Tat language (Caucasus)

The Tats are an indigenous Iranian people in the Caucasus^[9][10] who trace their origin to the Sassanid-period migrants from Iran (ca. fifth century AD).^[11]

Tat is endangered,^[12][13] classified as "severely endangered" by UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.^[14] Most scholars divide Tat into two primary varieties: Jewish and Muslim, with religious differences correlating with linguistic differences.^[15][7]

Another, almost extinct, variety of Tat is spoken by Christians of Armenian origin, who are referred to as Armeno-Tats.

Caucasian Tat is classified within the Southwestern Iranian branch of the Western Iranian languages. Within this specific sub-branch, Tati shares a close genetic relationship with Persian.^[16]

Vladimir Minorsky mentions in the first edition of Encyclopaedia of Islam that similar to most Persian dialects, Tati is not very regular in its characteristics, and occupies a position between modern Persian and the Caspian dialects.^[18] According to him, The Great Russian Encyclopedia of 1901 gives the number of Tati speakers in 1901 as 135,000.^[18] In the 1930s, Minorsky estimated the number of Tati speakers to be 90,000 and the decrease to be the result of gradual Turkicization.^[18]

According to the 1989 Soviet census, 30,000 Tats lived in the Soviet Union, of which 10,000 were in Azerbaijan.^[15] Not all likely speak Tati, and this does not include the more rural locations that were not reached by the census. It is vital to stress that the Tats are one of the most assimilated of Azerbaijan’s ethnic groups. This is particularly true for urban Tats. All of this makes it difficult to identify the true number of the Tat ethnic group.^[20]

The adults in most of the mountain and foothill communities reported they use Tat as their main language of interaction. They speak Tat with each other, but speak Azerbaijani with their children so that they will learn the language before beginning school. If the wife in the family is non-Tat speaking, however, the family is most likely to use Azerbaijani in the home. In the villages of Lahıc and Zǝyvǝ, women who marry in are reported to learn Tat.^[15]

Research has demonstrated that the word “Tat” does not have an ethnic origin. This is the term the Turks used to denote the settled Iranian-speaking population of Azerbaijan. This is proven by the names some groups of the Tat population have given themselves. For example, the residents of the Apsheron settlements of Balakhany and Surakhany call themselves Pars, and those of the settlement of Lagich in the Ismailly district the Lohudj. It must be mentioned that in the 19th century, cattle herders called the seasonal workers from southern Azerbaijan Tat, although they were ethnic Turks.^[20]

The following information is of the dialect of Apsheron:^[22]

Tat was not written until 1935. Efforts are being made at preservation. "Since 1996, the Azerbaijani government has provided money for the development of minority languages, including Tat. Haciyev (personal communication) reports that Tat classes have been started in several schools in the Quba region using an alphabet based on the current Azerbaijani Latin alphabet."^[15]

• Azerbaijan
• Russia
• Languages of Azerbaijan
• Judeo-Tat
• Tat people (Iran)
• Tati language (Iran)
• Tat alphabet