The Mongolian language is part of the Altaic language macro family, which includes Turkic, Tungusic languages. There are over 5 million people who speak Mongolian all over the world and of course, it’s mainly concentrated in Outer Mongolia. The Mongolian language family includes Buryat spoken in Russia, Kalmyk spoken in Russia and Kyrgyzstan, Oirat and Ordos spoken in Inner Mongolia, and Mogol spoken in Afghanistan.
The largest dialects are Khorchin in eastern China, Chakhar in northern China, and Khalkha, which is mostly dominated by modern Mongolia.
The Mongolian vertical script was first captured back in 1208 from the Uyghur alphabet. When Chinggis Khaan defeats Turk tribes in Central Asia and later the “The Secter History of the Mongolia” was written in 1240. This script is well known as traditional script or Mongol bichig.
Mongol bichig is written from top to bottom and from left to right. One letter can be written differently depending on its position in the word.
And the script is quite popular in modern Mongolia and the government plans to bring it back by 2025.
Mongol bichig is not the only script in Mongolian history. There were many other scripts such as Phags-pa, Soyombo, and Foded script which were created by the Mongolians in the 14th to the 17th century.
In February 1941, the Mongolian government abolished the traditional Mongolian script, after which Cyrillic was adopted as the official writing system in Mongolia.
Mongolian grammer is an agglutinative. And modern Mongolian vocabulary has borrowed words from neighbor countries from all stages of his history. For example, there are many Buddhist terms from the Tibetans, Chinese from the Manchu, and some Russian from the late 20th century.
If you are going to visit Mongolia, here are some common words you should learn.
Sain baina uu? ( sain bain uu) – Hello or How are You
Bayarlalaa ( bayarllaa ) – Thank you
Chinii ner hen ve? (chinii nyer khyen ve) – What is your name?
Bayartai (bairta) – Good bye!
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