Mongolian alphabet - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Many alphabets have been devised for the Mongolian language

Mongolian language

The Mongolian language is the official language of Mongolia and the best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner...

over the centuries, and from a variety of scripts. The oldest, called simply the Mongolian script

Mongolian script

The classical Mongolian script , also known as Uyghurjin, was the first writing system created specifically for the Mongolian language, and was the most successful until the introduction of Cyrillic in 1946...

, has been the predominant script during most of Mongolian history, and is still in active use today in the Inner Mongolia

Inner Mongolia

Inner Mongolia is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China, located in the northern region of the country. Inner Mongolia shares an international border with the countries of Mongolia and the Russian Federation...

region of China. It has spawned several alphabets, either as attempts to fix its perceived shortcomings, or to allow the notation of other languages, such as Sanskrit

Sanskrit

Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...

and Tibetan

Tibetan language

The Tibetan languages are a cluster of mutually-unintelligible Tibeto-Burman languages spoken primarily by Tibetan peoples who live across a wide area of eastern Central Asia bordering the Indian subcontinent, including the Tibetan Plateau and the northern Indian subcontinent in Baltistan, Ladakh,...

. In the 20th century, Mongolia

Mongolia

Mongolia is a landlocked country in East and Central Asia. It is bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south, east and west. Although Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan, its western-most point is only from Kazakhstan's eastern tip. Ulan Bator, the capital and largest...

switched first the Latin script, and then almost immediately replaced it with the Cyrillic script for compatibility with the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, its political ally of the time. Mongols in Inner Mongolia

Inner Mongolia

and other parts of China, on the other hand, continue to use alphabets based on the traditional Mongolian script.

Precursors

The Khitan

Khitan people

thumb|250px|Khitans [[Eagle hunting|using eagles to hunt]], painted during the Chinese [[Song Dynasty]].The Khitan people , or Khitai, Kitan, or Kidan, were a nomadic Mongolic people, originally located at Mongolia and Manchuria from the 4th century...

spoke a proto mongolic language called Khitan language

Khitan language

The Khitan language is a now-extinct language once spoken by the Khitan people . Khitan is generally deemed to be genetically linked to the Mongolic languages. It was written using two mutually exclusive writing systems known as the Khitan large script and the Khitan small script...

and had developed two scripts for writing their language: a logographic script derived from Chinese characters, and another derived from Uighur.

Classic Mongolian script

Traditional alphabet

At the very beginning of the Mongol Empire

Mongol Empire

The Mongol Empire , initially named as Greater Mongol State was a great empire during the 13th and 14th centuries...

, around 1204, Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan , born Temujin and occasionally known by his temple name Taizu , was the founder and Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death....

defeated the Naimans

Naimans

The Naimans, also Naiman Turks or Naiman Mongols, was a Mongolian name given to a group of people dwelling on the steppe of Central Asia, having diplomatic relations with the Kara-Khitan, and subservient to them until 1177...

and captured an Uyghur

Uyghur language

Uyghur , formerly known as Eastern Turk, is a Turkic language with 8 to 11 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Significant communities of Uyghur-speakers are located in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and various other...

scribe called Tata Tunga, who then adapted the Uyghur alphabet

Uyghur alphabet

Uyghur is a Turkic language spoken in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, administered by China, by the Uyghur people. It is a language with a long literary tradition, and has been written using numerous writing systems through time...

— a descendant of the Syriac alphabet

Syriac alphabet

The Syriac alphabet is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language from around the 2nd century BC . It is one of the Semitic abjads directly descending from the Aramaic alphabet and shares similarities with the Phoenician, Hebrew, Arabic, and the traditional Mongolian alphabets.-...

, via Sogdian

Sogdian alphabet

The Sogdian alphabet was originally used for the Sogdian language, a language in the Iranian family used by the people of Sogdiana. The alphabet is derived from Syriac, the descendant script of the Aramaic alphabet. The Sogdian alphabet is one of three scripts used to write the Sogdian language,...

— to write Mongol. With only minor modifications, it is used in Inner Mongolia

Inner Mongolia

to this day. Its most salient feature is its vertical direction; it is the only vertical script that is written from left to right. (All other vertical writing systems are written right to left.) This is because the Uyghurs rotated their script 90 degrees counterclockwise to emulate the Chinese writing system.

Galik alphabet

In 1587, the translator and scholar Ayuush Güüsh created the Galik alphabet, inspired by Sonam Gyatso, the third Dalai Lama

Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama is a high lama in the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" branch of Tibetan Buddhism. The name is a combination of the Mongolian word далай meaning "Ocean" and the Tibetan word bla-ma meaning "teacher"...

. It primarily added extra letters to transcribe Tibetan

Tibetan language

and Sanskrit

Sanskrit

terms in religious texts, and later also from Chinese

Chinese language

The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

. Some of these letters are still in use today for writing foreign names.

Oirat alphabet

In 1648, the Oirat

Oirats

Oirats are the westernmost group of the Mongols who unified several tribes origin whose ancestral home is in the Altai region of western Mongolia. Although the Oirats originated in the eastern parts of Central Asia, the most prominent group today is located in the Republic of Kalmykia, a federal...

Buddhist monk Zaya-pandita Namkhaijamco

Zaya Pandit

Zaya Pandita or Namkhaijantsan was a Buddhist missionary priest and scholar of Oirat origin who is the most prominent Oirat Buddhist scholar....

created this variation with the goal of bringing the written language closer to the actual pronunciation, and to make it easier to transcribe Tibetan and Sanskrit

Sanskrit

. The script was used by Kalmyks of Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

until 1924, when it was replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet. In Xinjiang

Xinjiang

Xinjiang is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. It is the largest Chinese administrative division and spans over 1.6 million km2...

, China the Oirat people still use it.

Buryat alphabet

Another alphabet was created in 1905 by the Buryat

Buryats

The Buryats or Buriyads , numbering approximately 436,000, are the largest ethnic minority group in Siberia and are mainly concentrated in their homeland, the Buryat Republic, a federal subject of Russia...

monk Agvan Dorjiev (1850–1938). It was meant to also reduce ambiguity, and to support the Russian language

Russian language

Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

in addition to Mongolian. The most significant change however was the elimination of the positional shape variations: All letters were based on the medial variant of the original Mongol alphabet.

'Phags-pa script

The traditional Mongolian alphabet is not a perfect fit for the Mongolian language, and it would be impractical to extend it to a language with a very different phonology like Chinese. Therefore, during the Yuan Dynasty

Yuan Dynasty

The Yuan Dynasty , or Great Yuan Empire was a ruling dynasty founded by the Mongol leader Kublai Khan, who ruled most of present-day China, all of modern Mongolia and its surrounding areas, lasting officially from 1271 to 1368. It is considered both as a division of the Mongol Empire and as an...

(ca. 1269), Kublai Khan

Kublai Khan

Kublai Khan , born Kublai and also known by the temple name Shizu , was the fifth Great Khan of the Mongol Empire from 1260 to 1294 and the founder of the Yuan Dynasty in China...

asked a Tibetan monk, Drogön Chögyal Phagpa

Drogön Chögyal Phagpa

Zhogön Qögyä Pagba, Zhogoin Qoigyai Phagspa or Drogön Chögyal Phagpa , born Lochö Gyäcän or Lochoi Gyaicain , was the fifth leader of the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism. He became the first vice-king of Tibet and played an important political role...

, to design a new script for use by the whole empire. Phagpa extended his native Tibetan script

Tibetan script

The Tibetan alphabet is an abugida of Indic origin used to write the Tibetan language as well as the Dzongkha language, Denzongkha, Ladakhi language and sometimes the Balti language. The printed form of the alphabet is called uchen script while the hand-written cursive form used in everyday...

to encompass Mongolian and Chinese; the result was known by several descriptive names, such as the Mongolian new script, but today is known as the 'Phags-pa script. The script did not receive wide acceptance and fell into disuse with the collapse of the Yuan dynasty in 1368. After this it was mainly used as a phonetic gloss

Gloss

A gloss is a brief notation of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may be in the language of the text, or in the reader's language if that is different....

for Mongols learning Chinese characters. However, scholars such as Gari Ledyard

Gari Ledyard

Gari Keith Ledyard is Sejong Professor of Korean History Emeritus at Columbia University. He is best known for his work on the history of the hangul alphabet.-Biography:...

believe that in the meantime it was the source of some of the basic letters of the Korean hangul

Hangul

Hangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...

alphabet.

Soyombo script

The Soyombo script is an abugida

Abugida

An abugida , also called an alphasyllabary, is a segmental writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as a unit: each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel notation is obligatory but secondary...

created by the Mongolian monk and scholar Bogdo Zanabazar

Bogdo Zanabazar

Undur Geghen Zanabazar , born Eshidorji , was the first Jebtsundamba Khutuktu, the spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism for the Khalkha in Outer Mongolia. His name 'Zanabazar' is the Mongolian rendition of the Sanskrit 'Jnana-vajra' meaning thunderbolt of wisdom...

in the late 17th century, that can also be used to write Tibetan and Sanskrit

Sanskrit

. A special glyph in the script, the Soyombo, became a national symbol of Mongolia

Mongolia

, and has appeared on the national flag

Flag of Mongolia

The current flag of Mongolia was adopted on February 12, 1992. It is similar to the flag of 1949, except for the removal of the socialist star....

since 1921, and on the national coat of arms

Coat of arms of Mongolia

The state emblem of Mongolia is used by the government of Mongolia as its symbol of state. It is officially used for example on documents such as Mongolian passports, and government and embassy placards.- Description :...

since 1992, as well as money, stamps, etc.

Zanabazar had created it for the translation of Buddhist texts from Sanskrit or Tibetan, and both he and his students used it extensively for that purpose. Aside from historical texts, it can usually be found in temple inscriptions. It also has some relevance to linguistic research, because it reflects certain developments in the Mongolian language, such as that of long vowels.

Horizontal square script

At around the same time, Zanabazar also developed the Horizontal square script, which was only rediscovered in 1801. Its actual use is unknown. It was also largely based on the Tibetan alphabet, read left to right, and employed vowel diacritics above and below the consonant letters. Additionally, a dot was used below consonants to show that they were syllable-final.

Latin script

On February 1, 1941, Mongolia officially adopted a Latin alphabet. Only two months later, on March 25 the decision was reversed. According to later official claims the alphabet had turned out to have not been thought out well. It was said not to distinguish all the sounds of the Mongolian language, and to be difficult to use. However, those seem to have been pretexts rather than the true reasons. Using "y" as feminine "u", with additional feminine "o" ("ө") and with additional consonants "ç" for "ch", "ş" for "sh" and ƶ for "zh", it successfully served in printing books and newspapers. Many of the Latin letters (f, h, p, v) were even rarely used while q, w and x were completely excluded. The adoption of the Cyrillic script a short time later, almost simultaneously with most Soviet republics, suggests political reasons.

Cyrillic script

The most recent Mongolian alphabet is a based on the Cyrillic script, more specifically the Russian alphabet

Russian alphabet

The Russian alphabet is a form of the Cyrillic script, developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...

plus the letters, Өө /ö/ and Үү /ü/. It was introduced in the 1940s and has been in use as the official writing system of Mongolia

Mongolia

ever since.

Foreign scripts

Before the 13th century, foreign scripts had to be used to write the Mongolian language. And even during the reign of the Mongol Empire, people in the conquered areas often wrote it in their local systems. Most often it was transcribed phonetically using Chinese character

Chinese character

Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...

s, as is the case with the only surviving copies of The Secret History of the Mongols
The Secret History of the Mongols
The Secret History of the Mongols is the oldest surviving Mongolian-language literary work...

. Subjects from the Middle East

Middle East

The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...

hired into administrative functions would also often use Persian or Arabic

Arabic alphabet

The Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually stand for consonants, it is classified as an abjad.-Consonants:The Arabic alphabet has...

scripts to write their Mongolian language documents.

External links

The Silver Horde: Mongol Scripts
The Mongolian language and scripts, Tseveliin Shagdarsuren, Indiana University
Inkway Mongolian Calligraphy

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