I remember reading somewhere that for a few years in the late 1940s
or early 1950s, Abkhaz and Ossetian, instead of being Cyrillicized as
with other Caucasian/Turkic/Ugric,etc languages, had Mxedruli adapted
to their phonologies for a few years and then they were Cyrillicized.
Apparently Ossetian added 6 new letters namely one for a
palatalized /t/, /d/, /t/ and /tH/ (H denoting asperation). The two
forms I have seen are Mxedruli დ, ტ, თ with either
a tilde or grave
accent over them, and for /g/, /k/, /kH/, written with Mxedruli
ვ, ქ,
კ, with what looked like the tilde written through the letter.
(my
apologies if the Arial Unicode font doesn't make it through)
Abkhaz seems to have a plethora of new digraphs/compounds that
consist mainly of Mxedruli letters followed by what looks like a
schwa and "o".
In any event, would anyone have any sources/titles that would
indicate the Mxedruli scripts for both these languages?
I have no access to university libraries over here in Japan, but I
will have access to the UCLA library when I visit California in
July.
I am guessing that one source will be Klimov's "Einfuehrung in die
kaukasische Sprachwissenschaft", so if anyone knows of any OTHER
source, or has a list indicating the new Mxedruli letters/compounds
they'd care to post, I'd be most grateful.