The modern Gagauz alphabet is a 31-letter Latin-based alphabet modelled on the

Turkish alphabet The Turkish alphabet ( tr, ) 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 requirem ...

. Previously, during

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

rule, Gagauz's official script was Cyrillic. 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 BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as w ...

in the late 19th century.M. Ciachir. Basarabialâ gagauzlarân istoriassi / Chișinău: 1933, p. 133Măcriș, Anatol. ''Găgăuzii'' / Bucharest: Editura PACO, 2008, p. 71. The current 31-letter Gagauz alphabet, used for the

Gagauz language Gagauz (, ) 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, alongs ...

, is a Latin-based alphabet modelled after the Turkish and

Azerbaijani Azerbaijani may refer to: * Something of, or related to Azerbaijan * Azerbaijanis * Azerbaijani language See also * Azerbaijan (disambiguation) * Azeri (disambiguation) * Azerbaijani cuisine * Culture of Azerbaijan The culture of Azerbaijan ...

History

It appears that the first alphabet to be used for the language was the

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

in the late 19th century. For example, orientalist

Otto Blau Otto is a masculine German given name and a surname. It originates as an Old High German short form (variants ''Audo'', ''Odo'', ''Udo'') of Germanic names beginning in ''aud-'', an element meaning "wealth, prosperity". The name is recorded fro ...

claims that plays of

Euripides Euripides (; grc, Εὐριπίδης, Eurīpídēs, ; ) was a 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 ...

had been translated into the Gagauz language and had been written with Greek letters. Beginning in 1957, Cyrillic was used until 1993. On 13 May 1993, the parliament of the Republic of Moldova passed a decision providing for the official adoption of the

Latin-based alphabet A Latin-script alphabet (Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet) is an alphabet that uses letters of the Latin script. The 21-letter archaic Latin alphabet and the 23-letter classical Latin alphabet belong to the oldest of this group. The 26-letter ...

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 Azerbaijanis (; az, Azərbaycanlılar, ), Azeris ( az, Azərilər, ), or Azerbaijani Turks ( az, Azərbaycan Türkləri, ) are a Turkic people living mainly in northwestern Iran and the Republic of Azerbaijan. They are the second-most numer ...

), to represent the (schwa) sound, which does not exist in Turkish, and or to represent the sound as in

Romanian Romanian may refer to: *anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania **Romanians, an ethnic group **Romanian language, a Romance language *** Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language **Romanian cuisine, traditiona ...

. 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.

Latin alphabet

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 The Tatars ()

References

Latin alphabets Gagauz language Alphabets used by Turkic languages Moldovan culture