Gagauz language

Gagauz (Gagauz dili, Gagauzca) also called Gagauz Turkish (Gagauz Türkçäsi) is a Turkic language spoken by the ethnic Gagauz people of Moldova, Ukraine, Russia, and Turkey, and it is the official language of the Autonomous Region of Gagauzia in Moldova. Gagauz belongs to the Oghuz branch of Turkic languages, alongside Azeri, Turkmen, Crimean Tatar, and Turkish. Gagauz has two dialects, Bulgar Gagauzi and Maritime Gagauzi. Gagauz is a distinct language from Balkan Gagauz Turkish.

Alphabet

It appears that the first alphabet to be used for the language was the Greek alphabet in the late 19th century. For example, orientalist Otto Blau claims that plays of Euripides had been translated into the Gagauz language and had been written with Greek letters.

Beginning in 1957, Cyrillic was used up until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Gagauz currently uses a Latin-based alphabet, modelled after the modern Turkish alphabet, with the addition of three letters: ⟨ä⟩ to represent the sound of [æ] (as ⟨ə⟩ in Azeri; Turkish simply uses ⟨e⟩), ⟨ê⟩ to represent the sound of ə (like Romanian ă) and ⟨ț⟩ or ⟨ţ⟩ to represent the sound [ts] (like Romanian).