Efficacy Of Abdullah Tukay On Tatar Language

The word Tatarian is encountered in various historical sources such a s Chinese sources, Orkhon Inscriptions, and Divanu Lugati’t-Turk of Mahmud al Kashgari. Currently, this naming is used to define a nation by the Kazan and Kirim Tatars and the language of these societies is called the Tatarian language. Tatar Turkish, which is a member of Kipchak branch of the North-Eastern Turkish, has entered a transformation process which has foundations in the second half of the 18th century. During this transformation, through the end of the 19th century, a new literature started for the Tatars, and the transformation reached its peak in the 20thcentury. One of the significant names who had influence in the evolution of the Tatarian language and formalized the language in the modern form is a poet, an author, and a philosopher, Abdullah Tukay. The life of Tukay, who is the national poet of Kazan Tatars, consist of two eras. The languages of poems during these two eras in which Tukay produced his literary work have extremely different characters. Two different senses of language can be defined for his poems that would represents the two eras of his life. Tukay, who was influenced by the Istanbul dialect during the years 1905-1907 -Cayik (Uralsk) era- which coincides first years of his literature life, arrived to Kazan in 1907 and leaned towards the local dialect with reasons such as the effect of the literary environment and Tatar nationalism. He carried this movement, which started with Shihabetdin Marjani, to its paramount and helped Tatar spoken language to be a literary language. This can evidently be seen in the poems considered.

Keywords

Spoken language, Tatar language, Abdullah Tukay, transformation, literary language