Turkestani & Uygur Transcriptions

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Roman Alphabet

The languages of Turkestan and Uyguristan are written in a script known as Soğdo in Turkestan and Uygur in Uyguristan. However, when writing in the Roman alphabet, a standard transliteration scheme resembling *here's Atatürk alphabet is preferred by the govenments of the two nations.

The consonants /p/ /b/ /m/ /t/ /d/ /n/ /k/ /g/ /q/ /f/ /v/ /s/ /z/ /x/ /h/ /l/ /r/ are all written with the expected Roman letters. The sounds /∫/, its voiced equivalent, /ŋ/, /γ/, /j/ and the Turcoman phoneme /θ/ are written with ş, j, ņ, ğ, /y/ and ţ respectively. C and ç are used to represent the /ts/ of Russian loan-words and /t∫/.

The vowel inventory is also more complex than the Latin alphabet allows for without digraphs or diacritics. /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ and /u/ are all written with the standard Roman characters. The additional sounds /æ/, unrounded /u/, /œ/ and /y/ are represented by ä, ı, ö and ü respectively.

Phonemic length in the Kırğız language is represented by doubling for the long vowels.

Cyrillic Alphabet

When writing in the Cyrillic script, Turkestan's government prefers a script resembling *here's Kazakh Cyrillic script, with the additional letter Ѕ ѕ representing the /θ/ sound of the Turcoman language. Uyguristan prefers the Ҳ ҳ character for /q/ and Ў ў for /y/, uses И и for the /i/ sound, and does not use the /θ/ or /γ/ sounds at all.