Volga Tatar language resources?

All about language programs, courses, websites and other learning resources
Dtmont
Yellow Belt
Posts: 61
Joined: Fri Jan 29, 2016 9:45 pm
Languages: English(n) Portuguese/Galician(around intermediate). In reading: Old English,Dutch,Affrkikaans
x 22

Volga Tatar language resources?

Postby Dtmont » Sat Aug 17, 2019 11:34 pm

Does anyone know of Volga Tatar language resources in English? Also does anyone know how close Tatar is to Kazakh? Are they mutually intelligible?
1 x

Speakeasy
x 7658

Re: Volga Tatar language resources?

Postby Speakeasy » Sun Aug 18, 2019 12:08 am

Generally speaking, when preparing a list of resources for a language, I begin by consulting the HTLAL archives, the LLORG, the Yojik and Live Lingua websites, DLIFLC’s Headstart2 and GLOSS files, the National Foreign Language Center (NFLC)’s files, the Indiana University CeLT Recorded Materials Archives, the website of the University of Michigan, the U.S. Government's ERIC website, the files of So You Want to Learn a Language, Amazon, AbeBooks, eBay, et cetera, along with repeated searches of Google.

You might wish trying this yourself and submitting your own list of Tatar resources for review and comment by the members of the forum. Then again, it would appear that the inimitable Chung has already done so …

Yürükler - Another call to the (fool)hardy ones - LLORG – July 2015
https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=743/

Turkic Profile - HTLAL - December 2011
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=30243&PN=1
2 x

David1917
Blue Belt
Posts: 596
Joined: Mon Nov 06, 2017 2:36 am
Location: USA
Languages: English (N)
Professional Level: Russian, Spanish
x 1564

Re: Volga Tatar language resources?

Postby David1917 » Sun Aug 18, 2019 1:46 am

As far as I understand the main divisions of the Turkic languages by their most prominent representatives, they are as follows:

Turkish / Turkmen
Kazakh / Kyrgyz
Uzbek / Uyghur

The Tatar languages at large do fall into the same grouping as the Kazakh and Kyrgyz languages, however mutual intelligibility miles may vary.

If by "Volga Tatar" you mean the language spoken in present-day Tatarstan, I do not know of any English language resources. The language is on my hit-list, but I always planned on using Russian resources and/or learning one of the more widely spoken Turkic languages first. If you do find a good English-based resource, please let us know!

Chung and Daristani are likely to be able to assist here as well. I second Speakeasy's recommendation to the HTLAL thread entitled Turkic Profile. The work those two did on there all those years ago is quite exhaustive, and there are more threads linked as well.
1 x

vonPeterhof
Blue Belt
Posts: 879
Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2015 1:55 am
Languages: Russian (N), English (C2), Japanese (~C1), German (~B2), Kazakh (~B1), Norwegian (~A2)
Studying: Kazakh, Mandarin, Coptic
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1237
x 2833
Contact:

Re: Volga Tatar language resources?

Postby vonPeterhof » Mon Aug 26, 2019 5:14 am

Dtmont wrote:Also does anyone know how close Tatar is to Kazakh? Are they mutually intelligible?

It's true that, as David1917 pointed out, Tatar is in the same subgroup of Turkic languages as Kazakh and (according to most specialists nowadays) Kyrgyz, the Kipchak sub-branch. However, the Kipchak sub-branch in particular has noticeable internal variation and can be further sub-divided into at least three groups. Aside from Crimean Tatar and Kyrgyz the division is pretty straightforward: Tatar is in the Volga/Bulgar group together with Bashkir, whereas Kazakh is in the Nogai group together with Nogai, Karakalpak and arguably Kyrgyz. The mutual intelligibility within those groups is much higher than between them: reading Nogai and Karakalpak for me is almost like reading weirdly respelled Kazakh, and I've heard pop songs "translated" between Tatar and Bashkir with basically nothing changed aside from the pronunciation.

As for Tatar and Kazakh in particular, as I pointed out in my log the phonological differences between their standard varieties are quite a bit smaller than the orthographies make them look. However, there are still noticeable differences in pronunciation, some aspects of the grammar and, perhaps most notable, in the vocabulary. From my observations it seems that Tatar has both incorporated a bit more learned vocabulary from Perso-Arabic and also didn't do quite as much as Kazakh to adapt that vocabulary to Turkic phonological rules, i.e. vowel harmony. All things considered I've found Tatar to be more or less accessible in written form (especially after learning about how the orthography works), more so than many other Turkic languages, but considerably less so than Kipchak-Nogai languages. However, as a non-native speaker of Kazakh I don't have a very large passive Common Turkic vocabulary to fall back on, so the experiences of actual native speakers could be different.
3 x

Dtmont
Yellow Belt
Posts: 61
Joined: Fri Jan 29, 2016 9:45 pm
Languages: English(n) Portuguese/Galician(around intermediate). In reading: Old English,Dutch,Affrkikaans
x 22

Re: Volga Tatar language resources?

Postby Dtmont » Tue Sep 17, 2019 5:20 pm

Thank you for your replies!
0 x


Return to “Language Programs and Resources”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests