The modern Gagauz alphabet is a 31-letter

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

-based alphabet modelled on the

Turkish alphabet The Turkish alphabet () is a Latin-script alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, seven of which ( Ç, Ğ, I, İ, Ö, Ş and Ü) have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements o ...

and Azerbaijani. It is used to write the

Gagauz language Gagauz (; or ) is a Turkic language spoken by the Gagauz people of Moldova, Ukraine, Russia and Turkey and it is an official language of the Autonomous Region of Gagauzia in Moldova. Gagauz belongs to the Oghuz branch of Turkic languages, ...

. During its existence, it has functioned on different graphic bases and has been repeatedly reformed. Previously, during

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

rule, Gagauz's official script was

Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...

, close to the

Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet The Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet is a Cyrillic alphabet designed for the Romanian language spoken in the Soviet Union ( Moldovan) and was in official use from 1924 to 1932 and 1938 to 1989 (and still in use today in the breakaway Moldovan region ...

. There are 3 stages in the history of Gagauz writing: * before 1957 – early attempts to create writing; * 1957–1993 – writing based on the Cyrillic alphabet; * since 1993 – modern writing based on the Latin alphabet.

History

Early experiences

Gagauz was first written in

Greek letters The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as we ...

in the late 19th century.M. Ciachir. Basarabialâ gagauzlarân istoriassi / Chișinău: 1933, p. 133Măcriș, Anatol. ''Găgăuzii'' / Bucharest: Editura PACO, 2008, p. 71. Orientalist Otto Blau claims that one of the first instances of written Gagauz was with plays of

Euripides Euripides () was a Greek tragedy, tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to ...

being translated into the Gagauz language and written with Greek letters. The first specimens of Gagauz were collected by the Russian ethnographer Valentin Moshkov, who collected folklore texts from the Gagauz in Bessarabia, published in 1904. Until that time, up to the establishment of Gagauz as one of the official languages of the Soviet Union in 1957, the priest Mihail Ciachir was the only native speaker to attempt to write in Gagauz. His products were, for the most part, translations of religious texts but were also a history of the Gagauz people, which he first wrote in Romanian and subsequently translated into Gagauz. From 1909 to 1914, Ciachir wrote Gagauz in Cyrillic script but from 1932 to 1938, he wrote in Latin script. The alphabet of these editions contained the letters: a, â, ă, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, î, j, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, ş, t, ţ, u, v, ƶ, as well as di-, tri- and tetragraphs: aa, ââ, ee, ea, eaea, ii, ia, îa, ăă, io, ioio, iu, iuiu, oo, uu, ce, cea, ci, cia, cio, ciu, dj

Cyrillic alphabet

Beginning in 1957,

was used until 1993. The Gagauz alphabet based on the Cyrillic alphabet was introduced by a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Moldavian SSR dated July 30, 1957. Initially, the Gagauz alphabet was compiled on the basis of the Russian alphabet without additional letters for individual Gagauz sounds, which were indicated by digraphs: Аь аь, Оь оь, Уь уь. In December of the same year, instead of digraphs, three additional letters were added to the Gagauz alphabet: Ӓ ä, Ӧ ö, Ӱ ÿ. In 1968, the letter Ӂ ӂ was added to the Gagauz alphabet. As a result, the Gagauz Cyrillic alphabet took the following form: The letters ''Ё ё, Щ щ, Ъ, ъ, Ь, ь, Ю ю, Я я'' were used only in borrowings from the Russian language.

Latin alphabet

On 13 May 1993, the parliament of the Republic of Moldova passed a decision providing for the official adoption of a

Latin-script alphabet A Latin-script alphabet (Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet) is an alphabet that uses Letter (alphabet), letters of the Latin script. The 21-letter archaic Latin alphabet and the 23-letter classical Latin alphabet belong to the oldest of this gr ...

for the Gagauz language. This was subsequently amended in 1996. The official Gagauz alphabet adopted is modelled after the modern

, with the addition of three letters: to represent the sound of (as in Azeri); to represent the (schwa) sound, which does not exist in Turkish; and or to represent the sound as in Romanian. On the other hand, unlike Crimean Tatar, Turkish, and some other Turkic languages, Gagauz does not have the letter , which had become completely silent in the Gagauz language. Note that cedillas should be used instead of commas for Ç, Ş, and Ţ for consistency, since C with comma does not exist in Romanian and Turkish uses cedillas for Ç and Ş, although Ț is often seen. In their standard order, the letters of the Gagauz alphabet are: : A, Ä, B, C, Ç, D, E, Ê, F, G, H, I, İ, J, K, L, M, N, O, Ö, P, R, S, Ş, T, Ţ, U, Ü, V, Y, Z. Note that dotted and

dotless I I, or ı, called dotless i, is a letter used in the Latin-script alphabets of Azerbaijani, Crimean Tatar, Gagauz, Kazakh, Tatar and Turkish. It commonly represents the close back unrounded vowel , except in Kazakh where it represents the ...

are separate letters, each with its own uppercase and lowercase form. ''I'' is the capital form of ''ı'', and ''İ'' is the capital form of ''i''. The Gagauz alphabet has no q, w or x. Instead, those characters are transliterated into Gagauz as k, v and ks, respectively. {, style="font-size:1.4em; border-color:#000000; border-width:1px; border-style:solid; border-collapse:collapse; background-color:#F8F8EF" , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , A a , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , Ä ä , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , B b , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , C c , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , Ç ç , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , D d , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , E e , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , Ê ê , - , style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , �, style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , �~ɛ, style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , , style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , ʒ, style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , ʃ, style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , , style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , , style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , �, - , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , F f , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , G g , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , H h , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , I ı , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , İ i , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , J j , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , K k , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , L l , - , style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , , style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , , ɟ, style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , , h~ħ, style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , �~ɨ, style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , , style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , �, style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , , c, style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , , ʎ, - , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , M m , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , N n , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , O o , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , Ö ö , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , P p , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , R r , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , S s , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , Ş ş , - , style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , , style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , , ɲ, style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , , style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , �, style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , , style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , , style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , , style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , �, - , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , T t , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , Ţ ţ , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , U u , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , Ü ü , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , V v , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , Y y , style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , Z z , , - , style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , , style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , s, style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em;; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , , style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , , style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , , vʲ, style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , , style="font-size:0.8em; width:1em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" , ,

References

Latin alphabets Gagauz language Alphabets used by Turkic languages Culture of Moldova