Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet

Until the 19th century, Romanian was usually written using a local variant of the Cyrillic alphabet. A variant based on the reformed Russian civil script, first introduced in the late 18th century, became widespread in Bessarabia after its annexation to the Russian Empire, while the rest of the Principality of Moldavia gradually switched to a Latin-based alphabet, adopted officially after its union with Wallachia that resulted in the creation of Romania.[1] The Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet was introduced in the early 1920s, in the Soviet bid to standardise the orthography of Romanian in the Moldavian ASSR, at the same time furthering political objectives by marking a clear distinction from the "bourgeois" Latin-based Romanian orthography introduced in Romania in the 1860s. As was the case with other Cyrillic-based languages in the Soviet Union, such as Russian, Ukrainian or Belarusian, obsolete and redundant characters were dropped in an effort to simplify orthography and boost literacy. It was abandoned for a Latin-based alphabet during the Union-wide Latinisation campaign in 1932. Its re-introduction was decided by the Central Executive Committee of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic on May 19, 1938, albeit with an orthography more similar to standard Russian. Following the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, it was established as the official alphabet of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic until 1989, when a law returned to the standard, Latin-based, Romanian alphabet.

There were several requests to switch back to the Latin alphabet, which was seen "more suitable for the Romance core of the language", in the Moldavian SSR. In 1965, the demands of the 3rd Congress of Writers of Soviet Moldavia were rejected by the leadership of the Communist Party, the replacement being deemed "contrary to the interests of the Moldavian people and not reflecting its aspirations and hopes".[2]

The Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet is the official and the only accepted alphabet in Transnistria (internationally recognized as part of Moldova) for the Romanian language.

All but one of the letters of this alphabet can be found in the modern Russian alphabet, the exception being the character zhe (ж) with breve: Ӂ ӂ (U+04C1, U+04C2).

The following chart shows the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet compared with the Latin alphabet currently in use. IPA values are given for the post-1957 literary standard.

Limba noastră

• Romanian alphabet
• Romanian Cyrillic alphabet
• Ӂ

• King, Charles (2000). The Moldovans: Romania, Russia and the Politics of Culture. Hoover Institution Press. ISBN 0-8179-9792-X.
• Jeffrey Chinn (1994). "The Politics of Language in Moldova" (PDF). Demokratizatsya. pp. 309–315. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 29, 2011. Retrieved August 22, 2011.

• Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet – example text and comparison with Latin script
• Moldovan Cyrillic (молдовеняскэ) • Keyboard Layout for Windows