Mongolian

Where it’s spoken

Mongolian is the official language of Mongolia, where it is spoken by about 3 million people (Khalkha Mongolian dialect). Across the border in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, about 4 million Mongols speak Inner Mongolian varieties, though Mandarin Chinese has been increasing in dominance. Smaller Mongolian-speaking populations live in Russia’s Buryatia and Kalmykia republics.

What it sounds like

Mongolian has vowel harmony — words must contain either masculine (back) or feminine (front) vowels, not both. It distinguishes seven vowel qualities with phonemic length. Stress falls on the first syllable. The language is non-tonal. Verbal morphology is rich, with extensive participial and aspectual suffixes.

How it’s written

In Mongolia, Mongolian is written in Cyrillic since 1946, with 35 letters. In China’s Inner Mongolia, the traditional Mongolian script (developed in 1208 from Old Uyghur and written vertically from top to bottom) is used. Mongolia announced a plan to fully transition back to the traditional script by 2025.

History

Mongolian rose to prominence as the language of Genghis Khan’s empire (13th century). The Secret History of the Mongols, an early-13th-century chronicle, is one of the oldest extant texts in the language.