Re: Comma below, cedilla, and Gagauz

From: Herman Ranes (herman@iet.hist.no)
Date: Tue Oct 01 2002 - 12:27:37 EDT

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    The core area for written Gagauz is the Gagauz Autonomous Region
    (Gagauz-Yeri) in Moldova. The language has official status since
    autonomy in 1994. Virtually every Gagauz in Moldova who is literate in
    Gagauz is literate in Moldovan[Roumanian] and/or Russian as well.

    Moldovan[Roumanian] uses Latin script with s-comma and t-comma. Turkish
    _is_ closely related to Gagauz (they are both Turkic languages), but the
    language is not used in Gagauz-Yeri. Turkish uses c-cedilla and
    s-cedilla. I suppose it would be utterly difficult to educate the people
    of Gagauz-Yeri to use the s-cedilla to write Gagauz, and the s-comma to
    write Moldovan[Roumanian] ... The only reasonable choice would be to use
    comma-letters only in both latin-script languages on Gagauz-Yeri territory.

    But this is less an encoding matter, and more a political one, which
    will be decided upon in Chișinău and Komrat/Comrat. Moldova ist the most
    impoverished country in Europe, and are these somewhat subtle matters
    given high priority there?

    Is there any Gagauz to ask, Michael ... ?

    -Herman Ranes

    Michael Everson skreiv:
    > At 11:10 -0400 2002-09-26, Robert wrote:
    >
    >
    >> The proper encoding of those letters is with *cedilla* (yup -- the
    >> French kind...); thus, c-cedilla, g-cedilla, s-cedilla, t-cedilla, and
    >> so on!
    >
    >
    > The proper encoding of the relevant ones in Romanian is s-comma-below
    > and t-comma-below.
    >
    > The proper encoding of the relevant ones in Turkish is c-cedilla and
    > s-cedilla.
    >
    > What the proper encoding in Gagauz is is problematic. It is a Turkic
    > language so one would expect cedilla, but it is used in Romania and
    > Moldova (and Bulgaria and Greece), so the conculusion as to which is
    > preferred is not necessarily foregone.
    >
    > We are going to ask the Gagauzi. 

    -- 
Herman Ranes                  Høgskolen i Sør-Trøndelag
                               Avdeling for teknologi
Telefon   +47 73559606        Institutt for elektroteknikk
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