Writing Mongolian

The Mongols did not have a written language until 1204 AD, when Ghengis Khan commanded that the language be put into writing. The modern Mongol dialect Khalkhan is believed to be rooted in the Middle Mongolian dialect spoken by the tribe of Ghengis Khan. Since that time, a number of different scripts have been used to write Mongolian, the five most significant being Uighur, Chinese, Phagsba, Soyombo, and Cyrillic.

The first script used by the Mongols to write their language was the beautiful Uighur (Classical Mongolian) script that originated with China's Uighur, who brought it from the Middle East. The oldest known sample of this writing style is a stone engraving from the year 1225 A.D.. The 26 characters of the Uighur alphabet, based on an Aramaic alphabet originally taken from a northern Semitic alphabet, are used to write words vertically from top to bottom and from left to right across the page. This unique written orientation looks much like a page of Arab script rotated 90° to the right. Classical Mongolian is still the official writing system used in China's Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region and finds limited use in the Buryat region of Russia.

In the early 1930s, Classical Mongolian script was replaced with a short-lived Latin script that lasted until about 1938. In 1940, under the strong influence of the Russians, a modified Cyrillic script was introduced in Mongolia that has since proven both useful and practical. Despite numerous attempts to introduce different types of writing, Classical Mongolian has proven to be the most stable vehicle of written Mongolian. With the collapse of authoritarian rule in 1990, Mongolia moved to reinstate Classical Mongolian script as its native script. When secondary schools began teaching traditional Mongolian script, many adults born after 1940 had to learn a completely different writing system. Mongolia's 1992 constitution was printed in Modern (Cyrillic) and Classical (Uighur) Mongolian, making Classical script the official writing of Mongolia once again. The change was made mandatory in 1994, yet not everyone is happy about it, feeling that it may isolate Mongolia even more.

During the 13th and early 14th century, Chinese was the script of choice for writing important Mongolian documents. Mongolians used a modified set of some 500 characters from Early Mandarin Chinese to render the proper pronunciation of words. Perhaps the most important Mongolian document written with Chinese characters is the Secret History of the Mongols. Among the many challenges faced by scholars in deciphering this text was the problem that words were used which appeared nowhere else, not even in the famous Barbarian Glossaries, Chinese dictionaries of the Middle Ages that dealt with a number of Central and Northeast Asian languages. It is interesting to note that using Chinese characters to write Mongolian meant that messages encoded in this system were obscure to a Chinese messenger, yet perfectly understandable to a Mongolian listener.

A famous 13th century Tibetan monk and scholar named Phagsba designed a system of square writing known as the Unified Writing of the Yüan. Phagsba, or Square Writing, combined features of Tibetan, Chinese (vertical writing direction), and Mongolian. Despite its functionality, it never established itself and fell by the wayside after the fall of the Yüan Dynasty. Nevertheless, Phagsba script is a valuable research tool that yields insights into the phonetics and phonology of 14th century Mongolian and Chinese dictionaries.

The uniquely beautiful and intriguing script of the Soyombo alphabet was created in 1686 by the famous Mongolian monk, Zanabazar. Capable of representing not only Mongolian, but Tibetan and Sanskrit as well, this complex script never established itself as an everyday writing system, but it survives today in the form of inscriptions on Mongolian prayer mills and temples. A variant of the opening symbol of the Soyombo script became the national symbol of Mongolia and can be seen literally everywhere in the country, from the national flag and money to official stamps and documents.

The Mongolian People's Republic, as it was then known, first started using a modified Russian Cyrillic alphabet in 1940. It has been in widespread use ever since 1944. With virtually all newspapers, books, etc. now being printed in Cyrillic, it remains the major vehicle for written communication in Mongolia. The only difference between Mongolian Cyrillic based on the Khalkha dialect and Russian Cyrillic is that Mongolian Cyrillic has two additional characters for a total of 35. Mongolian can be transliterated using the Roman alphabet, but Cyrillic gives a much better representation of Mongolian sounds than the paltry 26 of the Roman alphabet. The variety of romanization techniques that have been used caused such confusion that a loose standard was adopted in 1987. As a result, Mongolia's capital city, previously written as Ulan Bator (Russian spelling), is now Ulaan Baatar.

Compared with the functionality of Classical Mongolian script, Mongolian Cyrillic is not as transparent to speakers of other Mongolian dialects. Its clearly phonetic notation does however, make it easy to understand if it is read aloud. This characteristic also makes it easy to search Mongolian dictionaries. Since Mongolian Cyrillic is structurally similar to Latin, it can be integrated into the world of modern information technology which will further promote the solid standing of Cyrillic writing in modern Mongolia.