The Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet (Mongolian: Монгол Кирилл үсэг, Mongol Kirill üseg or Кирилл цагаан толгой, Kirill tsagaan tolgoi) 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 consistency in the representation of individual sounds. Cyrillic has not been adopted as the writing system in the Inner Mongolia region of China, which continues to use the traditional Mongolian script.

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Mongolian Cyrillic
Script type	Alphabet
Time period	1940s – present
Languages	Mongolian
Related scripts
Parent systems	Mongolic Proto-Mongolic language Middle Mongol Classical Mongolian language Mongolian Cyrillic
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Cyrl (220), ​Cyrillic
Unicode
Unicode alias	Cyrillic
Unicode range	subset of Cyrillic (U+0400...U+04FF)
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

History

Mongolian Cyrillic 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 the two additional characters Өө ⟨ö⟩ and Үү ⟨ü⟩.

It was introduced in the 1940s in the Mongolian People's Republic under Soviet influence,[1] after two months in 1941 where Latin was used as the official script, while Latinisation in the Soviet Union was in vogue. After the Mongolian democratic revolution in 1990, the traditional Mongolian script was briefly considered to replace Cyrillic, but the plan was canceled in the end. However, the Mongolian script has become a compulsory subject in primary and secondary schooling and is slowly gaining in popularity.[2] The Mongolian script is a highly uncommon vertical script, and unlike other historically vertical-only scripts such as the Chinese script it cannot easily be adapted for horizontal use, which puts it at a disadvantage compared to Cyrillic for many modern purposes. Thus, the Cyrillic script continues to be used in everyday life.

In March 2020, the Mongolian government announced plans to use both Cyrillic and the traditional Mongolian script in official documents by 2025.[3][4][5]

In China, Cyrillic alphabet also used by the Chinese to learn the modern Mongolian language, and by some Mongols in Inner Mongolia to their demonstrate ethnic identity.[6][7]

Description

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

Үү and Өө are sometimes also written as the Ukrainian letters Її (or Vv) and Єє respectively,[11] 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.[12] 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,[13] while the difference between ɵ~o is positional.[14]

/ɡ/ and /ɢ/ are both indicated by the letter г ⟨g⟩, but the phonetic value of that letter is mostly predictable. In words with "front" (+ATR) vowels (see Mongolian phonology for details), it always means /ɡ/, because only /ɡ/ occurs in such words. In words with "back" (−ATR) vowels, it always means /ɢ/, except syllable-finally, where it means /ɡ/; to acquire the value of /ɢ/, it is written as followed by a single mute syllable-final vowel letter. Similarly, a mute vowel is added to final н ⟨n⟩ to make it denote /n/ and not /ŋ/. ф (f) and к (k) are loan consonants and will often be adapted into the Mongolian sound system as [pʰ] and [x].[12]

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.[15]

Keyboard layout

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

See also

• Mongolian writing systems
  • Mongolian script
    • Galik alphabet
    • Todo alphabet
  • ʼPhags-pa script
    • Horizontal square script
  • Soyombo script
  • Mongolian Latin alphabet
    • SASM/GNC romanization § Mongolian
  • Mongolian transliteration of Chinese characters
    • Sino–Mongolian Transliterations [zh]
  • Mongolian Braille
• Mongolian Sign Language
• Mongolian name

References

На других языках

[ru] Монгольский алфавит