Writing systems of the Mongols. Why did the Mongols switch to Cyrillic?

INFORMATION FOR TOURISTS

MONGOLIAN LANGUAGE AND WRITING

The Mongolian language belongs to the Mongolian group of the Altai macrofamily of languages. The official language of Mongolia is based on the Khalkha dialect, which is spoken by the majority of the country's population.

Over the centuries, the Mongols had five different scripts and alphabets. One of the Uyghur scripts began to be used from the X-XIII centuries, passing long haul: Phoenicians Sogdians Uyghurs Khitans.

The Khitans used the "Great Khitan Script", similar to hieroglyphic Chinese, and in 925 announced the "Little Khitan Script", probably borrowed from the Uyghurs. Mongolian characters are written from top to bottom and from right to left. There are special cursive writing methods and rules for abbreviating words. Old Mongolian writing is still used today autonomous region Inner Mongolia (China).

IN 1269 monk Pagwa, on the orders of Khubilai, based on the Tibetan alphabet, the Mongolian alphabet (square letter) was compiled, which was used for a century until the fall of the Yuan dynasty (1260-1368).

IN 1986 The head of the Buddhist church Undur-gegen Zanabazar compiled an alphabet from the signs of the ideogram "soyombo". It includes letters based on the spelling of the 16 vowels and 34 consonants of Indian Sanskrit. Some difficulty in writing the letters of this alphabet prevented its wide distribution among the people.

IN 30s of XX century. the Mongols began to use latin letters, but they were only used to write newspaper headlines and posters.

In Mongolia since 1945 the Mongolian script is replaced by a script based on the Russian alphabet, based on the Cyrillic alphabet. Two more letters were added to the letters of the Russian alphabet - fita and izhitsa - to convey the sounds of the front row specific to the Mongolian language. By 1950, as a result of the fight against illiteracy, all Mongols learned to read and write. Illiteracy was destroyed for short time and Mongolia for the first time in its history acquired a unified written language.

Since 1978, interest in the revival of Old Mongolian writing has increased sharply, and it was included in curriculum secondary schools. In 1990, against the backdrop of populist statements, a decree was adopted on the return to the old Mongolian script, the implementation of which was supposed to take 10 years. However, to this day this issue has not been resolved. In the Mongolian language, many modern words come from Russian and English.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

"The Mongols created an invaluable written culture." S. Zhambaldorj Sh. Chuluunbaatar.
Bulletin of the center "Moscow-Ulaanbaatar". New!!! 2009

In my life I have come across the Mongolian alphabet twice, and in two different options. The first time was in childhood, when I enthusiastically solved cryptograms from the collection of “Linguistic Problems”. Then I came across an ancient Mongolian version - writing from top to bottom with some squiggles, a little like capital letters. The second time I encountered the Mongolian alphabet was at work. And this was already a modern spelling. I remember then I was very surprised why Mongolia has Cyrillic, and I studied this issue a little.

First

There were many different states on the territory of modern Mongolia. Naturally, there was an ancient alphabet, which was later stopped being used, in my opinion, due to its complexity. As far as I know, the Cyrillic alphabet appeared in Mongolia during a time of close friendship with Soviet Union, although back in the 19th century Russian educators went there, bringing, so to speak, culture to the “illiterate” Asian population. Unfortunately, for some reason Russians still consider Asia an underdeveloped region, although this has not been the case for a long time. In general, we were so friendly with our Mongolian colleagues that it was decided to write down their language with our letters. By the way, the Chuvash language was also written in Cyrillic at the beginning of the 20th century. But Vietnamese language, for example, is written in Latin.

Second

It seems to me that writing down any Asian language using our letters is quite a difficult task. Therefore in Mongolian Cyrillic there are two additional signs, namely:

As I understand it, these are just another “o” and “y”. I know that in the Korean language there are two types of “o”, which are almost indistinguishable to our ears. I think it's the same with Mongolian pronunciation. But the recording of Russian names and surnames in Mongolian is absolutely identical to the writing in Russian.

Kyrgyz Mongolian Tajik Historical: Old Church Slavonic alphabet Romanian Cyrillic *Only official ones are listed
alphabets of UN member states.
Read more.

Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet

Mongolian Cyrillic- alphabet of the Mongolian language based on the Cyrillic alphabet, adopted in the Mongolian People's Republic since 1941. Many other writing systems were used for the Mongolian language (see Mongolian scripts). Outside Mongolia, for example in China, they are still used today.

The modern Mongolian alphabet differs from the Russian alphabet by two additional letters: and.

Difference from previous systems

Rationalistically, the introduction of this alphabet was justified by the need to establish a direct correlation between the spoken phonetic norm and writing. Old Mongolian writing was believed to be inaccessible ordinary people, since the forms of words used in it are significantly outdated, and the study of writing required actually studying the Mongolian language of the Middle Ages, with a large number letters and long-lost tense and case forms. Cyrillization was carried out on the basis of the so-called “clattering” Khalkha dialect (thus, the word “tea” during Cyrillization was finally assigned the phonetic form Mong. tsai, while in the old Mongolian h And ts did not differ). Also, in comparison with the old Mongolian orthography, the “zh” and “z”, “g” and “x” words of the soft series, “o” and “u”, “ө” and “ү” were clearly differentiated. The writing of borrowings from languages ​​that do not have vowel harmony became more accurate, since the Old Mongolian letter automatically implied the identification of the phonetics of the entire word as a soft (front-lingual) or hard (back-lingual) series, which was most often identified by the first syllable.

The main omission of this orthography in relation to phonetics is that in some cases, without knowing the word in advance, there is no opportunity to differentiate sounds [n] And [ŋ] , because special sign For [ŋ] No. This causes, in particular, a problem in the display of Chinese words and names, since in Mongolian words proper, “ь” is used, unlike the Russian language, in places where “i” has ceased to be pronounced, and is therefore rarely used where it is not implied syllable.

Story

The first experiments in using the Cyrillic alphabet for the Mongolian language belonged to Orthodox missionaries and became significant under the leadership of Nil of Irkutsk and Nerchinsky in the 1840s. Since then, a number of Cyrillic Orthodox church publications have appeared in various Mongolian languages, not using a single graphic standard.

In the 1990s, the idea of ​​returning to the old Mongolian script was put forward, but for a number of reasons this transition was not realized. However, while maintaining the Cyrillic alphabet as the main written language of the country, the Old Mongolian letter again acquired official status and is used in state seals, at the request of the owners - on signs and company logos.

As a reaction to the assimilation of the Mongols of Inner Mongolia by the Chinese population, since the 1990s the Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet has also spread among them as the script of the unassimilated (that is, not sinicized in the field of language) Mongols of Mongolia. In Inner Mongolia, publications in the Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet began to appear, primarily reprints of works by authors from Mongolia. The popularity of this phenomenon is associated not only with aspects of national identity, but also with the temporarily greater friendliness of the computer environment to the Cyrillic alphabet compared to the vertically oriented Old Mongolian script.

ABC

Cyrillic	MFA		Cyrillic	MFA		Cyrillic	MFA		Cyrillic	MFA
A a	a		And and	i		P p	p		H h	tʃ
B b	b		Thy	j		R r	r		Sh sh	ʃ
In in	w		K k	k		With with	s		sch sch	stʃ
G g	ɡ		L l	ɮ		T t	t		Kommersant
D d	d		Mm	m		U y	ʊ		s s	i
Her	je		N n	n		Ү ү	u		b b	ʲ
Her	jɔ		Oh oh	ɔ		F f	f		Uh uh	e
F	dʒ		Ө ө	ɞ		X x	x		Yu Yu	jʊ
Z z	dz					Ts ts	ts		I I	ja

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Notes

An excerpt characterizing the Mongolian alphabet

- How you loved them!.. Who are you, girl?
My throat became very sore and for some time I could not squeeze out a word. It was very painful because of such a heavy loss, and, at the same time, I was sad for this “restless” person, for whom it would be oh, how difficult it would be to exist with such a burden...
- I am Svetlana. And this is Stella. We're just hanging out here. We visit friends or help someone when we can. True, there are no friends left now...
- Forgive me, Svetlana. Although it probably won’t change anything if I ask you for forgiveness every time... What happened happened, and I can’t change anything. But I can change what will happen, right? - the man glared at me with his eyes blue as the sky and, smiling, a sad smile, said: - And yet... You say I’m free in my choice?.. But it turns out - not so free, dear.. It looks more like atonement... Which I agree with, of course. But it is your choice that I am obliged to live for your friends. Because they gave their lives for me... But I didn’t ask for this, right?.. Therefore, it’s not my choice...
I looked at him, completely dumbfounded, and instead of “proud indignation” that was ready to immediately burst from my lips, I gradually began to understand what he was talking about... No matter how strange or offensive it may sound - but all this was the honest truth! Even if I didn't like it at all...
Yes, I was very painful for my friends, for the fact that I would never see them again... that I would no longer have our wonderful, “eternal” conversations with my friend Luminary, in his strange cave filled with light and warmth ... that the laughing Maria would no longer show us the funny places that Dean had found, and her laughter would not ring like a merry bell... And it was especially painful that instead of them this person, completely unfamiliar to us, would now live...
But, again, on the other hand, he did not ask us to intervene... He did not ask us to die for him. I didn't want to take someone's life. And now he will have to live with this heavy burden, trying to “pay” with his future actions the guilt that was not really his fault... Rather, it was the guilt of that terrible, unearthly creature who, having captured the essence of our stranger, killed “right and left.”
But it certainly wasn't his fault...
How could it be possible to decide who was right and who was wrong if the same truth was on both sides?.. And, without a doubt, to me, a confused ten-year-old girl, life seemed at that moment too complicated and too many-sided to be possible. somehow decide only between “yes” and “no”... Since in each of our actions there was too much different sides and opinions, and it seemed incredibly difficult to find the right answer that would be right for everyone...
– Do you remember anything at all? Who were you? What's your name? How long have you been here? – in order to get away from a sensitive and unpleasant topic, I asked.
The stranger thought for a moment.
- My name was Arno. And I only remember how I lived there on Earth. And I remember how I “left”... I died, didn’t I? And after that I can’t remember anything else, although I really would like to...
- Yes, you “left”... Or died, if you prefer. But I'm not sure this is your world. I think you should live on the “floor” above. This is the world of “crippled” souls... Those who killed someone or seriously offended someone, or even simply deceived and lied a lot. This scary world, probably the one that people call Hell.
- Where are you from then? How could you get here? – Arno was surprised.
- This long story. But this is really not our place... Stella lives at the very top. Well, I’m still on Earth...
– How – on Earth?! – he asked, stunned. – Does this mean you’re still alive?.. How did you end up here? And even in such horror?
“Well, to be honest, I don’t like this place too much either...” I smiled and shuddered. - But sometimes very good people. And we are trying to help them, just as we helped you...
- What should I do now? I don’t know anything here... And, as it turned out, I killed too. So this is exactly my place... And someone should take care of them,” Arno said, affectionately patting one of the kids on the curly head.
The kids looked at him with ever-increasing confidence, but the little girl generally clung to him like a tick, not intending to let go... She was still very tiny, with big gray eyes and a very funny, smiling face of a cheerful monkey. IN normal life, on the “real” Earth, she was probably a very sweet and affectionate child, beloved by everyone. Here, after all the horrors she had experienced, her clear, funny face looked extremely exhausted and pale, and horror and melancholy constantly lived in her gray eyes... Her brothers were a little older, probably 5 and 6 years old. They looked very scared and serious , and unlike their little sister, they did not express the slightest desire to communicate. The girl, the only one of the three, apparently wasn’t afraid of us, because having very quickly gotten used to her “newfound” friend, she asked quite briskly:
- My name is Maya. Can I please stay with you?.. And my brothers too? We have no one now. We will help you,” and turning to Stella and me, she asked, “Do you live here, girls?” Why do you live here? It's so scary here...
With her incessant barrage of questions and her manner of asking two people at once, she reminded me a lot of Stella. And I laughed heartily...
– No, Maya, we, of course, don’t live here. You were very brave to come here yourself. It takes a lot of courage to do something like this... You are truly great! But now you have to go back to where you came from; you have no reason to stay here anymore.
– Are mom and dad “completely” dead?.. And we won’t see them again... Really?
Maya’s plump lips twitched, and the first large tear appeared on her cheek... I knew that if this was not stopped now, there would be a lot of tears... And in our current “generally nervous” state, this was absolutely impossible to allow...
– But you’re alive, aren’t you?! Therefore, whether you like it or not, you will have to live. I think that mom and dad would be very happy if they knew that everything was fine with you. They loved you very much...” I said as cheerfully as I could.

A review of Mongolian writing, including the one that Mongolia is trying to return, in our review.

In an illustration from the website of the Russian edition of Radio “Voice of Mongolia”:

This is what the old Mongolian script looks like.

“On the eve of the 100th anniversary of the National Liberation Revolution of 1911, the President of Mongolia issued a decree on expanding the official use of the Old Mongolian script in order to accelerate the implementation of public policy on the restoration of national writing.

According to the decree, official letters from the President, Chairman of the Parliament, Prime Minister and members of the Government of Mongolia addressed to persons at relevant levels of foreign states must be drawn up in the national script, and translations into one of them must be attached. official languages UN or in the language of the recipient country.

“Birth certificate, marriage certificate and all educational documents issued educational institutions of all levels, must be written simultaneously in both Cyrillic and Old Mongolian script,” the decree says. The President also gave directives to the government to accelerate the progress of the “National Program for the Dissemination of Mongolian Writing-2”, approved in 2008. The decree came into force on July 11, 2011,” reported Mnogolya Foreign Broadcasting. End of quote.

About Old Mongolian writing

Let's talk about old Mongolian writing. The Old Mongolian script was abolished in Mongolia in 1941, after the transition to the Cyrillic alphabet, before that to short term the country was switching to the Latin alphabet.

The Old Mongolian classical script was developed at the behest of Genghis Khan, according to legend, by a captive Uyghur scribe precisely on the basis of the Uyghur script (which has roots in the Sogdian and Aramaic alphabets).

Note that the Sogdians are representatives of the disappeared Eastern Iranian people, who, having mixed with the Persian tribes, became the ancestors of the modern Tajiks. (In Tajikistan, the name of the Sogd region reminds of the Sogdians). Sogdian writing was based on the Aramaic alphabet - script from right to left. Aramaic, in turn, was spoken by many Semitic peoples. By the way, Aramaic is the language of Christ. Now Kurdish languages ​​are close to Aramaic.

And the Uyghur Turkic people, who also took part in the creation of the Mongolian classical writing, now known as Old Mongolian, still live in what is now China.

Features of Old Mongolian writing

Genghis Khan demanded from the Uyghur scribe that the new writing reflect the most archaic form of the language, in order to unite the speakers of various dialects and strengthen the unity of the Mongol tribes.

Old Mongolian script is vertical (columns go from left to right). Verticality is believed to be due to influence on the Uyghurs and Sogdians Chinese writing, since archaeological scientists discover shards and other variants of recording signs, but in the course of the historical process, vertical recording won.

Mongolian language and writing. From history

In the Mongolian languagePerii was a variety of Mongolian that is now known as Middle Mongolian.

However, later in the states formed under the rule of Genghis Khan’s relatives in different parts Eurasia and at first still recognized the power of the main khan - the so-called. Great Khan, Mongolian was no longer the main language.

In the Golden Horde (a state that arose as an ulus of Genghis Khan's eldest son Jochi, it adjoined the Russian principalities, which were under his vassalage), Kipchak, now extinct, belonged to the Turkic family of languages).

In the state of the Ilkhans, founded by the grandson of Genghis Khan Hulagu and located in the Middle East (present-day Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Central Asia), along with the Central Mongolian state language became Persian.

In China, where the Mongols founded the Yuan Dynasty ("new beginning"), the rulers adopted the Chinese language, to its former main capital.

In Mongolia itself, which had ceased to be a world power, the Mongolian language, now known as Khalkha Mongol, from the dominant Mongol group in the territory (lit. "shield") continued to be spoken.

Mongolian writing changed quite dramatically several times:

Old Mongolian script developed in 1204, created at the behest of Genghis Khan based on the Uyghur alphabet, as discussed above.

In 1269, the square letter Pagba Lama appeared based on Tibetan symbols, created by order of the Great Khan, founder of the Yuan dynasty, Kublai Kublai, to better reflect Chinese words V. The classical Mongolian script was not suitable for recording languages ​​with a different phonology from Mongolian, in particular for Chinese language. Therefore, when the Mongol rulers conquered China, Kublai Khan ordered the creation of a new script, called the “square Mongol script,” which went out of circulation after the expulsion of the Mongol rulers from China

In 1648, based on the old Mongolian letter, the Buddhist monk Zaya-Pandit developed its improvement - todo-bichig (i.e. “clear letter”). "Todo bichig" was created to better reflect the pronunciation in writing.

In 1686, the ruler of Mongolia, Zanabazar, created something new - a graphic variation based on Indian symbols, called the Soyombo script. The first Mongolian Bogdo-Gegen Dzanabadzar, a spiritual-secular ruler who already ruled the remnants Mongol Empire, in order to better convey Tibetan and Sanskrit words, and the Mongols from shamanists became Tibetan Buddhists, created the Soyombo writing based on Indian characters, the first - where the letters were written not vertically, but horizontally. The font symbol is the national emblem of Mongolia, depicted on the flag and coat of arms.

The Eastern heritage was rejected in 1941, when Mongolia switched to Latin writing, which already in 1943, on orders from Moscow, was replaced by the more ideologically correct Cyrillic alphabet.

Naturally, the Cyrillic alphabet and, to some extent, the Old Mongolian alphabet can be called more or less commonly used in modern Mongolia.

The newspaper “Humuun Bichig” is now published in the Old Mongolian script, the only one in the country published in the Old Mongolian script. Old Mongolian writing also began to be taught in schools.

Nowadays in the Republic of Mongolia there is a very slow, almost imperceptible process of transition from the Cyrillic alphabet to the Old Mongolian alphabet. Interestingly, the Mongols of the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia officially retained a script based on Old Mongolian, although they suffer from the dominance of the Chinese language. (By the way, the Mongols of Inner Mongolia are the majority of the Mongols in the world. Of the approximately 8-10 million Mongols in the world, only 2.5 million live in independent Mongolia, and more than 6 million in China., incl. 4th million in Inner Mongolia).

The main asset of any people is its language and writing. They give originality, allow you to establish national identity and stand out from others. For my centuries-old history The Mongols managed to try about ten different alphabets; now these people mainly use the Cyrillic alphabet. As descendants of the conquerors who founded Golden Horde, switched to a writing system similar to Russian? And why not Latin or Old Mongolian script?

Many alphabets, one language

Many have tried to develop an alphabet suitable for the Mongolian language and all its dialects. Myself legendary commander Genghis Khan, creating a huge empire, became concerned with the need to establish a document flow in order to record orders and draw up contracts.
There is a legend that in 1204, after defeating the Naiman tribe, the Mongols captured a scribe named Tatatunga. By order of Genghis Khan, he created a writing system for the conquerors based on his native Uyghur alphabet. All documents of the Golden Horde were compiled using the developments of a captive scribe.
A characteristic feature of Old Mongolian writing is its vertical orientation: words are written from top to bottom, and lines are arranged from left to right. Some researchers explain this fact by the fact that it was easier for a warrior galloping on his war horse to read scrolls compiled in this way.
In the 90s of the 20th century, in the homeland of Genghis Khan, the old Mongolian script was returned to official status, but its scope of application is limited to company logos and names of organizations, since this alphabet is outdated and does not correspond to modern pronunciation. In addition, the old Mongolian script is not convenient for working on a computer.
However, a modified version of this alphabet is used in Inner Mongolia, a region of China where the main population is the descendants of the legendary conquerors.
Subsequently, there were several more variants of Mongolian writing. For example, at the end of the 13th century Tibetan monk Pagba Lama (Dromton Chogyal Pagpa) developed the so-called square script based on the symbols of Chinese phonetics. And in 1648, another monk, Zaya-Pandita of Oirat, created todo-bichig (clear writing), focusing on Tibetan writing and Sanskrit. The Mongolian scientist Bogdo Dzanabazar developed soyombo at the end of the 17th century, and the Buryat monk Agvan Dorzhiev (1850-1938) developed vagindra. The main goal these scientists were creating an alphabet most suitable for translation sacred texts into Mongolian.

Writing is a political issue

The use of certain symbols to record a language is not so much a matter of convenience and linguistic conformity as it is a choice of the sphere of political influence. By using the same alphabet, peoples inevitably become closer and enter into a common cultural space. In the twentieth century, Mongolia, like many other countries, actively sought self-determination, so writing reform was inevitable.
Revolutionary transformations in this Asian state began in 1921, and soon socialist power was established throughout Mongolia. The new leadership decided to abandon the old Mongolian script, which was used to translate religious texts ideologically alien to the communists, and switch to the Latin alphabet.
However, the reformers encountered strong resistance from many representatives of the local intelligentsia, some of whom were supporters of modifying the old Mongolian script, while others argued that the Latin alphabet was not suitable for their language. After accusations of nationalism and a wave of repressions in the second half of the 30s of the twentieth century, the linguistic reformers simply had no opponents left.
The Latin alphabet was officially approved in Mongolia on February 1, 1941, and a modified version of this alphabet began to be used for printing newspapers and books. But less than two months passed before this decision of the country’s leadership was canceled. And on March 25, 1941, the people were announced about the imminent transition to the Cyrillic alphabet. Since 1946, all media began to use this alphabet, and since 1950, legal documents began to be compiled in it.
Of course, the choice in favor of the Cyrillic alphabet was made by the Mongolian authorities under pressure from the USSR. At that time, the languages ​​of all peoples of the RSFSR, Central Asia and neighboring states, which were under the strong influence of Moscow, were transferred to the Cyrillic alphabet by order.
Only the inhabitants of Inner Mongolia, which is part of the People's Republic of China, still have the same vertical writing system. As a result, representatives of one nation, separated by a border, enjoy two different alphabets and do not always understand each other.
In 1975, under the leadership of Mao Zedong, preparations began to translate the language of Inner Mongolia into the Latin alphabet, but the death of the head of the Chinese communist party did not allow this plan to come true.
Now some Mongolians who are citizens of the PRC use the Cyrillic alphabet to emphasize their national identity as a counterbalance to the assimilating influence of the Chinese authorities.

Cyrillic or Latin?

Unlike the Russian alphabet, the Mongolian version of the Cyrillic alphabet has two additional letters: Ү and Ө. The developers managed to distinguish between the dialect sounds of the sounds Ch and C, Zh and Z, G and X, O and U, Ө and Ү. And yet, this type of writing does not provide a complete correlation between writing and pronunciation.
Although the Latin alphabet cannot be called a suitable alphabet for the Mongolian language, this type of writing has its drawbacks. Not all sounds are the same when written and pronounced.
In the 1990s, in the wake of the rejection of communist ideology and the search for a further path of development, there was an attempt to return the old Mongolian writing, but it ended in failure. This alphabet no longer corresponds to the trends of the times, and translating everything scientific terms, formulas, textbooks and office work in the country for the vertical version of writing turned out to be an impractical, costly and labor-intensive process. Such a reform would take a lot of time: we would have to wait for representatives of the next generation, educated in Old Mongolian, to start working as teachers.
As a result, having given the original alphabet the status of official, the Mongols use it only for decorative purposes, continuing to write in Cyrillic, although from time to time there are calls in the country to switch to the Latin alphabet.
Wanting to demonstrate your national independence, at the end of the twentieth century beginning of XXI centuries, the states of Central Asia abandoned the Cyrillic alphabet imposed on them during the Soviet era. Even in Tatarstan, which is part of Russia, there was talk of writing reform. This process is actively lobbied by Turkey, which switched to the Latin alphabet in 1928, as well as its NATO allies - Great Britain and the USA, who are interested in spreading their cultural influence in Asia.
However, Mongolia's transition to the Latin alphabet is unlikely for several reasons.
Firstly, this country is not one of the Turkic-speaking states, unlike its neighbors from Central Asia, and therefore the opinion of official Ankara does not have of great importance in Ulaanbaatar.
Secondly, the Mongols do not have a strong desire to distance themselves from Russia. Despite the repressions of the 30s of the twentieth century, this country also remembers the good things that were done with the help of the USSR: the construction of enterprises, hospitals, educational centers, and infrastructure facilities.
Thirdly, Mongolians fear the growing influence of China, which is seeking to assimilate all neighboring peoples. The Cyrillic alphabet serves as a kind of cultural buffer that prevents the Mongols from being deprived of their national identity.
In addition, as we mentioned above, the Latin alphabet is also not entirely suitable for the Mongolian language, just like the Cyrillic alphabet. That's why special meaning Residents of this country do not see changing one alphabet for another.