Yañalif
Sign in to saveAlso known as Janalif, Jaꞑalif, Yangalif, Jaŋalif, New Turkic Alphabet, Unified Turkic Latin Alphabet
The New Turkic Alphabet, known in Turkic languages as Yañalif (Tatar: / , / ; ), is the first Latin alphabet used during the Latinisation in the Soviet Union in the 1930s for the Turkic languages. It replaced the Arabic script-based alphabets like Yaña imlâ used for Tatar in 1928, and was replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet in 1938–1940. After their respective independence in 1991, several former Soviet states in Central Asia switched back to Latin script, with slight modifications to the original Yañalif.
Key facts
- Writing system.type
- Alphabet
- Writing system.name
- Yañalif
- Writing system.native_name
- Jaꞑa Əlifʙa
- Writing system.sample
- Tatar Latin Janalif Arabic 1928.png
- Writing system.imagesize
- 150px
- Writing system.languages
- Turkic languages
- Writing system.creator
- Various, primarily during the Latinisation in the Soviet Union
- Writing system.time
- 1924 – 1940
- Writing system.fam1
- Egyptian hieroglyphs
- Writing system.fam2
- Proto-Sinaitic alphabet
- Writing system.fam3
- Phoenician alphabet
- Writing system.fam4
- Greek alphabet
- Writing system.fam5
- Old Italic scripts
- Writing system.fam6
- Latin alphabet augmented by Cyrillic script
- Writing system.sisters
- Unified Northern Alphabet
- Writing system.unicode
- Subset of Latin, some characters not available
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
Show 1 more fact
- inception
- 1928-00-00
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
~12 min read
Article
8 sectionsContents
- History
- Decline
- Restoring Yañalif
- Inalif
- Criticism
- Sources
- See also
- External links
The New Turkic Alphabet, known in Turkic languages as Yañalif (Tatar: / , / ; ), is the first Latin alphabet used during the Latinisation in the Soviet Union in the 1930s for the Turkic languages. It replaced the Arabic script-based alphabets like Yaña imlâ used for Tatar in 1928, and was replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet in 1938–1940. After their respective independence in 1991, several former Soviet states in Central Asia switched back to Latin script, with slight modifications to the original Yañalif.
There are 33 letters in Yañalif, nine of which are vowels. The apostrophe (') is used for the glottal stop (həmzə or hämzä) and is sometimes considered a letter for the purposes of alphabetic sorting. Other characters may also be used in spelling foreign names. The lowercase form of the letter B is ʙ (small caps B), to prevent confusion with Ь ь (I with bowl). Letter No. 33 looks exactly like Cyrillic soft sign (Ь); Unicode has rejected separate encoding. Capital Ə (schwa) also looks like Russian/Cyrillic Э in some fonts. There is also a digraph in Yañalif (Ьj ьj).