Mongolian script

Mongolian script
Script type	Alphabet
Time period	ca.1204 – today
Direction	Vertical left-to-right, left-to-right
Languages	Mongolian language Evenki language
Related scripts
Parent systems	Proto-Sinaitic alphabet Phoenician alphabet Aramaic alphabet Syriac alphabet Sogdian alphabet Old Uyghur alphabet Uyghurjin script Mongolian script
Child systems	Manchu script Clear script Vaghintara script
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Mong (145), ​Mongolian
Unicode
Unicode alias	Mongolian
Unicode range	U+1800 – U+18AF

Template:Contains Mongolian script Mongolian script (in Mongolian script: (ᠮᠣᠩᠭᠣᠯ ᠪᠢᠴᠢᠭ᠌) Mongγol bičig; in Mongolian Cyrillic: Монгол бичиг, Mongol bichig), or Hudam Mongolian script (in comparison with Todo Mongolian script), 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 to this day to write both Mongolian and the Evenki language.

History

File:Genghis stone.jpg

The Stele of Yisüngge, possibly the oldest surviving monument in Uyghur-Mongolian script, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia.

The Mongolian vertical script was developed as an adaptation of the Uyghur script to write the Mongolian language. 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. Mongolian sources often distinguish the early forms by using the term Uyghurjin script Mongolian for Uyghur style script). Western sources tend to use this term as a synonym for all variations of the Mongolian script.

The middle period of the development of Mongolian extended from the seventh and eighth to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Mongolian language of this period is divided into southern. eastern and western dialects. The principal monuments of the middle period are: in the eastern dialect, the famous Secret History of the Mongols, monuments in the square script, materials of the Chinese-Mongolian glossary of the fourteenth century, and materials of the Mongolian language of the middle period in Chinese transcription, etc.; in the western dialect, materials of the Arab-Mongolian and Persian-Mongolian dictionaries, Mongolian texts in Arabic transcription, etc. The main features of the period are that the vowels ï and i had lost their phonemic significance, creating the i phoneme; intervocal consonants Y/g, b/w had disappeared and the preliminary process of the formation of Mongolian long vowels had begun; the initial h was preserved in many words; grammatical categories were partially absent, etc. The development over this period explains why Mongolian script look like a vertical Arabic script (in particular the presence of the dots system).

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.

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.

The characters

The word Monggul in the classic script

A KFC in Hohhot. All street signs must be bilingual in Mongol and Chinese.

File:Gaykhatu coin with Khagan's name.jpg

Coin bears the legend "Struck by Rinchindorji Gaykhatu in the name of Khagan" in Mongolian script. (Minted in Iran.)

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. 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	Cyrillic
				a	А	Distinction usually by vowel harmony (see also q/γ and k/g below)
				e	Э
				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.
				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	In classical Mongolian v is used only for transcribing foreign words, so most "В (V)" in Cyrillic Mongolian correspond to "Б (B)" in Classical Mongolian.
				p	П	Only at the beginning of Mongolian words. Transcribes Tibetan པ;
				q	Х	Only with back vowels
				γ	Г	Only with back vowels. Between vowels pronounced as a long vowel in oral Mongolian. The "final" version only appears when followed by an a written detached from the word.
				k	Х	Only with front vowels, but 'ki/gi' can occur in both front and back vowel words Word-finally only g, not k. g between vowels pronounced as long vowel.
				g	Г
				m	М
				l	Л
				s	С
				š	Ш
				t, d	Т, Д	Distinction depending on context.
				č	Ч, Ц	Distinction between /tʃ'/ and /ts'/ in Khalkha Mongolian.
				j	Ж, З	Distinction by context in Khalkha Mongolian.
				y	-Й, Е*, Ё*, Ю*, Я*
				r	Р	Not normally at the beginning of words.
				v	В	Used to transcribe foreign words (Originally used to transcribe Sanskrit व)
				f	Ф	Used to transcribe foreign words
				ḳ	К	Used to transcribe foreign words
				(c)	(ц)	Used to transcribe foreign words (Originally used to transcribe Tibetan /ts'/ ཚ; Sanskrit छ)
				(z)	(з)	Used to transcribe foreign words (Originally used to transcribe Tibetan /dz/ ཛ; Sanskrit ज)
				(h)	(г, х)	Used to transcribe foreign words (Originally used to transcribe Tibetan /h/ ཧ, ྷ; Sanskrit ह)
				(zh)	(-,-)	Transcribes Chinese 'zhi' - used in Inner Mongolia
				(ř)	(-,-)	Transcribes Chinese 'ri' - used in Inner Mongolia
				(chi)	(-,-)	Transcribes Chinese 'chi' - used in Inner Mongolia

Notes:

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.

Derived scripts

Galik script

Main article: Galik script

In 1587, the translator and scholar Ayuush Güüsh (Аюуш гүүш) created the Galik script (Али-гали), inspired by the third Dalai Lama, Sonam Gyatso. It primarily added extra characters for transcribing Tibetan and Sanskrit terms when translating religious texts, and later also from Chinese. Some of those characters are still in use today for writing foreign names (compare table above).

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.

Manchu script

Main article: Manchu alphabet

The Manchu script was developed from the Mongolian script in the early 17th century to write the Manchu language. A variant is still used to write the Xibe language.

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.

Unicode

Mongolian script was added to the Unicode Standard in September, 1999 with the release of version 3.0.

Block

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

Mongolian[1][2] Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

U+180x

᠀

᠁

᠂

᠃

᠄

᠅

᠆

᠇

᠈

᠉

᠊

FVS 1

FVS 2

FVS 3

MVS

FVS 4

U+181x

᠐

᠑

᠒

᠓

᠔

᠕

᠖

᠗

᠘

᠙

U+182x

ᠠ

ᠡ

ᠢ

ᠣ

ᠤ

ᠥ

ᠦ

ᠧ

ᠨ

ᠩ

ᠪ

ᠫ

ᠬ

ᠭ

ᠮ

ᠯ

U+183x

ᠰ

ᠱ

ᠲ

ᠳ

ᠴ

ᠵ

ᠶ

ᠷ

ᠸ

ᠹ

ᠺ

ᠻ

ᠼ

ᠽ

ᠾ

ᠿ

U+184x

ᡀ

ᡁ

ᡂ

ᡃ

ᡄ

ᡅ

ᡆ

ᡇ

ᡈ

ᡉ

ᡊ

ᡋ

ᡌ

ᡍ

ᡎ

ᡏ

U+185x

ᡐ

ᡑ

ᡒ

ᡓ

ᡔ

ᡕ

ᡖ

ᡗ

ᡘ

ᡙ

ᡚ

ᡛ

ᡜ

ᡝ

ᡞ

ᡟ

U+186x

ᡠ

ᡡ

ᡢ

ᡣ

ᡤ

ᡥ

ᡦ

ᡧ

ᡨ

ᡩ

ᡪ

ᡫ

ᡬ

ᡭ

ᡮ

ᡯ

U+187x

ᡰ

ᡱ

ᡲ

ᡳ

ᡴ

ᡵ

ᡶ

ᡷ

ᡸ

U+188x

ᢀ

ᢁ

ᢂ

ᢃ

ᢄ

ᢅ

ᢆ

ᢇ

ᢈ

ᢉ

ᢊ

ᢋ

ᢌ

ᢍ

ᢎ

ᢏ

U+189x

ᢐ

ᢑ

ᢒ

ᢓ

ᢔ

ᢕ

ᢖ

ᢗ

ᢘ

ᢙ

ᢚ

ᢛ

ᢜ

ᢝ

ᢞ

ᢟ

U+18Ax

ᢠ

ᢡ

ᢢ

ᢣ

ᢤ

ᢥ

ᢦ

ᢧ

ᢨ

ᢩ

ᢪ

Notes 1.^ As of Unicode version 16.0 2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

Issues

Although the Mongolian script has been defined in Unicode since 1999, there was no support for Unicode Mongolian from the major vendors until the release of the Windows Vista operating system in 2007, and so Unicode Mongolian is not yet widely used. In China, legacy encodings such as the Private Use Area (PUA) Unicode mappings and GB18030 mappings of the Menksoft IMEs (espc. Menksoft Mongolian IME) are more commonly used than Unicode for writing web pages and electronic documents in Mongolian.

The inclusion of a Unicode Mongolian font and keyboard layout in Windows Vista has meant that Unicode Mongolian is now gradually becoming more popular, but the complexity of the Unicode Mongolian encoding model and the lack of a clear definition for the use variation selectors are still barriers to its widespread adoption, as is the lack of support for inline vertical display. Currently there are no fonts that successfully display all of Mongolian when written in Unicode.

Furthermore, Mongolian language support has suffered from buggy implementations: the initial version of Microsoft's Mongolian Baiti font was, in the supplier's own words, "almost unusable", and as of 2011 there remain some serious bugs with the rendering of suffixes in Mozilla Firefox.

There're also some inherent issues in Unicode (NNBSP-MVS).

External links

• Sample text of Uyghurjin script - printing ()
• Sample text of Uyghurjin script - handwriting (cursive)
• Omniglot: Mongolian Alphabet
• The Silver Horde: Mongol Scripts
• Lingua Mongolia: Mongolian Alphabet, including tutorial
• Inkway Mongolian calligraphy