the dictionary, the grammar and the sentence breakdowns — and now flashcards, for practising vocabulary: the Mišär word on one side, the translation on the other. So the community can not only record the language but also learn and pass it on.

The language tools (dictionary, questionnaire, grammar, flashcards) are for members; this Vikipeedia is public. The platform's goal is to keep Mišär alive and to enrich it with neologisms and with the older Turkic, Kipchak and Cuman languages.

See also

• The Mišär Tatar dialect

• The Estonian Tatars kept the Estonian language even in exile

• Union of Estonian Tatars

• Cuman and Mišär word comparison

Sources: the language platform’s own materials (the dictionary, the Estonian Tatar alphabet) and the related pages of this knowledge base.