Common Turkic Alphabet

The term Common Turkic Alphabet can refer to two different systems using the Latin alphabet to write various Turkic languages. The old system was developed in the Soviet Union and used in the 1930s; the current system is an alphabet with 34 letters recognized by the Turkic Council.^[1] Its letters are as follows:

• Long forms of vowels are shown with a circumflex (in Turkish): Â, Ê, Î, Ô, Û.

Grapheme-Phoneme correspondences

The orthographies of Turkic languages are largely phonetic, meaning that the pronunciation of a word can usually be determined from its spelling. For example, Turkish orthography is highly regular and a word's pronunciation can almost always be determined by its spelling. This rule excludes recent loanwords such as proper names. The letters representing vowel sounds in Turkic languages are, in alphabetical order, ⟨a⟩, ⟨ä⟩ and ⟨e⟩, ⟨ı⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨ö⟩, ⟨u⟩, ⟨ü⟩.^[2]

• Semi-vowels (Glottal Letters) are shown with a breve (or caron in Chuvash): Ă, Ĕ, Ĭ, Ŏ, Ŭ.
• The /θ/ phoneme (Latin Š or Ť, Arabic ث, Cyrillic Ҫ) is only present in the Bashkir language.
• The /ð/ phoneme (Latin Ž or Ď, Arabic ذ, Cyrillic Ҙ) is only present in the Bashkir language.
• Ä is sometimes written as Əə or Эə (Latin glyphs).^[3][4][5]
• The phonemes /t͡s/ (Ț) and /d͡z/ (Ḑ) are represented in the Lipka Tatars Belarusian Arabic alphabet.^[6][7][8]
• Some handwritten letters have variant forms. For example: Čč=Jj, Ķķ=Ⱪⱪ, and Ḩḩ=Ⱨⱨ.^[9]
• ٯ = ق (representing /q/) or ڨ (representing /ɢ/).

Non-Turkic (Slavic or Arabic) Letters

Examples of Latin Turkic alphabets 1922-1940

• Ţ (T-cedilla, minuscule: ţ) is a letter originating as part of the Romanian alphabet, used to represent the Romanian and Moldovan phoneme /t͡s/, the voiceless alveolar affricate (like ts in bolts).^[10] It is written as the letter T with a small comma below, and it has both lower-case and the upper-case variants. It is also a part of the Gagauz alphabet and the Livonian alphabet.^[11] The letter corresponds to Cyrillic Tse (Ц) in the romanisation of Cyrillic Turkic alphabets.
• Ḑ (D-cedilla, minuscule: ḑ) is a letter originating as part of the old Romanian alphabet, used to represent the old Romanian and Moldovan sound /d͡z/, the voiced alveolar affricate.^[12] It is written as the letter D with a small comma below, and it has both lower-case and the upper-case variants. It is also a part of the Livonian alphabet. The letter corresponds to Cyrillic Dze (Ӡ) in the romanisation of Cyrillic Turkic alphabets.
• Ṡ (ص), Ż (ظ), Ṫ (ط) and Ḋ (ض) are only used for Arabic transcriptions; the emphatic consonants they represent do not exist in Turkic languages. For example: Ramaḋan, Kaḋı, Kaḋa, Ḋarb, Ḋarbe, Ṡahib, Ṡabun, Huṡuṡ, Arḋ, Ṡabr, etc.
• The Latin letter Ë (E-umlaut) has no relation to the Cyrillic letter Ё (Yo). The Latin letter Ë represents the sound sequence /je/ and thus corresponds to the Cyrillic letter Є in Ukrainian or Е in Russian.

In the USSR

The Uniform Turkic Alphabet was a Latin alphabet used by non-Slavic peoples of the USSR in the 1930s. The alphabet used letters from Jaꞑalif as it was also a part of the uniform alphabet. The uniform alphabet utilized Latin letters, excluding "w". Some additional letters were also introduced into the alphabet.

• Ꞑꞑ : ( )

Bibliography

• Heinz F. Wendt: Fischer Lexikon Sprachen, 1961 (ISBN 3-596-24561-3)
• Bilal N. Şimşir: Türk Yazi Devrimi, Ankara 1992, S. 119
• Helmut Glück (Hrsg.): Metzler Lexikon Sprache, 2005 [S. 417] (ISBN 3-476-02056-8)
• Proceedings of the International Symposium of Contemporary Turkish Alphabet (Milletlerarası Çağdaş Türk Alfabeleri Sempozyumu Bildirisi), 1991, İstanbul, M.Ü. Türkiyat Araştırmaları Enstitüsü, 1992 .
• Zentrum für Türkeistudien, Essen: Aktuelle Situation in den Turkrepubliken – Innenpolitik, Sicherheitspolitik, Wirtschaft, Umwelt, Bevölkerung (Working Paper 14, 1994)
• FSP Entwicklungssoziologie, Bielefeld: Formen der Transvergesellschaftung als gegenläufige Prozesse zur Nationsbildung in Usbekistan (Working Paper 334, 2000)
• Der Fischer Welt Almanach '94 – Zahlen, Daten, Fakten, 1993 (S. 846)
• Mehmet Tütüncü: Alphabets for the turkic languages
• Herbert W. Duda: Die neue türkische Lateinschrift. I. Historisches. In: Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 1929, Spalten 441–453. – II. Linguistisches. In: Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 1930, Spalten 399–413.
• F.H. Weißbach: Die türkische Lateinschrift. In: Archiv für Schreib- und Buchwesen 1930, S. 125–138.
• Yakovlev N.F. "Development and succeeding problems in Latinizing alphabets", No 2, 1936, pp. 25–38 (In Russian) Н.Ф. Революция и письменность
• Луначарский. Латинизация русской письменности
• Статья «Новый алфавит» в Литературной энциклопедии
• Nevzat Özkan, Gagavuz Türkçesi Grameri, Türk Dil Kurumu Yayınları, 1996
• Jaꞑalif/Яңалиф". Tatar Encyclopedia. (2002). Kazan: Tatarstan Republic Academy of Sciences Institution of the Tatar Encyclopaedia
• Закиев. Тюрко-татарское письмо. История, состояние, перспективы. Москва, "Инсан", 2005
• G.A Gaydarci, E.K Koltsa, L.A.Pokrovskaya B.P.Tukan, Gagauz Türkçesinin Sözlüğü, TC Kültür Bakanlığı Yayınları
• Nevzat Özkan, Gagauz Destanları, Türk Dil Kurumu Yayınları
• Prof. Dr. Mustafa Argunşah-Âdem Terzi-Abdullah Durkun, Gagauz Türkçesi Araştırmaları Bilgi Şöleni, Türk Dil Kurumu Yayınları
• Gagauzum Bucaktır Yerim, Tatura Anamut Ocak Yayınları
• Yakovlev N.F. "Development and succeeding problems in Latinizing alphabets", "Revolution and script" No 2, 1936, pp. 25–38 (In Russian) Н.Ф. ЯКОВЛЕВ: «О развитии и очередных проблемах латинизации алфавитов», Революция и письменность, № 2, 1936, стр. 25–38
• Minglang Zhou (2003). Multilingualism in China: the politics of writing reforms for minority languages, 1949-2002. Volume 89 of Contributions to the sociology of language (illustrated ed.). Published Walter de Gruyter. p. 174. ISBN 3-11-017896-6. Retrieved 2011-01-01.

References

External links

• Kitabs, the unique highlight of the Belarusian language

See also

• Latinisation (USSR)