Technical specification for the Kaitag Cyrillic script.
Example:
| Kaitag | IPA | English |
|---|---|---|
| Ьар мейдам азатдеҳ челле чиьачӏурил це: цада йярдицци, цада ихтийарцци. Ьелттай яҡӏлу ра йяь ра деччил дилле, цалццил ца уццбе гон бугара биккан це. | haɾ ˈmejdam azatʰˈdex ˈtʃʰelle tʃʰihatʃʼuˈɾil tsʰe: tsʰaˈda jæɾˈditsːi, tsʰaˈda iχtʰiˈjaɾtsːi. helˈtːaj ˈæqʼlu ɾa jæh ɾa ˈdetʃːil ˈdille, ˈtsʰaltsːil tsʰa utsːˈbe gʷan buˈgaɾa biˈkːan tsʰe. | All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. |
The modern Kaitag alphabet, based on the Cyrillic script, was developed in 2024 and revised in 2026. It consists of 27 Russian letters (excluding Щщ, Фф, Ыы, Ээ, Ёё, Юю), 4 extended Cyrillic characters (Ғғ, Ҡҡ, Ҳҳ, Ӏӏ), and 12 digraphs (geminates and ejectives). Extended notation includes vowels with acute accents for stress and additional digraphs for non-phonemic sounds.
v1.1 (January 2026): Reintroduced palochka (Ӏӏ) as ejective marker, aligning with Dagestanian orthographic tradition. Added extended notation for stress marking and tense fricatives.
v1.0 (February 2024): Initial release introducing extended Cyrillic characters, uniform consonant series representation, and explicit iotation. Used soft sign (Ьь) as dual marker for both /h/ and ejectivity.
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Extended Cyrillic characters: Ғғ /ʁ/, Ҡҡ /qʰ/, Ҳҳ /x/. These established Cyrillic extensions maintain single-letter representation for basic consonants.
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Uniform consonant series: doubling for geminates (пп, тт, чч, цц, кк, ҡҡ) and palochka (Ӏӏ) for all ejectives (пӏ, тӏ, чӏ, цӏ, кӏ, ҡӏ) and only for them. This consistently represents six parallel three-way contrasts (aspirated/geminate/ejective).
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Repurposed Russian signs for laryngeal sounds: Ьь /h/ and Ъъ /ʔ/. In Russian these letters serve as modifiers without representing sounds themselves. Repurposing them reduces the number of special characters needed.
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Letter Оо represents labialization /ʷa/ before Аа, while Вв marks both /β/ and rare labialization before other vowels. Since labialization overwhelmingly occurs with /a/, this allows simplified orthography: беркона /beɾkʰʷana/ "to eat" → беркне /beɾkʰne/ (masd.).
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Explicit iotation: Ее /e/ and Яя /æ/ are always pure vowels; Йй /j/ is written explicitly everywhere. This eliminates Russian's context-dependent vowel readings, creating one-to-one sound-letter correspondence.
42 letters, of which 12 are digraphs:
а б в г ғ д е ж з и й к кк кӏ ҡ ҡҡ ҡӏ л м н о п пп пӏ р с т тт тӏ у х ҳ ц цц цӏ ч чч чӏ ш ъ ь я
Collation order: The alphabet sequence above defines the sorting order. Digraphs are treated as single letters sorting after their base consonant; extended characters follow their base letters (ғ after г, ҡ after к, ҳ after х).
Letter frequency data: letter_frequencies.csv
Comparison with Soviet Dagestanian orthographies. Asterisk (*) marks the conventions from the dissertations on Kaitag by Temirbulatova [2004] and Gasanova [2012]:
| Kaitag | IPA | Soviet Dagestanian |
|---|---|---|
| а | /a/ | я (includes preceding й) |
| б | /b/ | |
| в | /β/, /ʷ/ | |
| г | /g/ | |
| ғ | /ʁ/ | гъ |
| д | /d/ | |
| е | /e/ | э (after vowels or word-initially) |
| ж | /ʒ/ | |
| з | /z/ | |
| и | /i/ | |
| й | /j/ | е, я, ю (after vowels or word-initially, each includes the corresponding vowel following it) |
| к | /kʰ/ | |
| кк | /kː/ | |
| кӏ | /kʼ/ | |
| ҡ | /qʰ/ | хъ, къ |
| ҡҡ | /qː/ | къкъ* (intervocally), къ |
| ҡӏ | /qʼ/ | кь, къ |
| л | /l/ | |
| м | /m/ | |
| н | /n/ | |
| о | /ʷa/ | ва |
| п | /pʰ/ | |
| пп | /pː/ | |
| пӏ | /pʼ/ | |
| р | /ɾ/ | |
| с | /s/ | |
| т | /tʰ/ | |
| тт | /tː/ | |
| тӏ | /tʼ/ | |
| у | /u/ | ю (includes preceding й) |
| х | /χ/ | |
| ҳ | /x/ | хь |
| ц | /tsʰ/ | |
| цц | /tsː/ | |
| цӏ | /tsʼ/ | |
| ч | /tʃʰ/ | |
| чч | /tʃː/ | |
| чӏ | /tʃʼ/ | |
| ш | /ʃ/ | |
| ъ | /ʔ/ | гӏ* (adjacent to я) |
| ь | /h/ | хӏ* (adjacent to я), гь |
| я | /æ/ | гӏя* (word-initially), я* (word-initially, includes preceding й), аь, аӏ |
31 unique characters, of which 4 are from extended Cyrillic:
а б в г ғ д е ж з и й к ҡ л м н о п р с т у х ҳ ц ч ш ъ ь я ӏ
Character frequency data: character_frequencies.csv
Extended Cyrillic characters:
| Character | Unicode | Name |
|---|---|---|
| Ғ ғ | U+0492, U+0493 | Cyrillic Letter Ghe with Stroke |
| Ҡ ҡ | U+04A0, U+04A1 | Cyrillic Letter Bashkir Ka |
| Ҳ ҳ | U+04B2, U+04B3 | Cyrillic Letter Ha with Descender |
| Ӏ ӏ | U+04C0, U+04CF | Cyrillic Letter Palochka |
Note on Palochka: Often substituted with digit
1, LatinI/i, lowercasel, vertical bar|, or slash/due to absence from standard Russian keyboards. This practice began with Soviet typewriters and continues today. Corpora, dictionaries, and datasets should normalize these substitutions to the canonical Unicode characters U+04C0 (capital) and U+04CF (lowercase).
Beyond the core alphabet, extended orthographic notation includes:
- Acute diacritics for stress marking: а́, е́, и́, о́, у́, я́
- Tense fricatives (phonemic status uncertain): сс /sː/, хх /χː/, ҳҳ /xː/, шш /ʃː/
- Marginal sounds (onomatopoeia): ву /w/, гҳ /ɣ/, пв /ɸ/
- Dialectal sounds: гӏ /ʡ/, хӏ /ħ/
These elements are not part of the standard alphabet but are used for precise phonetic documentation, pedagogical purposes, and dialectal variation.
Input methods are based on the standard Russian ЙЦУКЕН layout to minimize disruption to Russian keyboard users' muscle memory. An optimized Kaitag-specific layout based on character frequency would require a larger text corpus for proper analysis.
Language identifiers for keyboard layouts:
- English: Kaitag
- Russian: кайтагский
- Kaitag: Хайдаҡӏла
- ISO 639-3: xdq
The layout replaces five keys for the excluded Russian letters Щ, Ф, Ы, Э, Ю with Ҡ, Ҳ, Ғ, Ъ, Ӏ respectively. These characters are positioned by frequency, with more frequent ones closer to the center.
й ц у к е н г ш ҡ з х
ҳ ғ в а п р о л д ж ъ
я ч с м и т ь б ӏ
Accented vowels for stress marking and excluded Russian letters are accessible via long-press:
у: ю у́
е: э е́ ё
ш: щ
а: а́
п: ф
о: о́
я: я́
и: ы и́
Available for Google Gboard (Google Play), Yandex Keyboard (Google Play, App Store), and HeliBoard (GitHub).
The script requires only four additional symbols compared to standard Russian. Compose key sequences can be used to enter these characters without switching keyboard layouts.
Example configuration for WinCompose on Windows:
<Multi_key> <Г> : "Ғ" # CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER GHE WITH STROKE
<Multi_key> <г> : "ғ" # CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER GHE WITH STROKE
<Multi_key> <К> : "Ҡ" # CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER BASHKIR KA
<Multi_key> <к> : "ҡ" # CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER BASHKIR KA
<Multi_key> <Х> : "Ҳ" # CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER HA WITH DESCENDER
<Multi_key> <х> : "ҳ" # CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER HA WITH DESCENDER
<Multi_key> <!> : "Ӏ" # CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER PALOCHKA
<Multi_key> <1> : "ӏ" # CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER PALOCHKA
Linux has built-in compose key support. For macOS, macos-compose is available.
- Kaitag Dictionary (5,000+ lexemes, in development) with usage examples, notes, and cross-references (source)
- Reference corpus: monocorpus.txt (33,615 characters) extracted from Gasanova, U.U. (2013). Хайдакьла хабарти (Kaitag Tales). Makhachkala, 152 p.
- Yaziv text converter: Supports transliteration between Kaitag Cyrillic and IPA representations
- Current orthography: "Cyrillic"
- Legacy support: "Cyrillic (2024)", "Soviet Cyrillic"
- Google Fonts: Web font service and library
- ParaType: Cyrillic typography resource
- Ethnologue: Global language database
- Omniglot: Encyclopedia of writing systems and languages
This work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. If you use this specification or data in your work, please cite:
Magomedov, M. (2026). Kaitag Cyrillic Script. Retrieved from https://github.com/alkaitagi/urssivar/script
Contact: alkaitagi@outlook.com