Traditional Mongolian alphabet

U 1800 - U 18 AF

The classical Mongolian script was the first of a series of writings that have been developed or adapted for the Mongolian language. It is with minor changes even today ( since 1994 in addition to the Cyrillic alphabet ) used in Mongolia and in Inner Mongolia in China to write Mongolian and Evenki.

The font, an alphabet was created in 1208 by the Uyghur scribe Tatar - Tonga. He had been captured during a campaign against the Naiman of the Mongols, and was then commissioned by Genghis Khan to set a font for the Mongolian language. To this end, he adapted to the Uyghur alphabet to the new requirements. This stemmed from his hand on the Sogdian alphabet from the Aramaic script. Its biggest feature is the direction of writing, she runs vertically from top to bottom and columns from left to right (all other vertical writings go from right to left). The Uyghur had their writing ( right to left, lines from top to bottom ) rotated 90 ° counter-clockwise to make the vertical Chinese writing similar.

• 2.1 Different forms
• 2.2 Historical forms

• 3.1 Galik script
• 3.2 Clear writing
• 3.3 Vaghintara font

• 4.1 scheme

Character

The individual characters take different forms, depending on whether they are taking an initial, medial, or final position in the word. In some cases there are additional graphic variations, the choice of which depends on the visual interaction with each subsequent character.

The alphabet used in each case the same character for some vowel (o / u, ö / ü, final a / e ) and consonant pairs (t / d, k / g, sometimes ž / y) in the Mongolian language, which is not in Uighur were distinguished. The result is roughly comparable with the situation in English, which must represent 10 or more vowels with 5 characters, and the digraph th used for two different sounds. It still relatively rarely comes to real ambiguities, because the requirements of vowel harmony and syllable formation usually provide for a clear definition.

Alphabet

[note 2]

[note 4]

Transcribed Tibetan U 0 F44; Sanskrit ङ.

Transcribed Tibetan U 0 F54;

Originally often interchangeable with y below.

Footnotes:

Unicode

Examples

Different forms

Historical forms

Derived fonts

Galik script

1587 developed the translator and scholar Ayuusch Güüsch the Galik script ( Али - гали, Ali Gali ), inspired by the third Dalai Lama, Sonam Gyatso. He added the Mongolian script in the first place more characters added to translate religious texts from Sanskrit and Tibetan, and later also from Chinese. Some of these characters are to be written still in use today to loanwords and foreign language names (see the bottom section of the table above).

Clear writing

1648 created the oiratische monk Zaja Pandit this variant, to more closely approximate to the actual discussion with a written language, and to facilitate the transcription of Tibetan and Sanskrit. The font was used by Kalmyks of Russia until 1924, and then replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet. In Xinjiang, in China it is still used today by the Oirat.

Vaghintara font

Another variant was developed in 1905 by the Buryat monk Agvan Dorjiev ( 1850-1938 ). You should also eliminate some ambiguities and in addition to Mongolian enable the writing of the Russian language. However, the most significant change was the elimination of the positional shape variations of character. All characters based on the medial form of the original Mongolian script.

Unicode

The Unicode standard has its own Unicode block Mongolian. It includes letters, numbers and various punctuation characters for Mongolian, the clear writing, Xibe and Manchu, as well as extensions for the transcription of Sanskrit and Tibetan.

Scheme

Although the Mongolian script is listed in the standard, it is still always a phonetic transcription based on the Qahar dialect. Thus, for example ᠤ ᠯ ᠠ ᠭ ᠠ ᠨ ᠬ ᠠ ᠳ ᠠ ᠬ ᠣ ᠲ ᠠ not transcribed as Ûlaganhada Hota, but rather Ulaanhad hôt ( strict) or Ulanhad hot ( wide).

Although it is recommended as part of the standards to use the strict transcription in transcription of place names and the general transcription in general, strict transcription is hardly used in practice, for example, instead of actually Hohhot Hohhot. In some cases, the SASM / GNC / SRC transcription of Mongolian is even associated with the Hanyu pinyin, for example, Huhhot or Huhehot.