page_title: Tatar language
section_title: Vowels
hierarchical_section_title: Tatar language / Phonology / Vowels
caption_attribution_description: English: Tatar vowel formants F1 and F2 Русский: Форманты F1 и F2 татарских гласных
context_page_description: The Tatar language is a Turkic language spoken by Tatars mainly located in modern Tatarstan, as well as Siberia. It should not be confused with the Crimean Tatar or Siberian Tatar which are closely related but belong to different subgroups of the Kipchak languages.
context_section_description: There exist several interpretations of the Tatar vowel phonemic inventory. In total Tatar has nine or ten native vowels, and three or four loaned vowels (mainly in Russian loanwords).
  According to Baskakov (1988) Tatar has only two vowel heights, high and low. There are two low vowels, front and back, while there are eight high vowels: front and back, round (R+) and unround (R-), normal and short (or reduced).
  Poppe (1963) proposed a similar yet slightly different scheme with a third, higher mid, height, and with nine vowels.
  According to Makhmutova (1969) Tatar has three vowel heights: high, mid and low, and four tongue positions: front, front-central, front-back and back.
  The mid back unrounded vowel ''ë is usually transcribed as ı, though it differs from the corresponding Turkish vowel.
  The tenth vowel ï is realized as the diphthong ëy (IPA: [ɯɪ]), which only occurs word-finally, but it has been argued to be an independent phoneme.
  Phonetically, the native vowels are approximately thus (with the Cyrillic letters and the usual Latin romanization in angle brackets):
  In polysyllabic words, the front-back distinction is lost in reduced vowels: all become mid-central. The mid reduced vowels in an unstressed position are frequently elided, as in кеше keşe [kĕˈʃĕ] > [kʃĕ] 'person', or кышы qışı [qɤ̆ˈʃɤ̆] > [qʃɤ̆] '(his) winter'. Low back /ɑ/ is rounded [ɒ] in the first syllable and after [ɒ], but not in the last, as in бала bala [bɒˈlɑ] 'child', балаларга balalarğa [bɒlɒlɒrˈʁɑ] 'to children'. In Russian loans there are also [ɨ], [ɛ], [ɔ], and [ä], written the same as the native vowels: ы, е/э, о, а respectively.
caption: Tatar vowel formants F1 and F2
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