Yakut scripts

There have been three major Yakut writing systems in use since the early 20th century. The first systematic alphabet was developed by Semyon Novgorodov, and was based on the International Phonetic Alphabet. Novgorodov's alphabet was developed in 1917, and continued in use until 1929. In addition to the characters shown below, Novogorodov also introduced four letters to represent the diphthongs found in Yakut: /ɯ͡a/ – ꭠ, /i͡e/ – ꭡ, /u͡o/ – ꭣ, and /y͡ø/ – w.[1] Vowel and consonant length was indicated with the colon (e.g. a:, t:). While this alphabet was in use, various changes were implemented, including the addition of capital letters. After 1929, Novgorodov's alphabet was replaced by a form of Latin script based on the Yanalif.[2] This was in turn replaced in 1939 by an alphabet using the Cyrillic script. Prior to the Novgorodov alphabet, various ad hoc phonetic Latin and Cyrillic-based systems had been developed.

A fragment of suruk bicik

Currently only the Cyrillic Yakut alphabet is in use. This script consists of the usual Russian characters but with 5 additional letters: Ҕҕ, Ҥҥ, Өө, Һһ, Үү.