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The modern Gagauz alphabet is a 31-letter Latin-based alphabet modelled on the Turkish alphabet and Azerbaijani. It is used to write the Gagauz language.

During its existence, it has functioned on different graphic bases and has been repeatedly reformed. Previously, during Soviet rule, Gagauz's official script was Cyrillic, close to the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet.

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 in the late 19th century. Orientalist Otto Blau claims that one of the first instances of written Gagauz was with plays of Euripides 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.

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, Cyrillic 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, 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 for the Gagauz language. This was subsequently amended in 1996. The official Gagauz alphabet adopted is modelled after the modern Turkish alphabet, with the addition of three letters: ⟨ä⟩ to represent the sound of (as ⟨ə⟩ in Azeri); ⟨ê⟩ to represent the (schwa) sound, which does not exist in Turkish; and ⟨ț⟩ or ⟨ţ⟩ 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 ⟨ğ⟩, 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 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.

References

1. M. Ciachir. Basarabialâ gagauzlarân istoriassi / Chișinău: 1933, p. 133
2. ^ Măcriș, Anatol. Găgăuzii / Bucharest: Editura PACO, 2008, p. 71.
3. Astrid Menz (2022). "chapter 16. Gagauz". In Johanson, Lars; Csató, Éva Á. (eds.). The Turkic Languages (2nd ed.). Routledge. pp. 236–241. ISBN 978-0-415-73856-9.
4. Ciachir Mihail (comp.) (1938). Dicţionar gagauzo (tiurco)-român pentru gagauzii din Basarabia. Chisinau: Tipural Moldovenesc. p. 208.
5. Колца Е. К. (1973). "Орфография гагаузского языка" [Orthography of the Gagauz language]. In Мумаев К.М. (ed.). Орфографии тюрских литературных языков СССР [Orthography of the Turkic literary languages of the USSR] (in Russian). Москва: Наука. pp. 91–103.
6. Parliament Decision No. 1421 of 13 May 1993 "for the passage of the writing of the Gagauz language in the Latin spelling", retrieved 2019-11-03 – via lex.justice.md
7. Parliament Decision No. 816 of 24 April 1996 "on amending and supplementing the Parliament's Decision on the transfer of the Gagauzian writing to the Latin spelling", retrieved 2019-11-03 – via lex.justice.md

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