Mongolian languages

Mongolian languages
Family of about eight Altaic languages spoken by five to seven million people in central Eurasia.

All Mongolian languages are relatively closely related; those languages whose speakers left the core area in Mongolia the earliest tend to be the most divergent. The most remote language is Mogholi (Moghul, Mongol), now spoken by fewer than 200 people in western Afghanistan. Less divergent are the languages of several ethnic groups in northwestern China, eastern Qinghai, and adjacent parts of Gansu and Inner Mongolia, altogether spoken by fewer than 500,000 people. The core languages are Mongolian proper, the dominant dialect in the Republic of Mongolia and the basis of Modern Standard Mongolian, and a group of peripheral dialects. The core group of Mongolian speakers traditionally have used Classical Mongolian as their literary language; it is written in a vertical alphabetic script borrowed from the Uighurs (see Turkic languages). Modern Mongolian was written in this script until 1946, when the People's Republic of Mongolia introduced a script using a modified Cyrillic alphabet. With political democratization in the 1990s, the old script has been revived. In Inner Mongolia it has been in continuous use.

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Introduction

      one of three subfamilies of the Altaic language family. The Mongolian languages are spoken in Mongolia and adjacent parts of east-central Asia. Their subclassification is controversial, and no one scheme has won universal approval. The central Mongolian languages are usually divided into a western group, consisting of the closely related Oryat (spoken in Mongolia and in the Xinjiang region of China) and Kalmyk (Russia), and an eastern group, consisting of the closely related Buryat (Russia) and Mongol (Mongolia and China) languages. Outlying languages—Moghol (spoken in Afghanistan), Daur (Inner Mongolia, China), Yellow Uighur (Gansu province, China), and the related groups of Monguor (Tu), Dongxiang, and Bao'an (Bonan), which are spoken on the border between the provinces of Gansu and Qinghai—exhibit archaic features. All of the central, but none of the outlying, languages have written forms.

      The history of the Mongolian language, both spoken and written, consists of three periods. The divisions of the spoken language are Old, or Ancient, Mongolian (through the 12th century), Middle Mongolian (13th–16th centuries), and New, or Modern, Mongolian (17th century to the present). Old Mongolian is reconstructed from borrowings in other languages and by comparison of the recorded Mongolian languages. The Mongolian vertical script language developed at the end of the 12th century; the oldest extant text dates from roughly 1225. The Pre-Classical period of the written language corresponds to Middle Mongolian. This language is slightly more archaic than the contemporary Middle Mongolian recorded in Chinese transcription in the Secret History of the Mongols (c. 1240) and in other texts and glosses in the Chinese, 'Phags-pa, Persian, and Latin scripts. The conversion of the Mongols to Buddhism (c. 1575) ushered in the Classical period (17th and early 18th centuries) of translation of scriptural texts from Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese, and this period corresponds to the commencement of the Modern period of the spoken language. Not until the 19th century did features of contemporary spoken Mongolian languages begin to appear in Mongolian texts.

      With the translation of Buddhistic texts, Mongolian received a large number of Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, and Uighur terms, including not only technical religious words but also personal names and astronomical and calendrical terms.

      At the end of the Ancient Mongolian period, the Mongolian language began to spread from its original homeland, and, during the Middle Mongolian period, various dialects began to develop into separate languages. The outlying languages—which today survive as Moghol in Afghanistan; Daur in the east; and Monguor (Tu), Bao'an (Bonan), and Santa (Dongxiang) in the south—were isolated from the main body of Mongolian languages when the tide of Mongol conquest receded. These languages diverged from the main group of Mongolian dialects and to this day retain archaic features characteristic of Middle Mongolian that have been lost in other Mongolian languages; e.g., many retain /f/ and /h/ from Proto-Altaic */p/ (an asterisk identifies a sound as a hypothetical, reconstructed form), as well as unassimilated vowel sequences. An example of the latter phenomenon is Middle Mongolian e'ü (which in Classical Mongolian contained a medial velar, egü), where other languages have merged the vowels into a single, long vowel (thus ṻ).

Moghol
      The Moghol language has been reported to be spoken by no more than 200 elderly people of a few thousand ethnic Moghols living near Herāt in Afghanistan. It is unique in preserving the high back unrounded vowel /ɯ/. Unlike some of the other outlying languages, it has lost Proto-Altaic */p/, but it preserves some unassimilated vowel sequences. The phonology and syntax of Moghol have been affected by Persian, and it has borrowed a large number of words from that language, including some function words. Like Daur, it is not closely related to any other extant Mongolian language.

Daur
      Daur is spoken in several places in the northeastern portion of Inner Mongolia. It preserves some unassimilated vowel sequences, and one dialect preserves /h/. It is unique in preserving a complete set of forms of the old verb a- ‘to be' and in preserving complete sets of forms for both inclusive and exclusive ‘we'. Some Daur speakers used Manchu as their written language, and the influence of Manchu on Daur vocabulary and grammar led some to misclassify it as a Manchu-Tungus language.

Other outlying languages
      There is no general agreement concerning relationships within the southern group of Mongolian languages. Monguor (Tu), Bao'an, and Santa are spoken in isolated communities within a compact area on the border between the Chinese provinces of Gansu and Qinghai. Monguor is similar enough to Bao'an that the latter has sometimes been considered a Monguor dialect. Santa, spoken just east of Bao'an, is less similar. Yellow Uighur (also called Shera Yögur, Jegün Uighur, East Yogur, among other names) is spoken in the north of Gansu proper. It is not to be confused with the Yellow Uighur (Sarö, or Sarig, Uighur, or Yugur, West Yugar) that is a Turkic language; the speakers of the two languages have sometimes been confusingly lumped together. Several other names of dialects or languages (e.g., Aragwa, Sanquan, Shirongol) were mistakenly reported or identified by scholars.

      The southern group of Mongolian languages generally preserve unassimilated vowel sequences and retain /h/; in Monguor, Bao'an, and Santa, the earlier stage, /f/, occurs as well. Unlike other Mongolian languages, Monguor, Bao'an, and Yellow Uighur have stress on the last syllable, with loss or weakening of some initial syllables.

The Eastern and Western groups
      The split between Eastern Mongolian (Khalkha, Buryat, and the dialects of Inner Mongolia) and Western Mongolian (Oyrat and Kalmyk) occurred at a later stage than that between the peripheral, archaizing languages and the central group. So many features—the loss of initial /h/, reduction of vowel sequences to long vowels, development of rounded vowels in noninitial syllables, assimilation of /i/ to the vowel of the next syllable, and so on—are shared by the Eastern and Western groups that most contemporary linguists no longer consider the east-west split the primary division in the genealogy of the Mongolian languages. Eastern and Western Mongolian languages differ primarily in regard to a few relatively recent innovations, such as the development of labial harmony in the Eastern group. For example, where Khalkha rounds a to o following o, as in mor'or ‘by horse,' Kalmyk retains a in the ending -ar.

      The terms Oyrat (not to be confused with Oirot [Altai], a Turkic language) and Kalmyk have been used in various ways, sometimes as synonyms. Historically, this Mongol group lived west of Lake Baikal, in southeastern Siberia. Subsequently they spread to Dzungaria (now in China's Xinjiang autonomous region). In the early 17th century a portion of the Dzungarian Kalmyk migrated and established a kingdom on the Volga, near the Caspian Sea. When, in 1771, these people returned east to the Ili River valley in Dzungaria, a portion were unable to leave; the descendants of those who remained (the only Mongolian-speaking people of Europe) are called Kalmyk, though the Ili Oyrat are also referred to as Kalmyk by some. After World War II Stalin exiled the entire Kalmyk group to Siberia for alleged collaboration with the Germans, but in 1957 they were restored to Kalmykia.

      Linguistically speaking, the designation Kalmyk refers to the Cyrillic written language of the European Mongols and their spoken dialects, while the designation Oyrat refers to the vertical script language and its associated dialects in Asia. Spoken Oyrat so defined is, however, little differentiated from Kalmyk as a spoken language, save in vocabulary.

      The separate political and cultural histories of the east-central Mongolian peoples (the Buryat were conquered by the Russians in the mid-17th century and Inner Mongolia by the Manchu; the Manchu did not conquer Outer Mongolia until a half century later; Outer but not Inner Mongolia obtained independence from China in the 20th century) are reflected in their choices of script and in their distinctive vocabularies, and they justify reference to separate Buryat and Mongol languages, as well as, perhaps, to Inner and Outer (Khalkha) Mongolian, though the closely related spoken dialects hardly warrant such distinctions.

      Buryat differs from Mongol principally in its Russified vocabulary and in a few features of its phonology and morphology, most notably the change of /s/ to /h/ and the development of personal endings on the verb. The spoken languages of Inner and Outer (Khalkha) Mongolia, apart from vocabulary, likewise do not constitute distinct groupings.

      Consequently, while all scholars recognize a Mongol or (Eastern) Mongolian spoken language, they disagree on whether or not spoken Buryat is a language distinct from it. Further, although scholars are generally agreed in recognizing at least the following dialects—Chakhar, Darkhan, Ju Uda, Khalkha, Kharchin, Khorchin, Ordos (Urdus), and Ulan Tsab (Urat)—the number of dialects and their allocation to yet larger groupings remain a source of controversy.

Robert I. Binnick

Additional Reading
N. Poppe, Introduction to Mongolian Comparative Studies (1955), is principally a comparative grammar but contains as well history and description of the various languages and a brief history of scholarship. Articles on the Mongolian languages and the family as a whole are found in Handbuch der Orientalistik, vol. 5, part 2, Mongolistik (1964), along with a brief history of scholarship. A comprehensive bibliography is H.G. Schwarz, Bibliotheca Mongolica, vol. 1, Works in English, French, and German (1978).Robert I. Binnick

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Universalium. 2010.

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