Gagauz language
Spoken in
- Altaic languages ( disputed) Turkic languages Oghusische languages Westoghusisch Gagauz
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Does
Gag
The Gagauz language or Gagauz ( Gagauz dili Gagauz or Gagauzça; former Cyrillic spelling Гагауз дили, Гагаузча ) is the language of Gagauzia, belonging to the Turkic peoples. It is based on a Balkan Turkish dialect and thus belongs to the southwestern Turkish languages in the Turkic languages . Gagauz is now an official language of the autonomous region of Gagauzia in Moldova.
An oral as well as written communication is no problem between speakers of the Gagauz and the Turkey -Turkish, since both languages differ only slightly from each other.
Main distribution
Gagauz is in a southern region of Moldova, the Budschak (see also Gagauzia ), and in the Odessa region, the adjacent southwest tip of Ukraine, spoken. Today alone, the number of Gagauz in Moldova 171,500, the total number is about 250,000. Gagauz residual groups also live in Bulgaria, Romania, the CIS countries, Greece and Turkey.
Naming and alternative designations
The Gagauz language is named after the Gagauz and is generally in Turkey called and considered a dialect of Turkish because of the very close linguistic relationship as " gagausisches Turkish " ( Gagavuz Türkçesi ).
This once living in Bulgaria and on the Balkan population, there are about their origin and history different theories, has been lifted due to their Orthodox Christian religion from other groups of the Turks and Tatars. It is also noteworthy that some Turkish studies have summarized the common languages of the Turks and Tatars in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia under the generic term " Gagauz language". Others refer this preamble is based on the languages of all traditional Christian Turks of the Balkans.
Classification options
Like all languages within the Turkic languages can also classify the Gagauz different. So this language is, for example, in the " Fischer Lexicon languages " (1987) classified as follows:
- Turkic languages western branch Bulgarian group
- Oghusische group Oghusisch - Turkmen
- Bulgarian Oghusisch Gagauz
In contrast, the classified " Metzler Lexikon Sprache " (1993), the Gagauz as:
- Turkic languages Southwest Turkish ( Oghusisch ) Gagauz
Current Classification ( 2006):
- Turkic languages Oghusisch Westoghusisch Gagauz
See also Article Turkic languages .
Alphabets
In the 19th century there were the first publications of a religious nature in this language. For the Greek alphabet was used.
An independent Gagauz written language with a modified Cyrillic alphabet was created in 1957.
In 2000, the Gagauz introduced a new, Latin- Turkish alphabet, the alphabet of the modern Turkey -Turkish is very close with the additional characters ä and ţ ( this for the case of non-Turkish, mostly Romanian words).
- Former Cyril alphabet
- Modern Latin alphabet