Moldovan alphabet

Moldovan
Type:	Alphabet
Languages:	Moldovan/Romanian
Time period:	ca. 1930 - today
Parent writing systems:	Phoenician alphabet Greek alphabet Glagolitic alphabet Cyrillic Moldovan
Sister writing systems:	Romanian Cyrillic alphabet
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key.

The Moldovan alphabet is a Cyrillic alphabet derived from the Russian alphabet and developed for the Romanian/Moldovan language in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. It was the official script in Moldavian ASSR and between 1940 and 1989 in the Moldavian SSR and still is the official and the only accepted alphabet in Transnistria. It is not the same alphabet that was used in Romania before 1860 (see Romanian Cyrillic alphabet)^{[citation needed]}.

The alphabet is more or less standard with the exception of 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.

Cyrillic letter:	Equates to Latin letter:	As employed in this context:	IPA
а	a		/a/
б	b		/b/
в	v		/v/
г	g, gh	gh used before i or e, elsewhere g	/g/
д	d		/d/
е	e, ie	ie after a vowel or if it alternates with ia, elsewhere e	/e/, /je/
ж	j		/ʒ/
ӂ	g	Before i and e	/dʒ/
з	z		/z/
и	i, ii	ii used at end of word, i elsewhere	/i/
й	i	before vowels	/j/
к	c, ch	ch before i and e, c elsewhere	/k/
л	l		/l/
м	m		/m/
н	n		/n/
о	o		/o/
п	p		/p/
р	r		/r/
с	s		/s/
т	t		/t/
у	u		/u/
ф	f		/f/
х	h		/h/
ц	ţ		/ts/
ч	c	Before i and e	/tʃ/
ш	ş		/ʃ/
ы	â, î	â in middle of word, î at beginning and end of word	/ɨ/
ь	i	At end of word (usually)	/ʲ/ (i.e. palatalization of preceding consonant)
э	ă		/ə/
ю	iu		/ju/, /ʲu/
я	ea, ia	ea after a consonant or е, ia elsewhere	/ja/, /ʲa/