Wonder of wonders, as predicted, the question of what Gagauz users prefer for their language has arisen.
Currently I am giving some lectures on Unicode and related subjects at a European Summer School (Electronic Publishing for Cultural Heritage Studies) in Bulgaria. Among the participants is Miglena Ivanova, a native-speaker of "Bulgarian Turkish", or Gagauz. (Gagauz is about as different from Turkish as Bulgarian is from Serbian.) Interestingly, in Miglena's work she has identified a few elements of Trubetzkoy's transcription system which are absent from the Unicode standard. We will be looking into this in more detail in due course. Naturally I asked Miglena about the preference Gagauzi have for writing their language. We looked at a number of publications; one of the most interesting displayed a Turkic c-cedilla, a Romanian t-comma-below, and then an s whose glyph was more or less a compromise between the two. I'm told that a team of researchers in Moldova worked on this issue including development of a font. We will be pursuing this question with specialists in Gagauz to determine what the appropriate encoding (s-cedilla or s-comma-below) is for their language. I'm sure you're all as pleased as I am about this.... ;-) Best regards from thundery Sofia, -- Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com 48B Gleann na Carraige; Cill Fhionntain; Baile Átha Cliath 13; Éire Telephone +353 86 807 9169 * * Fax +353 1 832 2189 (by arrangement)
