Three scripts are currently used for theTatar language:Cyrillic (in Russia, including theRepublic of Tatarstan, where it is an official language and where the majority of speakers live, and in Kazakhstan), Latin (in Turkey, Finland, the Czech Republic, Poland,^[1] the US and Australia^[when?][2]) andArabic (in China^{[3][failed verification]}).

Before 1928, the Tatar language was usually written using alphabets based on theArabic alphabet:İske imlâ alphabet before 1920 andYaña imlâ alphabet in 1920–1927. Some letters such asچ andپ were borrowed from thePersian alphabet and the letterﯓ (callednef orsağır kef) was borrowed fromChagatai. The writing system was inherited fromVolga Bulgar.

The most ancient of Tatar literature (Qíssai Yosıf byQol-Ğäli, written inOld Tatar language) was created in the beginning of the 13th century. Until 1905 all literature was in Old Tatar, which was partly derived from the Bolgar language and not intelligible with modern Tatar. Since 1905 newspaper publishers started using modern Tatar. In 1918 the Arabic-based alphabet was revised: some new letters for Tatar sounds were added and some Arabic letters deleted. TheLatin-basedJaꞑalif alphabet was in use between 1928 and 1939 and theCyrillic-based alphabet has been used ever since.

Some scholars regardInstitutiones linguae Turcicae libri quator ("The Basic Rules of the Turkic Language"), written in Latin byHieronymus Megiser and printed inLeipzig in 1612, being the first example of a Turkic text printed inArabic script, as a first printed Tatar book.^[4] Meanwhile, Hieronymus Megiser'sChorographia Tartariae^[5] published in 1611 describes a uniqueTartarian alphabet and cites theLord’s Prayer in the Tartarian language, written inLatin script. The first Turkic-Tatar printed publication in Russia^[6] appears to bePeter the Great'sManifest, printed inArabic script and published inAstrakhan in 1722.

Printed books appeared en masse in 1801 when the first privatetypography ("Oriental typography") inKazan appeared.

The first unsuccessful attempt to publish a Tatarnewspaper was in 1808, when professor of mathematics atKazan University, I.I. Zapolsky, proposed publishing a newspaper "The Kazan News" in both Russian and Tatar languages. Zapolsky's untimely death in 1810 thwarted the project. The first successful attempt to publish a newspaper in Tatar was in 1905. On September 2, the first issue of the newspaper "Nur" was published inSt. Petersburg by Gataulla Bayazitov. The second Tatar newspaper, "Kazan Muhbire," came into existence on October 29, 1905. The publisher of the newspaper was a member of the Kazan City Council, Saidgirey Alkin.

The first Tatartypewriter was created in Tatarstan in the 1920s and used the Arabic-based alphabet.

• 
  Tatar Latin Janalif and TatarArabic script, 1927
• 
  Cover page of a TatarYana imla book printed in 1924
• 
  A Tatar alphabet book printed in 1778. Arabic script is used, Cyrillic text is in Russian.^[7]
• 
  The original Tatar alphabet

In 1930sTurkey became a potential enemy of theSoviet Union. Even thoughTurkish alphabet, introduced in 1928, was different from Jaꞑalif, for Soviet officials the Latin script was a symbol of the Western world. This motivated switching allTurkic languages of the USSR to Cyrillic script.

This was not the first project of introducing Cyrillic script for the Tatar language. Since 1861, theKeräşens ethnic group had usedNikolay Ilminsky's alphabet, based on pre-1917 Russian orthography which usedfita anddotted I to spell Orthodox proper names, additional Cyrillic lettersӒ,Ӧ,Ӱ for Tatar vowels, and the ligatureҤ for[ŋ]. This alphabet is related to theMari alphabet, and was used because Christian Tatars couldn't use the Arabic script. By the 1930s, Ilminsky's alphabet was forgotten and could not be used due to its religious origin. In 1938 professor M. Fazlullin introduced an adaptation of the Russian alphabet for the Tatar language, without any additional characters. Tatar sounds absent from Russian were to be represented with the digraphs Жь, Нь, Хь, Аь, Уь, Оь, Ый.^[8][9]

In 1939 Qorbangaliev and Ramazanov offered their own projects that planned to use additional Cyrillic characters. Letters Ө, Ә, Ү, Һ were inherited from Jaꞑalif, but Җ and Ң were invented by analogy with Щ and Ц. ⟨Гъ⟩ and ⟨къ⟩ were suggested to designate[ʁ] and[q], spelled in Jaꞑalif as ⟨ƣ⟩ and ⟨q⟩ correspondingly. In Ramazanov's project[w] (Jaꞑalif ⟨v⟩) was spelled as ⟨в⟩ before a vowel, and as ⟨у⟩ or ⟨ү⟩ in the end of a syllable. On 5 May 1939, Presidium of theSupreme Soviet ofTatar ASSR issued the decree"Onswitching Tatar writing from the Latin-based alphabet to an alphabet based on Russian glyphs", which opened with a declaration that the switch was enacted"in response to numerous requests by Tatar workers,kolkhozniks, andintelligentsia."^[10] The Tatar society disagreed to this project, and during a conference in July 1940, the Cyrillic alphabet was amended. The updated alphabet was accepted on 10 January 1941.

[q] and[ʁ] areallophones of/k/ and/ɡ/ in the environment of back vowels, and the accepted spelling doesn't explicitly distinguish between the allophones in each pair. When ⟨га/го/гу/гы/ка/ко/ку/кы⟩ is followed by a "soft syllable", containing one of the front vowels ⟨ә, е, ө, и, ү⟩ or thesoft sign ⟨ь⟩, they are pronounced as [ʁæ/ʁɵ/ʁy/ʁe/qæ/qɵ/qy/qe], otherwise as [ʁɑ/ʁo/ʁu/ʁɤ/qɑ/qo/qu/qɤ]. ⟨гә/гө/гү/ге/кә/кө/кү/ке⟩ are pronounced as [ɡæ/ɡɵ/ɡy/ɡe/kæ/kɵ/ky/ke]. Similar rules apply to ⟨е, ю, я⟩ which could be pronounced as either [je, jy, jæ] or [jɤ, ju, jɑ]. The soft sign is not used to showpalatalization as in Russian, but to show qualities of vowels where they are not determinable throughvowel harmony. Unlike modern Russian, some words can end with ⟨гъ⟩, representing[ʁ] after a front vowel, as in ⟨балигъ⟩ [bɑliʁ] ("baligh").^[8] In total, the Tatar Cyrillic script requires theRussian alphabet plus 6 extra letters: Әә, Өө, Үү, Җҗ, Ңң, Һһ. All Russian loanwords are written as in Russian and should be pronounced with Russian pronunciation.

The complexity of the orthographic rules had led to discussions about amending the Tatar Cyrillic alphabet again; these included sessions in theKazan branch of theAcademy of Sciences of the Soviet Union (KFAN) which were conducted in January 1954 and in February–March 1959, but did not result in any specific proposal for a new alphabet. In 1972, prof.Nikolai Baskakov suggested three new letters to be added to the Tatar Cyrillic alphabet:Қ,Ғ andЎ for the sounds[q],[ʁ] and[w], to make the Tatar spelling phonetic. On 18 May 1989, the Orthographic Commission formed by the KFAN published the new alphabet, which included Baskakov's three new letters, and the new spelling rules.^[11] The new alphabetic order was as follows, with the new letters shown in brackets:

А Ә Б В [Ў] Г [Ғ] Д Е (Ё) Ж Җ З И Й К [Қ] Л М Н Ң О Ө П Р С Т У Ү Ф Х Һ Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я

The spelling system of 1940 had led to manyhomographs and near-homographs between Tatar and Russian which had totally different pronunciation, e.g. ⟨гарь⟩ [ʁær] "shame" and ⟨гарь⟩ [ɡarʲ] "cinder". This presented difficulties for pupils learning the two spelling systems for the two languages simultaneously. One of the goals for the new spelling system was that the same sequence of letters would correspond to the same sounds, whether in a Russian word or in a Tatar word. Yet, the amended orthography was never formally adopted, as the popular opinion in the 1990s leaned towards switching to a Latin-based alphabet, instead of changing the Cyrillic one. Thus, on 20 July 1994, the Supreme Council of the Republic of Tatarstan approved a gradual transition to Latin-based script;^[12] the urgency of such transition was included in the resolution of the Second World Congress of the Tatars in 1997.^[13] Recognizing the popular demand, on 15 September 1999, theState Council of the Republic of Tatarstan issued the decree"On restoring the Tatar alphabet based on Latin glyphs".^[14] Despite the name of the decree, the new Latin alphabet was significantly different from Jaꞑalif, and its letters had one-to-one correspondence with the proposed Cyrillic alphabet from 1989.^[15] On 27 September 2000, the Cabinet of Ministers updated the new Latin alphabet, replacing the three uncommon characters inherited from Jaꞑalif (Ə, Ɵ, Ꞑ) with those present inLatin-1 encoding and in most computer fonts.^[16]

Before the 1980s, in the listing of the alphabet, extra letters were placed after the Russian ones, as shown above. The Tatar Parliament changed the alphabetic order in January 1997 to the one shown below.^[8]

The official Cyrillic version of the Tatar alphabet used in Tatarstan contains 39 letters:

А Ә Б В Г Д Е (Ё) Ж Җ З И Й К Л М Н Ң О Ө П Р С Т У Ү Ф Х Һ Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я

Due to the Russian Federal law, only Cyrillic alphabets may have official status in regions of the Russian Federation. There is ongoing confrontation with regards to adoption of the Latin script for the Tatar language.

According to the decree"On restoring the Tatar alphabet based on Latin glyphs" from 1999, the new Latin alphabet would be in official use alongside the Cyrillic alphabet from 1 September 2001, and would become the sole alphabet in official use by 1 September 2011. Around the same time, theRepublic of Karelia was pursuing official status forKarelian language, which also uses a Latin-based alphabet.^[17] The RussianState Duma perceived the latinization of the two republics as a variety oflanguage secessionism, and on 15 November 2002, they introduced an amendment into the lawOn the languages of the peoples of the Russian Federation stating that all official languages of the republics within the Russian Federation must use Cyrillic alphabets.^[18]

TheRepublic of Tatarstan challenged the amendment in theConstitutional Court of Russia, arguing that the State Duma doesn't have authority over the language policies of the constituent republics.^[19] On 16 November 2004, the Constitutional Court declined the appeal.^[20] To comply with the court's decision, the decree"On restoring the Tatar alphabet based on Latin glyphs" was officially rescinded on 22 January 2005.^[21]

On 24 December 2012, a new Tatarstani law clarified that the new Latin alphabet, as specified in 2000, should be used as the officialromanization for the Tatar language. It also specifiedYaña imlâ as the official system for transliteration into theArabic script. According to this law, requests to Tatarstani authorities may use the Latin and Arabic scripts, but the authorities' answers would be written in Cyrillic, with an optional transliteration into the other alphabets.^[22][23][24] As of 2020, Cyrillic remains the only official script in Tatarstan.

Zamanälif-2 (Tatar for "modern alphabet") contains 34 letters:^[24]

A,Ä,B,C,Ç,D,E,F,G,Ğ,H,I,İ,J,K,L,M,N,Ñ,O,Ö,P,Q,R,S,Ş,T,U,Ü,V,W,X,Y,Z.

There are 10vowels and 25consonants. In addition to theISO basic Latin alphabet, the following 9 letters are used: Çç, Ğğ, Şş, Ññ, Ää, Öö, Üü, Iı, İi.

Tatar vowels are:a/ä, o/ö, u/ü, ıy/i, ı/e.

The symbol⟨'⟩ is used for theglottal stop (known ashämzä in Tatar).

Tatar writing is largely phonetic, meaning that the pronunciation of a word can usually be derived from its spelling. This rule excludes recent loanwords, such assummit and names.

In 2024, the modifiedCommon Turkic Alphabet replaced letter ä with ə, which was already in use inAzerbaijani, as well as among Tatar activists using the Latin alphabet. This way of writing has been named as "Neo-alif" (Neo-əlif) by some Tatar activists. It disregards letter ä mainly due to its abundant occurrence in Tatar words compared to the other umlaut letters, creating an "undesired aesthetic outcome". (Compare: kübäläklär –> kübələklər; 'butterflies').^{[25][26][27][28][29]}

"Tatarça Diktant", a global event organized in 2024, had recitations of Tatar poems that were translated into the Latin Neo-alif alphabet. The event was sponsored by official bodies such as the Ministry of Youth of Tatarstan and Kazan Federal University. Its purpose was "aimed at uniting lovers of the Tatar language, increasing interest in writing correctly and learning the literary Tatar language".^[30][31]

In Finland, while ä is found in Finnish,the Tatar community has traditionally tried to use onlyletters found in Turkish, and thus, have replaced it with e. This has left both the [e] and [ɯ] (ı) sounds as ı (keçkenä / keçkenə,kıçkıne; 'small'^[a]). Nowadays however the spelling has had more influence from Tatarstan .^[32]

Article 1 of theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights:

• Tatar language
• Law on languages of peoples of the Russian Federation — introduced as a reaction to Tatarstan's attempt to switch the Tatar language from the Cyrillic alphabet to the Latin alphabet

• Adelina Shaydullina; Mikhail Strukov (2023)."Extended Cyrillic: Tatar".type.today (in English and Russian). Translated by Dina Mingalieva.
• A.A. Timerkhanov[in Tatar] (2019)."Tatar Cyrillic – Tatar Latin alphabet transliteration scheme accepted in the dictionary"(PDF).Tatar-English, English-Tatar dictionary (in English and Tatar).
• Aygul Ayupova (2011).The Tatar Phonetics: The Tatar Language Pronunciation Course.
• Alla Sal'nikova[in Tatar];Dilärä Ğäliullina[in Tatar] (2016).Tatar "Älifba"sı: ütkäne häm bügengese (in Tatar and Russian).
• "Alfavit".TATARICA (in Tatar and Russian).
  • "Ğäräp yazuwı".TATARICA (in Tatar and Russian).
  • "Ğäräp yazuwı ürnäkläre".TATARICA (in Tatar and Russian).
  • "Latin yazuwı".TATARICA (in Tatar and Russian).
  • "Yañalif".TATARICA (in Tatar and Russian).
  • "Kirillitsa".TATARICA (in Tatar and Russian).
  • "Älifba".TATARICA (in Tatar and Russian).
• "Zakon Respubliki Tatarstan: Ob ispol'zovanii tatarskogo yazyka kak gosudarstvennogo yazyka Respubliki Tatarstan"(PDF) (in Russian). Gosudarstvennym Sovetom Respubliki Tatarstan.
• E.N. Denmöxämmätova."Döres: Tatar telendä punktuatsiya häm orfografiya kağidäläre" (in Tatar).

• "Tatar language and alphabet".Omniglot.
• "Lengua tártara".Promotora Española de Lingüística (in Spanish).
• "Romanizer - Cyrillic to Latin".BaltoSlav Language Tools.

• Tatar language
• Latin alphabets
• Alphabets used by Turkic languages
• Cyrillic alphabets

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