Symbols
86Click a symbol to copy it and open its page.
Ossetian alphabet
The 34 single letters of the Ossetian alphabet, with Ӕ ӕ after А, in Ossetian alphabetical order. The two-character letters Гъ, Дж, Дз, Къ, Пъ, Тъ, Хъ, Цъ and Чъ are named beside the letter they start with; copy them by pasting the parts one after another, for example К + Ъ = Къ.
Quotation marks and dash
Ossetian follows Russian typography: «…» for quotations, „…“ for a quotation inside a quotation, and the long dash — for dialogue.
Currency
The Russian ruble, used in North Ossetia and also in South Ossetia, and the Georgian lari.
Where it's spoken
Largest Ossetian-speaking population first, by CLDR estimates; Georgia's figure includes South Ossetia.
Ossetia in emoji
There is no Ossetian flag emoji, so people stack ⬜🟥🟨 for the white, red and yellow tricolour; 🥧 for the pies served in threes, 🧀 and 🍺 for the cheese and home-brewed beer of the feast table, 🏔️ for the Caucasus, 🐆 for the leopard on the coat of arms and 🤼 for wrestling.
On the map
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The Ossetian alphabet: 34 Cyrillic letters with Ӕ
Ossetian (Ossetic in linguistics), which Iron speakers call ирон ӕвзаг, has been written in Cyrillic in North Ossetia since 1938 and in South Ossetia since 1954. Its alphabet has 34 Cyrillic letters, with Ӕ ӕ placed straight after А. Those 34 characters are everything you need to write the language, and all of them are in the grid above.
Some Ossetian consonants are written with two characters, and school alphabets count them as letters of their own: Гъ, Дж, Дз, Къ, Пъ, Тъ, Хъ, Цъ and Чъ. With them the Ossetian alphabet has 43 letters. In the grid each two-character letter is named beside the letter it starts with; to copy it, paste its parts one after the other.
The hard sign ъ does most of that work. After к, п, т, ц and ч it marks an ejective, a consonant released with a sharp pop from a closed throat: къ, пъ, тъ, цъ, чъ. After г and х it moves the sound to the back of the mouth: гъ is a throaty, French-like r and хъ a deep k made at the uvula. Дж and дз are the sounds of English 'j' and 'dz'. The letter у serves both as the vowel u and, before a vowel, as English w, as in уӕ (your). Ё, Щ and Ь turn up mainly in words taken from Russian.
Ӕ ӕ: the Ossetian letter that is not a Latin æ
Ӕ is one of the most frequent vowels in Ossetian, a short, central sound close to the 'a' of English 'about'. You see it everywhere: ӕвзаг (language), Дзӕуджыхъӕу (Vladikavkaz), Хӕрзбон! (goodbye). Its shape goes back to the first Cyrillic grammar of Ossetian, published by the linguist Andreas Sjögren in 1844, and Unicode encodes it as its own Cyrillic letter: the capital Ӕ is U04D4 and the small ӕ is U04D5, named 'Cyrillic ligature A Ie'.
Because ӕ is missing from ordinary Russian keyboards, plenty of Ossetian text online uses the Latin æ instead, the letter of Danish and Norwegian. The two look the same in most fonts, but to a computer ӕвзаг and æвзаг are different words, and a word mixing Cyrillic and Latin letters can trip up search, sorting and spell checkers. Paste the Cyrillic Ӕ ӕ from this page when the text will be searched, sorted or printed.
How to type Ossetian letters on a keyboard
Switch on a Russian keyboard layout and every Ossetian letter except Ӕ is a key: гъ is Г then Ъ, дж is Д then Ж. On Linux, the keyboard settings include ready-made Ossetian layouts, 'Ossetian (Windows)' and 'Ossetian (legacy)' under Russian and 'Ossetian (Georgia)' under Georgian; they put ӕ on the key where Russian has Э and move Э to the key left of 1.
Elsewhere, in Microsoft Word type 04D5 and press AltX for ӕ (04D4 for Ӕ). On a Mac, add the Unicode Hex Input layout, hold Option and type 04D5. In HTML write Ӕ for Ӕ and ӕ for ӕ. On a phone, add an Ossetian keyboard if your keyboard app offers one; otherwise set up a text replacement that turns a short code into ӕ, or copy it from here. The quotation marks are Alt0171 « and Alt0187 » on a Windows number pad, and Option\ and OptionShift\ on a US Mac keyboard.
Ossetian in Latin, Georgian and Cyrillic letters
After Sjögren's grammar, Ossetian books were printed in Cyrillic through the 19th century; the national poet Kosta Khetagurov published his collection Ирон фӕндыр (The Ossetian Lyre) in 1899. In 1923 the Soviet authorities switched Ossetian to a Latin alphabet, as they did for many languages of the USSR, and in 1938 to the Cyrillic alphabet in use today.
South of the main Caucasus ridge the story differed: from 1938 to 1954 Ossetian there was written in a Georgian-based alphabet, and then it too moved to Cyrillic. That is why searches for an 'Ossetian Georgian alphabet' or an 'Ossetian Latin alphabet' turn up real historical scripts, but every Ossetian book, newspaper and school today uses the Cyrillic letters on this page.
Where Ossetian is spoken
Ossetian has roughly half a million speakers. Several hundred thousand live in Russia , above all in the Republic of North Ossetia–Alania, where Ossetian is an official language beside Russian and its capital Vladikavkaz is called Дзӕуджыхъӕу. Georgia's 2024 census recorded 3,839 Ossetian mother-tongue speakers in the areas it covered and excluded the occupied territories. South Ossetia's status is disputed: it declares itself independent and is recognised by Russia and a few other states, while Georgia and most countries regard it as part of Georgia. In Ossetian the land is Ирыстон, the north Цӕгат Ирыстон and the south Хуссар Ирыстон. There are also Ossetian communities in Türkiye and elsewhere.
Ossetian is an Iranian language, the last living descendant of the language of the Alans, and so a distant relative of Persian and Pashto rather than of its Caucasian neighbours Georgian, Ingush, Chechen and Kabardian, though it has borrowed from them over the centuries. Its standard is the Iron dialect; Digor, spoken in the west of North Ossetia, has its own literature in the same alphabet. The Cyrillic it shares with Russian makes the Russian alphabet collection a useful companion page.
How to use them
6 situationsClick to copyOssetian Alphabet & Letters combos
12Worth knowing
- Ossetian descends from the language of the Alans, the Iranian-speaking horse people of the steppes, which is why North Ossetia's official name is North Ossetia–Alania.
- The Ossetian Nart sagas, tales of a race of heroes, are among the richest epics of the Caucasus; the French scholar Georges Dumézil spent decades comparing them with other Indo-European myths.
- Ossetian was written in three scripts within a single generation: Latin from 1923, Cyrillic in the north and Georgian in the south from 1938, and Cyrillic everywhere from 1954.
- Freestyle wrestling is the great sport of North Ossetia, a republic of under a million people that has produced a long line of Olympic wrestling champions.
Questions people ask
7How many letters are in the Ossetian alphabet?
It is written with 34 Cyrillic characters, Ӕ ӕ among them. Because Гъ, Дж, Дз, Къ, Пъ, Тъ, Хъ, Цъ and Чъ count as letters of their own, the Ossetian alphabet as taught in school has 43 letters.
How do I type the Ossetian æ?
Copy Ӕ or ӕ from this page, or in Word type 04D5 and press AltX (04D4 for the capital). On a Mac use the Unicode Hex Input layout and Option04D5; in HTML write ӕ. On Linux pick the 'Ossetian (Windows)' layout, which puts ӕ on the Э key.
Is the Ossetian Ӕ the same as the Latin Æ?
No. They look alike, but the Cyrillic Ӕ ӕ (U04D4, U04D5) and the Latin Æ æ (U00C6, U00E6) are different characters. Much Ossetian text online uses the Latin one because it is easier to type; the Cyrillic one is the correct letter and keeps words consistent for search and sorting.
Is there an Ossetian flag emoji?
No. Standard flag emoji use Unicode region codes for countries and territories; the only widely supported subdivision flags are England, Scotland and Wales, so neither North Ossetia nor South Ossetia has one. People paste , the white, red and yellow stripes of the flag both use.
Does Ossetian use the Cyrillic alphabet?
Yes. Ossetian has been written in Cyrillic since 1938 in North Ossetia and since 1954 in South Ossetia. It used a Latin alphabet from 1923 to 1938, and in South Ossetia a Georgian-based alphabet from 1938 to 1954.
Is Ossetic the same as Ossetian?
Yes. Ossetic is the name linguists and standards such as Unicode's CLDR prefer, Ossetian the everyday English one; both refer to the same language, known in Iron as ирон ӕвзаг and in Digor as дигорон ӕвзаг.
What language family is Ossetian?
Ossetian is an Eastern Iranian language of the Indo-European family, related to Persian and Pashto. It is the surviving descendant of the language of the Alans, not a relative of the Caucasian languages spoken around it.
