ABSTRACT
A Latin spelling system was devised for Chechen in the 1920's (based on the unified Ingush-Chechen spelling system created by Zaurbek Mal'sagov) and used for publication until it was officially replaced by a Cyrillic transliteration of it in 1938. The Latin system used a number of special symbols and diacritics and failed to distinguish vowel length; the Cyrillic system which replaced it lost some more vowel distinctions. In the mid 1990's there was a move to return to Latin spelling, and a special Latin alphabet was proposed for Chechen. That alphabet, which we call Cyrillo-Latin, is a direct transliteration of the Cyrillic spelling into a Latin system based on Turkish and Azeri spelling with some special diacritics.
