Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: The purpose of this article is to summarize information about the history of the formation and development of the Gagauz writing system. The object of study is written Gagauz texts of different periods of history. The subject of the research is the formation and development of the Gagauz writing system variants. The main research method is historical and descriptive. Methods of etymological, comparative and sociolinguistic analysis were also used. The following conclusions are the result of the historical and linguistic research. The Gagauz writing system went through three stages of history: until 1957, the writers adapted the Cyrillic alphabet, which was used in the languages of neighbors: Bulgarians, Russians, Ukrainians, Moldovans, or the Latin alphabet, which was used by the Romanians, and since 1928, the Turks in their languages. At the second stage (1957–1993), the officially adopted Cyrillic alphabet was used; at the present stage, since 1993, the officially accepted alphabet based on the Latin alphabet is used. The variability of writing system has led to the fact that today the Gagauz people officially use the Latin alphabet, but unofficial texts are created both in the Latin alphabet and in the Cyrillic alphabet. Written speech is the most important ethnopolitical factor that contributed to an increase in the self-identity of the Gagauz people. The literary Gagauz language was created on the basis of the central (Comrat-Ceadirlung) dialect. The Gagauz people of the Danube regions of the Odessa region (Ukraine) are carriers of the southern (Vulcanesti) dialect, which, better than the literary language, retained the proper Turkic features in oral speech.
Source: Мова
Author: Іван Георгійович НЄНОВ
Institution: Odessa National Maritime University
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W3084123779