It has been almost 80 years since Mongolia switched to using the Cyrillic alphabet.
In 1208 Chinggis khaan defeated the Naimans, Turkic tribes living in Central Asia, and captured their Uyghur scribe Tatar-Tonga, who adapted the old Uyghur alphabet to write Mongolian. The alphabet created by Tatar-Tonga is now known as the Uyghur script, the classical or traditional Mongol script, the old script, or Mongol bichig in Mongolian.
The traditional Mongolian script was not ideal for writing the Mongolian language and was even less suited for writing Chinese, so during the 13th century a Tibetan monk called Drogon Chogyal Phagpa was asked by Kublai Khan to create a new script for the Mongol empire. Pagba came up with the “Phags-pa script, which is also known as the Mongolian new script, and was based on the Tibetan. This script was never widely used and after the Yuan dynasty fell in 1368, “Phags-pa was used mainly to provide Mongolian phonetic glosses in Chinese texts.
In the late 17th century, a Mongolian monk and scholar called Bog Zanabazar created a new script for Mongolian called Soyombo, which also could be used to write Chinese and Sanskrit. It was used mainly for Mongolian translations of Buddhist texts and in temple inscriptions. Bogd Zanabazar also created another script for Mongolians known as the Mongolian square script or Mongolian horizontal square script, which was rediscovered in 1801. It was based on the Tibetan script, but what it was used for is uncertain. In 1567 the translator and scholar Ayuush Guush added extra letters to the traditional Mongol script to make it possible to write loanwords from Tibetan, Sanskrit, and Chinese in Mongolian texts.
This version of the script is known as the Galig script. Type of writing system: phonemic alphabet with separate letters for consonants and vowels. Direction writing: left to rght in vertical columns running from top to bottom. The letters have several different shapes, the choice of which depends on the position of a letter in a word and which letter follows it. The Mongolian script is traditionally taught as syllables rather than individual letters.
Mongolian writing system
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