The current official
Turkmen alphabet as used in
Turkmenistan is a
Latin alphabet based on the
Turkish alphabet, but with notable differences: J is used instead of the Turkish C; W is used instead of the Turkish V; Ž is used instead of the Turkish J; Y is used instead of the
dotless i (I/i); Ý is used instead of the Turkish consonantal Y; and the letters Ä and N have been added to represent the phonetic values and , respectively. At the start of the 20th century, when Turkmen first started to be written, it used the
Arabic script, but in 1928 the Latin script was adopted. In 1940, the
Russian influence in
Soviet Turkmenistan prompted a switch to a
Cyrillic alphabet, and a Turkmen Cyrillic alphabet (shown below in the table alongside the Latin) was created. When Turkmenistan became independent in 1991, president
Saparmurat Niyazov immediately instigated a return to the Latin script. When it was first reintroduced it was supposed to contain some rather unusual letters, such as the pound (
£), dollar (
$), yen (
¥), and cent signs (
¢), but these were later replaced by more orthodox letter symbols. The political and social forces that have combined to bring about these changes of script, then modifications of the Latin script, have been documented by Clement (2008).