Mongolian language

The Mongolian language ( , Mongɣol kele, Cyrillic: Монгол хэл, Mongol khel) is the best-known member of the Mongolic language family and the language of most of the residents of Mongolia, where it is officially written with the Cyrillic alphabet and of around three million Mongolian speakers in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China, where it is officially written with the traditional Mongolian script. It is also spoken in some areas in the Russian Far East and Kyrgyzstan. The majority of speakers in Mongolia speak the Khalkha (or Halh) dialect, while those in China speak one of many Inner Mongolian dialects.

Mongolian
монгол хэл ᠮᠣᠩᠭᠣᠯ ᠬᠡᠯᠡ
Pronunciation	/mɔŋɢɔ̆ɮ xeɮ/
Native to	Mongolia
Region	All of state Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, parts of Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Xinjiang and Gansu provinces in China
Native speakers	5.2 million  (2005)
Language family	Mongolic Mongolian
Early forms:	Middle Mongolian Classical Mongolian Mongolian
Standard forms	Khalkha (Mongolia) Chakhar (China)
Dialects	Khalkha Chakhar Khorchin Kharchin Baarin Shilin gol Ordos Mongolian Darkhad
Writing system	Mongolian alphabets: Traditional Mongolian script (in China), Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet (in Mongolia), Mongolian Braille
Official status
Official language in	Mongolia China Inner Mongolia
Regulated by	Mongolia: State Language Council, China: Council for Language and Literature Work
Language codes
ISO 639-1	mn
ISO 639-2	mon
ISO 639-3	mon – inclusive code Individual codes: khk – Khalkha Mongolian mvf – Peripheral Mongolian (part)
Linguasphere	part of 44-BAA-b
Geographic distribution of Mongolic peoples across Asia (red)

Mongolian Language Media

• 

  Modern Mongolian's place on the chronological tree of Mongolic languages

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  Edict of Yesün Temür Khan, Emperor Taiding of Yuan (1328). Only the 'Phags-pa script retains the complete Middle Mongol vowel system.

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  Nova N 176 found in Kyrgyzstan. The manuscript (dating to the 12th century Western Liao) is written in the Mongolic Khitan language using cursive Khitan large script. It has 127 leaves and 15,000 characters.

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  Mongolian script and Mongolian Cyrillic on Sukhbaatar's statue in Ulaanbaatar

References

• Janhunen, Juha (ed.) (2003): The Mongolic languages. London: Routledge.

Other websites

• Ethnologue report for Khalkha Mongolian
• Lingua Mongolia Archived 2009-04-24 at the Wayback Machine Information on classical Mongolian, including an online dictionary
• Omniglot - Mongolian Alphabets
• Mongolian bilingual dictionaries