The traditional Mongolian script, also known as the Hudum Mongol bichig, was the first writing system created specifically for the Mongolian language, and was the most widespread until the introduction of Cyrillic in 1946. The script is a co-official script in Mongolia since 2025, alongside the Cyrillic script for the language. It is also the official written form being taught in schools for Mongolian ethnic students in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. It is traditionally written in vertical lines from top to bottom, flowing in lines from left to right . Derived from the Old Uyghur alphabet, it is a true alphabet, with separate letters for consonants and vowels. It has been adapted for such languages as Oirat and Manchu. Alphabets based on this classical vertical script continue to be used in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia to write Mongolian, Xibe and, experimentally, Evenki.
Computer operating systems have been slow to adopt support for the Mongolian script; almost all have incomplete support or other text rendering difficulties.
History
The Mongolian vertical script developed as an adaptation of the Old Uyghur alphabet for the Mongolian language. Tata-tonga, a 13th-century Uyghur scribe captured by Genghis Khan, was responsible for bringing the Old Uyghur alphabet to the Mongolian Plateau and adapting it to the form of the Mongolian script.
From the seventh and eighth to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Mongolian language separated into southern, eastern and western dialects. The principal documents from the period of the Middle Mongol language are: in the eastern dialect, the famous text The 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 (in the Chakhar dialect, the Standard Mongolian in Inner Mongolia, these vowels are still distinct); inter-vocal consonants ɣ/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 the Mongolian script looks like a vertical Arabic script (in particular the presence of the dot 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 the letter tsadi became associated with and respectively, and in the 19th century, the Manchu hooked yodh was adopted for initial . Zain was dropped as it was redundant for . Various schools of orthography, some using diacritics, were developed to avoid ambiguity.
Words are written vertically from top to bottom, flowing in lines from left to right. The Old Uyghur script and its descendants, of which traditional Mongolian is one among Oirat Clear, Manchu, and Buryat are the only known 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.György Kara, "Aramaic Scripts for Altaic Languages", in Daniels & Bright The World's Writing Systems, 1994.
The reed pen was the writing instrument of choice until the 18th century, when the brush took its place under Chinese influence. Pens were also historically made of wood, bamboo, bone, bronze, or iron. Ink used was black or cinnabar red, and written with on birch bark, paper, cloths made of silk or cotton, and wooden or silver plates.
Mongols learned their script as a syllabary, dividing the syllables into twelve different classes, based on the final phonemes of the syllables, all of which ended in vowels.Chinggeltei. (1963) A Grammar of the Mongol Language. New York, Frederick Ungar Publishing Co. p. 15.
The script remained in continuous use by Mongolian speakers in Inner Mongolia in the People's Republic of China. In the Mongolian People's Republic, it was largely replaced by the Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet, although the vertical script remained in limited use. In March 2020, the Mongolian government announced plans to increase the use of the traditional Mongolian script and to use both Cyrillic and Mongolian script in official documents by 2025.Official documents to be recorded in both scripts from 2025, Montsame, 18 March 2020.Mongolian Language Law is effective from July 1st, Gogo, 1 July 2015. "Misinterpretation 1: Use of cyrillic is to be terminated and only Mongolian script to be used. There is no provision in the law that states the termination of use of cyrillic. It clearly states that Mongolian script is to be added to the current use of cyrillic. Mongolian script will be introduced in stages and state and local government is to conduct their correspondence in both cyrillic and Mongolian script. This provision is to be effective starting January 1st of 2025. ID, birth certificate, marriage certificate and education certificates are to be both in Mongolian cyrillic and Mongolian script and currently Mongolian script is being used in official letters of President, Prime Minister and Speaker of Parliament." Due to the particularity of the traditional Mongolian script, a large part (40%) of the Sinicized Mongols in China are unable to read or write this script, and in many cases the script is only used symbolically on plaques in many cities.
Names The script is known by a wide variety of names. As it was derived from the Old Uyghur alphabet, the Mongol script is known as the Uighur(-)Mongol script. From 1941 onwards, it became known as the Old Script, in contrast to the New Script, referring to Cyrillic. The Mongolian script is also known as the Hudum or 'not exact' script, in comparison with the Todo 'clear, exact' script, and also as 'vertical script'.
Overview The traditional or classical Mongolian alphabet, sometimes called Hudum 'traditional' in Oirat in contrast to the Clear script (Todo 'exact'), is the original form of the Mongolian script used to write the Mongolian language. It does not distinguish several vowels (/, /, final /) and consonants (syllable-initial / and /, sometimes /) that were not required for Uyghur, which was the source of the Mongol (or Uyghur-Mongol) script. 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. Ambiguity is sometimes prevented by context, as the requirements of vowel harmony and syllable sequence usually indicate the correct sound. Moreover, as there are few words with an exactly identical spelling, actual ambiguities are rare for a reader who knows the orthography.
Letters have different forms depending on their position in a word: initial, medial, or final. In some cases, additional graphic variants are selected for visual harmony with the subsequent character.
The rules for writing below apply specifically for the Mongolian language, unless stated otherwise.
Vowel harmony Mongolian vowel harmony separates the vowels of words into three groups – two mutually exclusive and one neutral: The back, male, masculine,by Manchu convention hard, or yangin Inner Mongolia. vowels , , and . The front, female, feminine, soft, or yin vowels , , and . The neutral vowel , able to appear in all words.
Any Mongolian word can contain the neutral vowel , but only vowels from either of the other two groups. The vowel qualities of visually separated vowels and suffixes must likewise harmonize with those of the preceding word stem. Such suffixes are written with front or neutral vowels when preceded by a word stem containing only neutral vowels. Any of these rules might not apply for foreign words however.
Separated final vowels A separated final form of vowels or ( ) is common, and can appear at the end of a word stem, or suffix. This form requires a final-shaped preceding letter, and a word-internal gap in between. This gap can be transliterated with a hyphen.
The presence or lack of a separated or can also indicate differences in meaning between different words (compare 'black' with 'to look').
It has the same shape as the traditional dative-locative suffix exemplified in the next section. This form of the suffix is, however, more commonly found in older texts, and is restricted in its Post-Classical use.
Separated suffixes
All case suffixes, as well as any plural suffixes consisting of one or two syllables, are likewise separated by a preceding and hyphen-transliterated gap. A maximum of two case suffixes can be added to a stem.
Such single-letter vowel suffixes appear with the final-shaped forms of /, , or /, as in 'to the country' and 'on the day', or 'the state' etc. Multi-letter suffixes most often start with an initial- (consonants), medial- (vowels), or variant-shaped form. Medial-shaped in the two-letter suffix / is exemplified in the adjacent newspaper logo.
Consonant clusters Two medial consonants are the most that can come together in original Mongolian words. There are however, a few loanwords that can begin or end with two or more.
Compound names In the modern language, proper names can usually join two words into graphic compounds (such as those of 'Jasper-jewel' or – the city of Hohhot; as opposed to other compound words). This also allows components of different harmonic classes to be joined together, and vowels of an added suffix will harmonize with those of the latter part of the compound. Orthographic peculiarities are most often retained, as with the short and long teeth of an initial-shaped in 'Bad Girl' (protective name). Medial and , in contrast, are not affected in this way.
Isolate citation forms Isolate citation forms for syllables containing , , , and may in dictionaries appear without a final tail as in / or /, and with a vertical tail as in / or / (as well as in transcriptions of Chinese syllables).
Flaws In the traditional Mongolian script, certain letters—such as t and d, o and u—were frequently confused, and letter formation varied inconsistently at the beginning, middle, and end of words. The poor legibility between letters and the requirement to memorize each syllable's shape individually increased the learning burden of the script. Additionally, its structural characteristics led to wider line spacing, consuming more space and paper. For example, in Qing Dynasty texts like the Pentaglot Dictionary, the Manchu and Mongolian sections occupy a larger portion of the page.
Letters
Sort orders Only in a late form can a definite order of signs be established for the alphabet, but can likely be traced back to an earlier Uyghur model. + Example orders South (inner) Mongolian order 1986 primer, Mongolian Republic Dictionaries after 1924, Mongolian Republic
Native Mongolian
+ Native MongolianLettersContextual formsTransliterationInternational Phonetic Alphabet Initial Medial FinalLatinMongolian PinyinMong. CyrillicKhalkhaChakhar or — and or before — and — and — and
Galik characters
In 1587, the translator and scholar Ayuush Güüsh created the Galik alphabet ( ), 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 (as listed below).