Thursday, 27 December 2007

The Mongolian Language



Mongolian language is an Altaic Language,related to turkic languages,such as Kazakh.
and both Turkic and Mongolian languages are belong to the Altaic language family.

And displays the typical features of agglutination and Vowel harmony. briefly, agglutation means that world-building is based on invariable stems to which single or multiple suffixes are added to modify meaning and achieve inflection(tense,case,etc). Vowel harmony means that all the wowelsin a wordstem, and any suffixes attached to it, belong to one class of either 'back' or 'front' vowels, which are not mixed. While these features are unfamiliar to speakers of english and most other European languages, they need not present difficulties, once the principles have been grasped. They are explained in detail below.

The basic Mongol-Turkic vocabulary of Khalkha,centred on the nomadic way of life,has been subjected to a range of influences since the time of the Mongol empire (12th-13th centries). Religious terminology in Tibetan and Sanskrit was spread by buddihism,
and Manchu and Chinese words and titles were added under Qing rule (17th-20th centries).

Russian technical terms and political phraseology were introduced under communist rule in this century, and knowledge of Russian became widespread. Now that English has become the most popular foreign language in Mongolia, English words like 'broker', 'change' and 'hobby' have entered circulation in Mongol form.

The Mongols have written their language in several different scripts, the oldest and most durable of which called the classical Mongol script, was introduces 800 years ago under Genghis Khan. Derived from uighur writing and written in vertical columns,
from left to right,it has 30 letters in initial, medial and final forms.

Although the classical script is still used by the Mongols in Inner Mongolia and elsewhere under chinese control, its use in Outer Mongolia was discouraged after the introduction of a modified Cyrillic (russian) alphabet in the 1940s.

Khalkha having undergone many changes over the centuries, the language of the classical Mongolian script is now archaic, but it is important to Mongols both linguistically and culturally. Mongolia's democratic revolution in the early 1990s led to demands for the restoration of the classical script. However, it planned official reintroductiion in 1994, initially for the government's official publications, was postponed until the next century because of the lack of proper preparation, a shortage of publishing facilities, and also resistance from the many Mongols who wanted to keep Cyrillic.

No comments: