İske imlâ is a variant of the Arabic script, used for the Tatar language

Tatar language

The Tatar language , or more specifically Kazan Tatar, is a Turkic language spoken by the Tatars of historical Kazan Khanate, including modern Tatarstan and Bashkiria...

 before 1920 and the Old Tatar language

Old Tatar language

Old Tatar language was a literary language used among the Muslim Tatars from the Middle Ages till the 19th century....

. This alphabet can be referred to as old only to contrast it with Yaña imlâ

Yaña imlâ

Yaña imlâ was a modified variant of Arabic script that was in use for the Tatar language in 1920–1927. The orthographical reform modified İske imlâ, abolishing excess Arabic letters, adding letters for short vowels e, ı, ö, o. Some diacritic, that looked like comma was used to designate the vowel...

.

Additional characters that could not be found in Arabic and Persian

Perso-Arabic script

The Persian or Perso-Arabic alphabet is a writing system based on the Arabic script. Originally used exclusively for the Arabic language, the Arabic alphabet was adapted to the Persian language, adding four letters: , , , and . Many languages which use the Perso-Arabic script add other letters...

 were borrowed from the Chagatai language

Chagatai language

The Chagatai language is an extinct Turkic language which was once widely spoken in Central Asia, and remained the shared literary language there until the early twentieth century...

. The final alphabet was reformed by Qayum Nasiri in the 1870s. In 1920, it was replaced by the Yaña imlâ

Yaña imlâ

Yaña imlâ was a modified variant of Arabic script that was in use for the Tatar language in 1920–1927. The orthographical reform modified İske imlâ, abolishing excess Arabic letters, adding letters for short vowels e, ı, ö, o. Some diacritic, that looked like comma was used to designate the vowel...

 (which was not an Abjad

Abjad

An abjad is a type of writing system in which each symbol always or usually stands for a consonant; the reader must supply the appropriate vowel....

, but derived from the same source).

This alphabet is currently used by Chinese Tatars

Chinese Tatars

The Chinese Tatars form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China.Their ancestors are Volga Tatar tradesmen who settled mostly in Xinjiang....

, who speak an archaic Tatar language

Tatar language

The Tatar language , or more specifically Kazan Tatar, is a Turkic language spoken by the Tatars of historical Kazan Khanate, including modern Tatarstan and Bashkiria...

.

Description

Use of the Arabic script for Tatar was linked to Pan Islam and anti Sovietism, with the old traditional class promoting Arabic script in opposition to the Soviets.

Based on the standard Arabic alphabet, İske imlâ reflected all vowels in the beginning and end of a word, and back vowels in the middle of a word with letters, but front vowels in the middle of a word, as in most Arabic alphabets, were optionally reflected using harakat

Harakat

The Arabic script has numerous diacritics, including ijam ⟨⟩ , and tashkil ⟨⟩...

 (diacritics on top of or below consonants). Just as in standard Arabic orthography, letters Alif

Aleph

* Aleph or Alef is the first letter of the Semitic abjads descended from Proto-Canaanite, Arabic alphabet, Phoenician alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Syriac alphabet-People:*Aleph , an Italo disco artist and alias of Dave Rodgers...

, , and Waw were used to represent all vowels in the beginning and end of a word, and back vowels in the middle of a word, with various harakat on top or below them, and in these cases the letters actually denoted a vowel. The same harakat that combined with the afore-mentioned letters to make vowels were used in the middle of a word on top of or below a consonant to represent a front vowel. However, the following pairs/triplets of Tatar vowels were represented by the same harakat, because Arabic language only uses 3 of them to represent vowels which can be either back or front depending on whether they are applied to Alif

Aleph

* Aleph or Alef is the first letter of the Semitic abjads descended from Proto-Canaanite, Arabic alphabet, Phoenician alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Syriac alphabet-People:*Aleph , an Italo disco artist and alias of Dave Rodgers...

, , and Waw or another letter (plus Alif madda represents a [ʔæː] in the beginning of a word):
ı

I

I is the ninth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:In Semitic, the letter may have originated in a hieroglyph for an arm that represented a voiced pharyngeal fricative in Egyptian, but was reassigned to by Semites, because their word for "arm" began with that sound...

, e

E

E is the fifth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used letter in the Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Latin, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish languages.-History:...

, í and i were represented with kasra, whereas ö

Ö

"Ö", or "ö", is a character used in several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter O with umlaut to denote the front vowels or . In languages without umlaut, the character is also used as a "O with diaeresis" to denote a syllable break, wherein its pronunciation remains an unmodified .- O-Umlaut...

 and ü

Ü

Ü, or ü, is a character which can be either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter U with an umlaut or a diaeresis...

 were represented with damma. O and U also looked the same, but being back vowels, they were represented with the help of Alif

Aleph

* Aleph or Alef is the first letter of the Semitic abjads descended from Proto-Canaanite, Arabic alphabet, Phoenician alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Syriac alphabet-People:*Aleph , an Italo disco artist and alias of Dave Rodgers...

, and Waw, and thus were distinct from ö and ü. Fatha represented only one vowel. While the user had to make a conversion of writing into pronunciation, somewhat akin to English, this allowed for more similar orthography between Turkic languages, because words looked more similar even when vowels vary, such as in cases of variations like ö to ü, o to u, or e to i.

Yaña imlâ added separate letters for vowels, and thus broke out with standard Arabic alphabets, but spelling followed no standard convention. During that period, the Tatar language had no borrowed vowels and consonates, so Arab loanwords were pronounced using the closest Tatar consonants (see table). European and Russian

Russian language

Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

 loanword

Loanword

A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...

s were pronounced according to how they could be written with the İske imlâ, so that, for example, "equator

Equator

An equator is the intersection of a sphere's surface with the plane perpendicular to the sphere's axis of rotation and containing the sphere's center of mass....

" was spelled "ikwatur".

The alphabet

	name	Initial	Medial	Final	Stand-alone	modern Latin Tatar alphabet Tatar alphabet Two scripts are currently used for the Tatar language: Cyrillic and Latin.-Introduction:While a Tatar version of the Latin alphabet called Jaŋalif had been in use during the 1930s, there is controversy in the matter of Latin-based Tatar alphabet for İdel-Ural Tatar. One dimension of the...	modern Cyrillic Tatar alphabet	Notes
1	älif	آ	ﺎ	ﺎ	آ	a	а
2	älif	ﺍ	ﺍ	ﺎ	ﺍ	ä	ә
3	bi	ﺑ	ﺒ	ﺐ	ﺏ	b	б
4	pi	ﭘ	ﭙ	ﭗ	ﭖ	p	п
5	ti	ﺗ	ﺘ	ﺖ	ﺕ	t	т
6	si	ﺛ	ﺜ	ﺚ	ﺙ	s	с	in Bashkir language
7	cim	ﺟ	ﺠ	ﺞ	ﺝ	c	җ
8	çi	ﭼ	ﭽ	ﭻ	ﭺ	ç	ч
9	xi	ﺣ	ﺤ	ﺢ	ﺡ	x	х
10	xı	ﺧ	ﺨ	ﺦ	ﺥ	x	х
11	däl	ﺩ	ﺪ	ﺪ	ﺩ	d	д
12	zäl	ﺫ	ﺬ	ﺬ	ﺫ	z	з	in Bashkir language and some dialects
13	ra	ﺭ	ﺮ	ﺮ	ﺭ	r	р
14	zi	ﺯ	ﺰ	ﺰ	ﺯ	z	з
15	jé	ﮊ	ﮋ	ﮋ	ﮊ	j	ж
16	sin, sen	ﺳ	ﺴ	ﺲ	ﺱ	s	с
17	şın	ﺷ	ﺸ	ﺶ	ﺵ	ş	ш
18	sad	ﺻ	ﺼ	ﺺ	ﺹ	s	с
19	dad, z’ad	ﺿ	ﻀ	ﺾ	ﺽ	d, z	д, з
20	tí	ﻃ	ﻄ	ﻂ	ﻁ	t	т
21	zí	ﻇ	ﻈ	ﻆ	ﻅ	z	з
22	ğäyn	ﻋ	ﻌ	ﻊ	ﻉ	ğ	г(ъ)	alternative Cyrillic transcription: ғ
23	ğayn	ﻏ	ﻐ	ﻎ	ﻍ	ğ	г(ъ)	alternative Cyrillic transcription: ғ
24	fi	ﻓ	ﻔ	ﻒ	ﻑ	f	ф
25	qaf	ﻗ	ﻘ	ﻖ	ﻕ	q	к(ъ)	alternative Cyrillic transcription: қ
26	kaf	ﻛ	ﻜ	ﻚ	ﮎ	k	к
27	gaf	ﮔ	ﮕ	ﮓ	ﮒ	g	г
28	eñ					ñ	ң	Initial form was never used due phonetic reasons
29	läm	ﻟ	ﻠ	ﻞ	ﻝ	l	л
30	mim	ﻣ	ﻤ	ﻢ	ﻡ	m	м
31	nün	ﻧ	ﻨ	ﻦ	ﻥ	n	н
32	ha	ﻫ	ﻬ	ﻪ	ﻩ	h	һ
33	waw	ﻭ	ﻮ	ﻮ	ﻭ	w, u, o	в, у, о	alternative Cyrillic transcription: ў, у, о
34	vaw					v	в	corresponds to в in Bashkir alphabet
35	ya	ﻳ	ﻴ	ﻰ	ﻯ	y, í, i	й, и, ый