Bashkir alphabet

Until the mid-19th century, the written language of the Bashkirs was the Old Turkic written language ( Türki). Many works of Bashkir literature were written in Türki: Bashkir shezhere (geneologies of the Bashkir people), “Batyrsha's letter to Empress Elizaveta”, the orders of Salawat Yulayev, and works of the poets A. Kargaly, Tadgetdin Yalsigul Al-Bashkordi, H. Salikhov, Gali Sokoroy, Miftahetdin Akmulla, Mukhametsalim Umetbaev.

Turki was written in a variant of the Arabic script. In many literary works of the 19th century written in Türki, the influence of the spoken Bashkir language is noticeable.[1][2]

In the middle of the 19th century, the first attempts to create a writing system that fully represented the Bashkir language began. In 1869 Mirsalikh Bekchurin published the first Bashkir grammar in the book “An Initial Guide to the Study of Arabic, Persian and Tatar Languages with the Adverbs of Bukhara, Bashkirs, Kyrgyz and Residents of Turkestan”. He published a fairy tale "The Tale of a Padishah Hero" in the southern dialect of the Bashkir language in this book.[3]

In the 1860s, the missionary Nikolai Ilminsky suggested using the Cyrillic alphabet for the Bashkir written language in his work "Introductory reading in the Turkish-Tatar language course".[4]

The first Cyrillic Bashkir primer was published by Vasily Katarinsky in Orenburg in 1892 (reprinted in 1898 and 1906). This alphabet included all the letters of the Cyrillic alphabet at the time (except for ё, й, ѳ, and ѵ), as well as additional characters ä, г̇, ҥ, ö, ӳ

In 1907 Alexander Bessonov published “The primer for the Bashkirs”. It had all the letters of the Cyrillic alphabet of the time (except for ё and й), and added the characters ä, г̣, д̣, ҥ, ö, с̣, and ӱ.

Another primer was prepared at the end of the 19th century by Nikolai Katanov. The author used the diacritic mark umlaut (ӓ - / ә /, ӧ - / ө /, ӟ - / ҙ /, к̈ - / ҡ /, ӱ - / и /, etc. ). This textbook remained in the manuscript and was not published.[3]

In 1912 Mstislav Kulaev (Mukhametkhan Kulaev) published “The Basics of Onomatopoeia and the Alphabet for Bashkirs” (reprinted in 1919). He also used the Cyrillic alphabet. To indicate the specific sounds of the Bashkir language, the author created new letters.[5][6]

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Алфавит М. А. Кулаева, 1912 год

In July 1921, the 2nd All-Bashkir Congress of Soviets decided to take measures to create a written language for the Bashkir language as the state language for the Bashkir ASSR. In December 1922, a commission was created at the Academic Center of the People's Commissariat of Education of the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic for the development of the alphabet and spelling. The commission was headed by Saifi Ufaly; its members also included G. Shonasi, Sagit Ramiev and others.

The commission adapted the Arabic alphabet to the needs of Bashkir phonetics. Some letters were excluded, and the spelling of the vowels was improved. At the beginning of the word, vowels were written with the hamza (ﺀ) above. The vowels of the front and back rows in the letter did not differ (for example, `` و 'denoted both / y / and / ү /;' - / o / and / ө /, etc. e.), but for meaningful purposes, a hardness sign (a vertical line) could be placed under the letters (ٸٖول - ул ( he ), ٸول - үл ( die )).[7]

The alphabet contained the following letters: ي ھ ۋ و ن م ل ڴ گ ک ق ف ﻉ ش س ژ ز ر ﺫ د ﺡ ﺝ ث ﺕ پ ب for consonants and ئ ي ۇ و ﻪ ا for vowels. In December 1923 - January 1924 this alphabet was officially approved. In March 1924, minor changes were made to it, concerning the spelling of sounds / s / and / e / at the beginning of a word. The Arabic-based alphabet functioned until 1930.

Poems by Sh. Babich

For the first time in the Academic Center, Latinization was discussed in June 1924, and the first draft was created in October. [8]).

This project was followed by others. They suggested the following notation for sounds: / h / - h, / x / - ħ, / s / - ȗ, ә, / ң / - n̑, / ш / - ŝ, / ҫ / - t ', / ый / - o, / f / - ĵ, / w / - ŭ, / җ / - ĝ, j.[5]

In June 1927, the All-Union Committee of the New Turkic Alphabet approved a single alphabet for the Turkic peoples of the USSR, called Yanalif. The Bashkir Latinized alphabet was again revised. July 6, 1930 the Central Executive Committee of the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic officially approved this alphabet. In May 1933 at the conference of the Bashkir Scientific Research Institute of Language and Literature the letter `` Ç ç was removed, and in 1938 - the digraph `` ьj was also removed. March 3, 1939 there were new rules for writing the Bashkir language in the Latin alphabet.[7] After the reform of 1938-1939, the Bashkir Latinized alphabet looked like this