Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet

The Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet (Mongolian: , or , ) is the primary writing system used for the Mongolian language in modern Mongolia. It has a largely phonemic orthography, meaning that there is a greater degree of consistency in the representation of individual sounds, compared to the traditional Mongolian script, which is still used in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China, and is also co-official in the modern state of Mongolia.

History The Cyrillic alphabet is the most recent of the many writing systems that have been used for Mongolian. It uses the same characters as the Russian alphabet except for two additional characters: Өө and Үү .

The alphabet was introduced in 1941, and due to strong Soviet influenceWill Mongolia Have the Courage to Scrap the Russian Alphabet?, the Mongolian People's Republic formally adopted the language on January 1, 1946.

In the traditional Mongolian script, certain letters such as "t"/"d" "o"/"u" were frequently confused, and there were inconsistencies in letter formation at the beginning, middle, and end of words. The poor legibility between letters and the need to memorize the shapes of all the individual syllables in the language increased the difficulty of learning Mongolian. Additionally, structural characteristics of the traditional Mongolian script resulted in wider line spacing, occupying more space and increasing paper usage. For instance, in ancient books from the Qing Dynasty such as the Pentaglot Dictionary, the sections in Manchu and Mongolian occupy a larger portion of the page space than other language scripts.

Following the script reform, the movement to replace the old Mongolian script continued for over a decade. It took 21 years for Mongolia to achieve nationwide literacy, with the literacy rate increasing from around 2% to over 97%; this greatly facilitated the development of modern Mongolian culture.

After the Mongolian democratic revolution in 1990, the traditional Mongolian script was briefly considered to replace Cyrillic, but the plan was cancelled. However, the Mongolian script has become a compulsory subject in primary and secondary schooling and is slowly gaining in popularity.

In March 2020, the Mongolian government announced plans to use both Cyrillic and the traditional 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 1 January 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."

In China, the Cyrillic alphabet is also used by Chinese for learning the modern Mongolian language, as well as by some Mongols in Inner Mongolia to demonstrate their ethnic identity.

Description

The Cyrillic alphabet used for Mongolian is as follows (with borrowed sounds in parentheses):

Position Cyrillic Braille Name IPA ISO 9 Standard romanization(MNS 5217:2012), basic table on archive.today Library ofCongress BGN/PCGN 1 Аа а а 2 Бб бэ b 3 Вв вэ v 4 Гг гэ g 5 Дд дэ d 6 Ее е e ye e yö 7 Ёё ё ë yo ë yo 8 Жж жэ ž j zh j 9 Зз зэ z dz 10 Ии и i 11 Йй хагас и j i ĭ y 12 Кк ка k 13 Лл эл , l 14 Мм эм , m 15 Нн эн , , n 16 Оо о o 17 Өө ө ô ö 18 Пп пэ p 19 Рр эр r 20 Сс эс s 21 Тт тэ t 22 Уу у u 23 Үү ү ü 24 Фф фэ, фа, эф f 25 Хх хэ, ха h kh h 26 Цц цэ c ts 27 Чч чэ č ch 28 Шш ша, эш š sh 29 Щщ ща, эщэ () ŝ sh shch 30 Ъъ хатуугийн тэмдэг none ʺ i ı ' 31 Ыы эр үгийн ы y ï 32 Ьь зөөлний тэмдэг ʹ i ĭ 33 Ээ э è e ê e 34 Юю ю û yu iu yu/yü 35 Яя я â ya ia ya

Үү and Өө are sometimes also written as the Ukrainian letters Її (or Vv) and Єє respectively, when using Russian software or keyboards that do not support them.

Initial long vowels and non-initial full vowels are written with double vowel letters, while initial short vowels and non-initial epenthetic vowels are written with single vowel letters. Conversely, every vowel letter except у and ү can also represent schwa and zero in non-first syllables. Palatalisation is indicated by и (i), the soft sign ь (') or е (ye), ё (yo), я (ya) and ю (yu) after the palatalised consonant. These latter letters are pronounced without [j] in that position. Щ is never used in Mongolian and only used in Russian words containing the letter.Svantesson et al. 2005: 30-40. It is pronounced identically to Ш, and is often omitted when teaching the Cyrillic alphabet. Sometimes, Russian loanwords with Щ will be spelled with Ш instead: борш, Хрушев. The difference between [e~i] might be dialectal,Svantesson et al. 2005 who proclaim a merger. Luvsanjav, J. (1975): Mongol avianii duudlaga. Ulaanbaatar: MUIS: 14-15 claims that word-initial e-s are articulated towards i, while others are not. But LaCross, Amy (2012): Non-adjacent Phonological Dependency Effects on Khalkha Mongolian Speech Perception. Proceedings of the 29th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, ed. Jaehoon Choi et al., 143-151. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 143-151 keeps them distinct while the difference between ɵ~o is positional.Svantesson et al. 2005: 1-10.

and are both indicated by the letter г , but the phonetic value of that letter is mostly predictable. In words with "front" (+ATR) vowels (see Mongolian phonology for details), it always means , because only occurs in such words. In words with "back" (−ATR) vowels, it always means , except syllable-finally, where it means ; to acquire the value of , it is written followed by a single mute syllable-final vowel letter. Similarly, a mute vowel is added to final н to make it denote and not . ф (f) and к (k) are loan consonants and will often be adapted into the Mongolian sound system as and .

The original plan as at 10 October 1945 was to use э only at the beginning of words and in long vowel combinations (as is done in other languages written using Russian-based Cyrillic), дз for modern з, дж for modern ж, ии for modern ий and йө for modern е (to represent the "yö" sound at the beginning of words), but the alphabet was changed to its final form on 13 November.Tseveliin Shagdagsüren, Mongolchuudyn üseg bichigiin tovchoon, 2001, page 190 This usually affects when transcribing places and foreign names into Mongolian Cyrillic, such as Steve Jobs is spelled as Стив Жобс (rather than Стив Джобс) and Joe Biden is spelled as Жо Байден (rather than Джо Байден).

Keyboard layout

The standard Mongolian Cyrillic keyboard layout for personal computers is as follows:

Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet

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