Tatar language - one of the Turkic languages. Spoken in the Republic of Tatarstan, in a number of districts of Bashkortostan, Mari El, Udmurtia, Mordovia, in many other regions of Russia as well as in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. The number of the Tatars in Russia is 5 million 522,1 thousand. 85,6 % of them regard Tatar as their mother tongue, 14,2 % Russian. Tatar language is also spoken among the Bashkirs (227,8 thousand Bashkirs regard it as their mother tongue) and Maris.

The oldest surviving Tatar texts date back to the 13th century. The modern literary language was developed under the influence of spoken Tatar since the middle of the 19th century. The phonetics and lexicon of the literary language are close to the Central dialect, morphology to the Western dialect. The writing system was based on the Arab script until 1927, then on Latin, and from 1939 - Cyrillic script. A decision to switch into the Latin alphabet has been made recently.

General information on the Tatar language

• Tatar mail group's home page - Sources on the Tatar language, information on using Latin script for writing Tatar etc.
• Tatars of the Samara region - Includes brief information on the Tatar language, writing system and the characteristics of the language of the Tatars in the Samara region (in Russian)

Education and science

• Department of Tatar philology of the Bashkir State University (in Russian)
• Faculty of Tatar philology, history and oriental languages of the Kazan University (in Russian)
• Kheter publishers - Tatar language teaching aids

Language technology

• Jahat for Windows - Tatar language support (information in Russian)
• Scientific laboratory "Problems of artificial intellect" of the Tatarstan academy of science and the Kazan university - Specialices in development of Tatar language technologies (in Russian)
• Tatar fonts and keyboards
• Tatar language and the new information technologies - Conference materials (in Russian)

Mass media

• Azatliq radiosinin tatar-basqort servisi - Radio Liberty Tatar-Bashkir service. Daily Real audio broadcasts on the Internet, Tatar pages in the Latin script (Turkish encoding)
• Tatar gazetasi - Cultural and educational newspaper of the Tatar community in the Republic of Mordovia in Tatar, Russian and English
• Tatar-inform - Tatarstan news agency. Elecronic newspaper "Tatar donyasi" (in the Latin script, Turkish encoding), news feeds in Tatar, English and Russian.

Sites in the Tatar language

• Cabinet of ministers of the Republic of Tatarstan - In Tatar, Russian and English
• Executive committee of the Tatar world congress - Information in Tatar and Russian
• Mintimer Shaimyev - The president of the Republic of Tatarstan (also in English and Russian)
• Nuran - Tatar site in the city of Naberezhnye Chelny
• Tatar cirlari - Tatar songs in the .mp3 format, text in the Turkish encoding
• Tatarstan Internetta - Tatar pages on the web server of the Tatarstan civil network. Information on Tatarstan, children's journal "Yalkyn", Tatar-Turkish dictionary etc.
• Yuldash - A site for making friends with other Tatars

Discussions

• Tatar e-group - Discussions in Tatar and other languages
• Yahoo! Tatar community message board