You may needrendering support to display the uncommonUnicode characters in this article correctly.

Yaña imlâ (Yaña imlâ:ياڭا ئيملە‎,Tatar:Яңа имлә, Yaña imlä,pronounced[jʌˈŋɑimˈlæ], lit. "New orthography") was a modified variant ofArabic script that was in use for theTatar language between 1920 and 1927. The orthographical reform modifiedİske imlâ, abolishing excess Arabic letters, adding letters for short vowels e, ı, ö, o. Yaña imlâ made use of "Arabic Letter Low Alef"⟨ࢭ⟩ to indicatevowel harmony. Arguably, Yaña imlâ had as its goal the accommodation of the alphabet to the actual Tatar pronunciation.

There were some projects that were to simplify Yaña imlâ too. The uniqueseparated Arabic was invented (so as to use typewriters). Separated Arabic was even incorporated in the early flag ofTatar ASSR, though it was not in real use.

As early as in 1924 the first projects of Latin script were introduced and in 1928 alphabet was switched to the LatinYañalif alphabet.

In Tatar Arabic alphabet, 10 vowels are defined. These occur in pairs, front and back vowels.^[1][2]

Similar to other Turkic languages, Tatar hasvowel harmony rules. Tatar orthography has one-dimensional vowel harmony rules, front versus back vowels. There does exist vowel roundedness harmony in Tatar, but it is not reflected in the orthography.

low alef ⟨ࢭ‎ ⟩ (Tatar: калынлык билгəсе, قالىُنلىُق بیلگەسىُ) has a unique role in Tatar, a role not seen in other Arabic scripts. Tatar Arabic script makes use ofU+08AD ࢭARABIC LETTER LOW ALEF, and it can only ever come at the beginning of words. It never comes in the middle or end of words. low alef doesn't represent any sound in Tatar. Instead, it indicates that the vowels in the word will be the followingback vowels:^[3]

• Ы ы (I ı)
• Ый ый (Iy ıy)
• О о (O o)
• У у (U u)

The logic essentially is that low alef indicates that the vowels of the word are articulated in the same part of the mouth as an[ɑ] sound, which is written with an alif ⟨ئا / ا‎ ⟩, i.e. at back of the mouth.

Hamza plays a similar but inverse role inKazakhArabic Alphabet, marking that vowels in a word will befront vowels.

There are exceptions in Tatar orthography, meaning words that will haveback vowels, but won't have low alef written for them. First are words that contain the vowelalefА а (A a) (shown in Arabic Script as ئا / ا / ـا). This vowel is a back vowel, and its corresponding front vowel pair is written with a different letter altogether. Thus, it is an unambiguous conclusion that any word containing alef, will have all its other vowels as back vowels too. Thus, thelow alef will be redundant, and so it's not written.

For example, the wordйорт (yort), meaning "house", is written with low alef, asࢭیۇرت . But in its plural form,йортлар (yortlar is written asیۇرتلار.

Inversely, words that contain the vowelӘ ә (Ä ä) (shown in Arabic Script as ئە / ـە / ە) are unambiguously words in which all vowels will befront vowels.

The second exception, is words that contain the following consonants:

• Г г (G g) (گ)
• Гъ гъ / Ғ ғ (Ğ ğ) (ع)
• К к (K k) (ك)
• Къ къ / Ҡ ҡ (Q q) (ق)

As per Tatar phonology, the lettersГ г (G g) (گ) andК к (K k) (ك) can only be accompanied byfront vowels. Thus there won't be any words containing these consonants that would need low alef. In contrast, the lettersГъ гъ / Ғ ғ (Ğ ğ) (ع) andКъ къ / Ҡ ҡ (Q q) (ق) can only be accompanied byback vowels. This means that they themselves act as indicators that vowels in a word areback vowels, thus eliminating a need for low alef. For example, the wordҗылы (cılı), meaning "warm", is written asࢭجىُلىُ, whereas, a derived word, such asҗылылык / cılılıq, meaning "heat", is written asجىُلىُلىُق.

Pursuant to these rules, suffixes are formed in pairs too. For example words withback vowels take suffixes-лык (‑لىُق) /-дык (‑دىُق) /-тык (‑تىُق), and words withfront vowels, take suffixes-лек (‫‑لىُك‬) /-дек (‫‑دىُك‬) /-тек (‫‑تىُك‬).

This article or sectionpossibly contains originalsynthesis. Source material shouldverifiably mention andrelate to the main topic. Relevant discussion may be found on thetalk page.(May 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Article 1 of theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights:

• Tatar alphabet
• Tatar language

This article includes alist of references,related reading, orexternal links,but its sources remain unclear because it lacksinline citations. Please helpimprove this article byintroducing more precise citations.(September 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

• "Arabic alphabet".Tatar Encyclopaedia (in Tatar).Kazan: TheRepublic of Tatarstan Academy of Sciences. Institution of the Tatar Encyclopaedia. 2002.

• Arabic alphabets
• Tatar language
• Alphabets used by Turkic languages
• Writing systems introduced in 1920

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Pages with plain IPA
• Articles containing Tatar-language text
• Pages with Tatar IPA
• Articles that may contain original research from May 2025
• Articles lacking in-text citations from September 2016
• All articles lacking in-text citations
• CS1 Tatar-language sources (tt)