Tatar is a Turkic language spoken by Tatars living in Russian Federation, mainly in Tatarstan or Siberia. There are also some speakers in neiboring countries like Ukraine, Uzbekstan, China, Finland, and etc. Total speaker worldwide could be as many as 7 million.

Tatar is one of two official languages of Tatarstan Republic of Russian Fedration, along with Russian. Its written form, however is just based on the Cyrillic letters, which is of Russian, and some additional letters. Due to the language policies shifts in recent decades, Tatar is losing the base of its speakers and is one of endangered languages in or out of Tatarstan Republic.

Tatar has two major dialects, one is called central or middle that is mainly used in Tatarstan and the other called "Mishar" meaning "western" is used among Tatar people in Finland. The two dialects have several subvisions and there are some minor variety of it as well.

IU is currently not offering Tatar courses but CeLT has some learning material on our recording archive.