Mongolian script

Mongolian script
Type	Alphabet
Spoken languages	Mongolian language Evenki language
Created by	Tatar-Tonga
Time period	ca.1204 – today
Parent systems	Proto-Canaanite alphabet  → Phoenician alphabet   → Aramaic alphabet    → Syriac alphabet     → Sogdian alphabet      → Old Uyghur alphabet       → Mongolian script
Child systems	Manchu script Clear script Vaghintara script
Unicode range	U+1800 – U+18AF
ISO 15924	Mong
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Mongolian script (Mongolian: Monɣul bičig, cyrillic: Монгол бичиг, Mongol bichig) was the first of many writing systems created for the Mongolian language and the most successful until the introduction of Cyrillic to Mongolia in 1946. With minor modification, the classic vertical script is used in Inner Mongolia in China to this day to write both Mongolian and the Evenki language.

Contents 1 History 2 The characters 3 Examples 4 Derivate scripts 4.1 Clear script 4.2 Vaghintara script 5 Mongolian in Unicode 6 Notes and references 7 External links

History

The Mongol vertical script is essentially the Uyghur script used to write Mongol. It was introduced by the Uyghur scribe Tatar-Tonga, who had been captured by the Mongols during a war against the Naimans around 1204. There were no substantive changes to the Uyghur form for the first few centuries, so that, for example, initial yodh stood for both [dʒ] and [j], while medial tsadi stood for both [dʒ] and [tʃ], and there was no letter for [d] in initial position. Eventually, minor concessions were made to the differences between the Uyghur and Mongol languages: In the 17th and 18th centuries, smoother and more angular versions of tsadi became associated with [dʒ] and [tʃ] respectively, and in the 19th century, the Manchu hooked yodh was adopted for initial [j]. Zain was dropped as it was redundant for [s]. Various schools of orthography, some using diacritics, were developed to avoid ambiguity.

In 1587, Ayuush Güüsh (Аюуш гүүш) devised a number of extra characters to transcribe the sounds of foreign languages like Tibetan, Chinese, and Sanskrit. This extension is known under the name Ali-Gali (Али-гали).

Mongolian is written vertically. The Uyghur script and its descendants—Mongolian, Oirat Clear, Manchu, and Buryat—are the only vertical scripts written from left to right. This developed because the Uyghurs rotated their Sogdian-derived script, originally written right to left, 90 degrees counterclockwise to emulate Chinese writing, but without changing the relative orientation of the letters.^[1]

The characters

Characters take different shapes depending on their initial, medial, or final position within a word. In some cases, there are additional graphic variations which are selected for better visual harmony with the subsequent character.

The alphabet fails to make several vowel (o/u, ö/ü, final a/e) and consonant (t/d, k/g, sometimes ž/y) distinctions of Mongolian that were not required for Uyghur.^[1] The result is somewhat comparable to the situation of English, which must represent ten or more vowels with only five letters and uses the digraph th for two distinct sounds. Sometimes, ambiguity is avoided, because the requirements of vowel harmony and syllable sequence usually determine the right choice. Moreover, as there are few words with an exactly identical spelling, actual ambiguities are rare for a reader who knows the orthography.

Characters				Transliteration		Notes
initial	medial	final		Latin[2]	Cyrillic
				a	А	Distinction usually by vowel harmony (see also q/γ and k/g below)
				e	Э
	[3] [4]			i, yi	И,Й, Ы, Ь	At end of word today often absorbed into preceding syllable
				o, u	О, У	Distinction depending on context.
				ö, ü	Ө, Ү	Distinction depending on context.
	[5] [6]			n	Н	Distinction from medial and final a/e by position in syllable sequence.
				ng	Н, НГ	Only at end of word (medial for composites). Transcribes Tibetan ང; Sanskrit ङ.
				b	Б, В
				p	П	Only at the beginning of Mongolian words. Transcribes Tibetan པ;
				q	Х	Only with back vowels
				ɣ	Г	Only with back vowels. Between vowels today pronounced as long vowel.[7] The "final" version only appears when followed by an a written detached from the word.
				k	Х	Only with front vowels. Word-finally only g, not k. g between vowels today pronounced as long vowel.[8]
				g	Г
				m	М
				l	Л
				s	С
				š	Ш	Pronunciation of this character has not changed.
				t, d	Т, Д	Distinction depending on context.
				č	Ч, Ц	Originally no distinction between /tʃ'/ and /ts'/, today by context.
				ǰ	Ж, З	Distinction by context. Originally often interchanged with y below.
				y	Е, Ё, И, Ю, Я	Part of diphthongs, although technically a consonant.
				r	Р	Not normally at the beginning of words.[9]
				v	В	Transcribes Sanskrit व.
				f	Ф	Medieval Mongolian didn't use this sound.
				ḳ	К	Transcribes Russian К.
				(c)	(ц)	Transcribes Tibetan /ts'/ ཚ; Sanskrit छ.
				(z)	(з)	Transcribes Tibetan /dz/ ཛ; Sanskrit ज.
				(h)		Transcribes Tibetan /h/ ཧ, ྷ; Sanskrit ह.

Examples

Historical shapes	Modern print type	Transliterating first word:
		v 　 i k i p e d i y a

• transliteration: Vikipediya čilügetü nebterkei toli bičig bolai.
• Cyrillic: Википедиа Чөлөөт Нэвтэрхий Толь Бичиг Болой.
• Transcription: Vikipedia chölööt nevterkhii toli bichig boloi.
• Gloss: Wikipedia free omni-profound mirror scripture is.
• Translation: Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia.

Derivate scripts

Clear script

Main article: Clear script

In 1648, the Oirat Buddhist monk Zaya-pandita Namkhaijamco created this variation with the goals of bringing the written language closer to the actual pronunciation and making it easier to transcribe Tibetan and Sanskrit. The script was used by Kalmyks of Russia until 1924, when it was replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet. In Xinjiang, China, the Oirat people still use it.

Vaghintara script

Another variant was developed in 1905 by a Buryat monk named Agvan Dorjiev (1854–1938). It was also meant to reduce ambiguity, and to support the Russian language in addition to Mongolian. The most significant change however was the elimination of the positional shape variations. All characters were based on the medial variant of the original Mongol script. After a few years, Agvan-Dorjiev ran out of funds to promote his invention further, so that fewer than a dozen books were printed using it.

Mongolian in Unicode

The Unicode Mongolian block is U+1800 – U+18AF.^[10] It includes letters, digits and various punctuation marks for Mongolian, Todo script, Xibe, and Manchu, as well as extensions for transcribing Sanskrit and Tibetan.

Notes and references

External links

• Omniglot: Mongolian Alphabet
• The Silver Horde: Mongol Scripts
• Lingua Mongolia: Mongolian Alphabet, including tutorial
• Inkway Mongolian calligraphy

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