The Mongolian Latin script (

Mongolian Cyrillic The Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet (Mongolian: , or , ) is the writing system used for the standard dialect of the Mongolian language in the modern state of Mongolia. It has a largely phonemic orthography, meaning that there is a fair degree of ...

: , ; Mongolian Latin: ; Traditional Mongolian script: ; ) was officially adopted in

Mongolia Mongolia is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south and southeast. It covers an area of , with a population of 3.5 million, making it the world's List of countries and dependencies by po ...

in 1931. In 1939, a second version of the Latin alphabet was introduced but not widely used, and was replaced by the

Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, Mongolic, Uralic languages, Uralic, C ...

in 1941.

History

In the 1930s, under the influence of

latinisation in the Soviet Union Latinisation or latinization ( ) was a campaign in the Soviet Union to adopt the Latin script during the 1920s and 1930s. Latinisation aimed to replace Cyrillic and traditional writing systems for all languages of the Soviet Union with Latin ...

, alphabets based on

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

letters were developed for the Mongolian language. These alphabets were rarely used. Latinate scripts appeared occasionally in the Ynen newspaper, and the title pages or covers of books were sometimes written in a Mongolian Latin script, even though the rest of the book was not. On 1 February 1941, Mongolia officially switched to a modified Latin alphabet, which was successfully used for some time to print books and newspapers. However, two months later, on 25 March, this decision was canceled. According to official explanations, the adopted writing system was not well thought out: it did not cover all the sounds of the Mongolian language and was difficult to use. The adoption of the Cyrillic alphabet occurred almost simultaneously with the

Cyrillization Cyrillization or Cyrillisation is the process of rendering words of a language that normally uses a writing system other than Cyrillic script into (a version of) the Cyrillic alphabet. Although such a process has often been carried out in an ad ...

in the Soviet Union, therefore, the rejection of the Latin alphabet could have been due to political considerations. In the Mongolian version of the Latin alphabet, there were additional letters ''ɵ'' (), ''ç'' (), ''ş'' () and ''ƶ'' (); ''Y'' corresponded to the Cyrillic . ''K'' transliterated the sound that would later come to be represented in Cyrillic by in native Mongolian words. The Mongolian Latin alphabets contained between 24 and 30 letters, depending on whether letters such as ''f, v, x'' (used primarily in loanwords) or ''h, q, w,'' (almost never attested) are counted as part of the alphabet. In 1975, preparations began in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

for the romanization of Mongolian writing in Mongol areas based on the

pinyin Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means 'Han Chinese, Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin' ...

system used for

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin ( ; zh, s=, t=, p=Guānhuà, l=Mandarin (bureaucrat), officials' speech) is the largest branch of the Sinitic languages. Mandarin varieties are spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area that stretch ...

. According to the plan, the Latin alphabet should have been introduced in 1977, but the death of

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; traditionally Romanization of Chinese, romanised as Mao Tse-tung. (26December 18939September 1976) was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and political theorist who founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in ...

and the changes in domestic policy that had begun did not allow the project to materialize. This system forms the basis of the SASM/GNC romanization of Mongolian that has been used in China to transcribe personal names and toponyms since 1978. Despite being neither widely promoted nor having any official status, Mongolians were increasingly using Latin script on smartphones and social networking services .

Characters

First Latin alphabet was using "y" as feminine "u", with additional feminine "o" ("ɵ") and with additional consonants "ç" for "ch", "ş" for "sh" and " ƶ" for "j", it successfully served in printing books and newspapers. A few of the letters (f, k, p, v) were rarely used, being found only in borrowings, while q, w and x were excluded altogether. Since ''k'' transcribed in loans, it is unclear how loans in were written. "j" is used for vowel combinations of the atype. Letter "c" is used for the sound sand "k" is used for the sound The first version was inspired by the Yanalif script used for the Soviet Union's Turkic languages. The second version of Latin alphabet made few minor changes to make the way it works to look more familiar to European languages. That change was including replacement of "y" by "ü", "ɵ" by "ö", " ƶ" by "j", "j" by "y" and also "k" by "x" in native words. Also reduced the number of letters in the alphabet by erasing "ç" "ş" and write them as a combination of ch and sh. And the rest of the alphabet and orthography kept same.

List of characters

The unaspirated stops are often realized as voiced . The non-nasal sonorants are often devoiced to .

Text samples

Orthography

The orthography of the Mongolian Latin is based on the orthography of the Classical

Mongolian script The traditional Mongolian script, also known as the Hudum Mongol bichig, was the first Mongolian alphabet, writing system created specifically for the Mongolian language, and was the most widespread until the introduction of Cyrillic script, Cy ...

. It preserves short final vowels. It does not drop unstressed vowels in the closing syllables when the word is conjugated. The suffixes and inflections without long or i-coupled vowels are made open syllables ending with a vowel, which is harmonized with the stressed vowel. The rule for the vowel harmony for unstressed vowels is similar to that of the Mongolian Cyrillic. It does not use consonant combinations to denote new consonant sounds. For both of the version, letter "b" is used both in the beginning and in the middle of the word. Because it phonetically assimilates into sound , no ambiguity is caused.

References

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Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...