If you know anything about indigenous languages in Russia, you’ll know that most of them aren’t even remotely related to Russian. While many now have significant amounts of Russian loanwords, for obvious reasons, most come from unrelated language families, such as Turkic, Uralic, Mongolic, Northwest Caucasian, and Northeast Caucasian. But there are indeed indigenous languages that are related to Russian as well—and not just Slavic languages like Ukrainian. There are also indigenous Iranian languages in Russia, which, believe it are not, are related to Russian.
One such language is Tat, which still has around 28,000 speakers today, although it’s difficult to ascertain the precise figure. Tat is spoken in both the Republic of Dagestan in the southernmost tip of Russia’s North Caucasus region as well as in Azerbaijan, and in both countries, most Tat speakers are bilingual in their country’s respective lingua franca. This puts enormous pressure on the Tat language, as speakers gradually shift away from it. That’s why UNESCO has classified Tat as “severely endangered.” At TranslationServices.com, we hate the idea of languages—unique cultures, unique identities—dying out. So, we’re proud to have put together a Tat translation team.
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Some details about Tat, an Iranian language in Azerbaijan and Russia
The Tat people are assumed to have migrated to modern-day Dagestan and Azerbaijan from Iran in the 5th century, bringing their Iranian language with them to the Caucasus. As an Indo–European language, Tat is related to Russian, although the two languages are so divergent that only a linguist could spot the similarities. The language can be written in either the Cyrillic or Latin alphabets, with Russian Tats often using the Cyrillic script and Azerbaijani Tats using the Latin alphabet.
Tat is related to Persian, the national language of Iran, but centuries of contact with Caucasian languages, Azeri, and Russian have dramatically changed the language. Tat has no case distinctions, which differentiates it significantly from most of the languages that surround it, and to express possession, Tat can mark nouns with pronominal affixes. Tat also has the tendency to use the progressive verbal aspect instead of the present indicative. The language has borrowed a high number of words from Azeri, given the close contact Tat speakers have had with Azerbaijani people over the centuries.
Let us translate Tat to your specifications.
Tat is a unique language, given its various linguistic differences from the other languages in the Caucasus. Our Tat translators are passionate about translating to and from their language, however, so you can rely on quality every time. This means we can provide Tat-to-English translation for all sorts of content, from historical documents to traditional folklore and stories, which can help teach outsiders about the Tat culture and language. It also means we can provide English-to-Tat translation services for a range of materials—everything from research surveys to books, websites, apps, poems, and more—which is a great way to encourage more use of the Tat language among speakers and learners.
Our Tat translation services are ready for you to take advantage of, so message us whenever you’re ready.