Overview of the Mongolian Language

The Mongolian language is spoken primarily in Mongolia, where it originated and remains the official language. Smaller colonies of people who speak Mongolian also exist in China, Russia, and Afghanistan.

The Mongolian Alphabet and Mongolian Pronunciation

Over the years, the Mongolian language has been written in a variety of alphabets. The traditional Mongolian alphabet was adopted in 1208, based on an earlier script, and remained in use until 1931, when it was replaced by a version of the Latin alphabet. That alphabet was in turn replaced by a Cyrillic script in 1937. In Mongolia today, the Mongolian language still uses a Cyrillic alphabet, similar but not identical to that of Russian. This Mongolian alphabet has 35 letters. Text is written from left to right, the same as English. Mongolian spelling is generally simple, because most words are spelled like they sound.

One interesting aspect of Mongolian pronunciation is the use of vowel harmony. Mongolian vowels are traditionally divided into two groups: front vowels and back vowels. If the first syllable of a word contains a front vowel, all the remaining vowels in that word must also be front vowels. Likewise, words with back vowels in their first syllable will also have back vowels in the rest of their syllables. The Mongolian language has both long vowel sounds and short vowel sounds, but long vowel sounds only occur in the first syllable of a word.

Mongolian Vocabulary

Mongolian words are often formed from simple roots combined with suffixes that extend or change the meaning. In ancient times, the Mongolian language picked up a great many loan words from Old Turkic, Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese. More modern borrowings have come from Russian, Chinese, and English. Very often, new terminology is formed by translating foreign terms into new words formed with Mongolian roots.

Mongolian Grammar

Mongolian grammar is substantially different from that of English. Mongolian nouns have case, meaning that they change form to indicate their role in a sentence. However, they do not have gender, unlike many European languages with which English speakers may be more familiar. The Mongolian language also does not have definite articles, and it makes very little distinction between nouns and adjectives. The word order for a typical Mongolian sentence is subject-object-verb.

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