Bashkir alphabet

Until the mid-19th century, the Bashkirs wrote in the literary language Türki using the Arabic script. Many works of Bashkir literature were written in Türki: Bashkir shezhere (genealogies 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, and Mukhametsalim Umetbaev. The influence of spoken Bashkir language is noticeable in many literary works of the 19th century written in Türki.[1][2]

Beginning in the middle of the 19th century, the first attempts to create a writing system that fully represented the Bashkir language began with many writers adapting the Cyrillic alphabet.

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".[3]

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. The book also included a fairy tail in the southern dialect of the Bashkir language called The Tale of a Padishah Hero.[4]

The first Cyrillic Bashkir primer was published by Vasily Katarinsky in Orenburg in 1892 (reprinted in 1898 and 1906). His proposed alphabet excluded the letters ё, й, ѳ, and ѵ from the contemporaneous Cyrillic alphabet and included the additional characters ä, г̇, ҥ, ö, ӳ.

In 1907, Alexander Bessonov published The Primer for the Bashkirs. This proposed alphabet included 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 using the umlaut (ӓ - / ә /, ӧ - / ө /, ӟ - / ҙ /, к̈ - / ҡ /, ӱ - / и /, etc. ). This work remained as a manuscript and was not published.[4]

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 and 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 create a written language for the Bashkir language as the state language for the Bashkir ASSR. In December 1922, a commission was created for the development of the alphabet and spelling at the Academic Center of the People's Commissariat of Education of the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. 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. For those letters that represented both a consonant and a vowel a hardness sign (a vertical line) could be placed under the letter (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 concerning the representation of the sounds / s / and / e / at the beginning of a word. The Arabic-based alphabet was used until 1930.

Poems by Sh. Babich

For the first time in the Academic Center, Latinization was discussed in June 1924, and the first draft of an alphabet using the Latin script was created later that year in October.[8] This draft was later modified with the following suggestions for letters:[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 to align with Yanalif, and on 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, as was the digraph ьj in 1938. On March 3, 1939 the official Latin alphabet of the Bashkir language was [7] After the reform of 1938-1939, the Bashkir Latinized alphabet had this form.

Latin
A a
B ʙ
V v
G g
Ƣ ƣ
D d
Đ đ
E e
Ƶ ƶ
Z z
I i
J j
K k
Q q
L l
M m
N n
Ꞑ ꞑ
O o
Ө ө
P p
R r
S s
T t
U u
Y y
F f
X x
H h
C c
Ş ş
Ь ь
Ә ә