What Genghis Khan's Mongolian Sounded Like - and how we know

Genghis Khan? Or Chinggis Khaan? Maybe Khagan? History's most famous conqueror kept many secrets. Yet with some clever linguistic investigation, we can reanimate the sounds of his language.

~ Summary ~

Our journey starts with a Mongolian grammar and a trip to modern Mongolia, a language with some standout features. You'll see the Khan's name written everywhere... but in the Cyrillic script. Cross the border to Inner Mongolia in China to see everyday use of a much older script, a script with extra "hidden" syllables.

We'll trace those syllables back to when the soon-to-be-Khan, Temüjin, conquered the Naiman and encouraged his dignitaries to use the newfound Uyghur script. That Written Mongol has some archaic features, and comes from the time of the Khan, but another piece of evidence suggests it's too archaic.

In the 1800s, a scholarly Russian monk found a history book in China. It was written in Hànzì (Chinese characters), but the text didn't read well... unless you pronounced it in Mongolian. This turned out to be the Secret History of the Mongols. The language of the text was similar to Written Mongol, but it had notable differences, including modern-looking features. Still, it also seemed to come from the Khan's time. Was this Middle Mongol more authentic?

That's when we'll run into a third line of evidence: linguists comparing Mongolic languages and reconstructing Proto-Mongolic. There's not just one modern Mongolian; there's an entire Mongolic family. The features of this reconstructed proto-language matched the slightly modern-looking Middle Mongol.

In the end, these three ways of looking back to the early Mongols situate the Khan in linguistic history. Before him, there were Turkic loans (including the Khahan, the state (ulus), and the hero (baatur) in Ulaanbaatar), maybe dialects, and perhaps sibling Para-Mongolic languages. After him, a diversification into the modern languages. Between those, he unified his people and, in a "linguistic bottleneck", created a common Mongol language that turned into a language family in a relatively short time.

Along the way, we'll meet these forms of the language:

- Mongolian: the modern standard language of Mongolia, a standardized form of Khalkha
- Mongol: a general term for stages of the standard or prestige language, as well as a native term for many individual Mongolic varieties (Mongol, Mangghuer, Moghol, ...)
- Written Mongol (WM): the archaic language behind a continuous stream of texts in the Mongol script
- Secret History (SH): the longest early Mongol text, here claimed to represent a different form of MM
- Middle Mongol (MM): the oldest attested stage of Mongol, typically including SH and Preclassical WM, plus later material like 'Phags-pa texts
- Mongolic: the language family branching from early Mongol after the time of Genghis Khan
- Proto-Mongolic (PM): the reconstructed common ancestor of modern Mongolian and its sibling languages

These discussions were heavily, heavily trimmed for time. They're mostly a given by Genghis Khan's era, but they definitely matter when we're digging into the backstory of PM and early Mongol:
- (Mongolized) Turkic: Mongolic has many Turkic words that must predate PM but show clear signs of borrowing, not common ancestry
- Para-Mongolic: a headscratcher of a hypothesis, but we may possess evidence of ancient siblings to the Proto-Mongolic or pre-PM language itself (not direct ancestors of modern Mongolian), with current focus on Khitan

~ Credits ~

Art, animation and narration by Josh from NativLang. Some of the music, too.

Sources for claims and credits for images, sfx, music and fonts:

[mishka]

I'm Mongolian and u NAILED IT with your pronunciation..(for a foreigner that is)

[nasanbatnyamdorj]

I am a Mongilian. I gotta tell you that your pronunciation is great and you did dig deep into our history and language. Almost everything in this video about Mongolia is correct. Nice work👏👏

[ddz]

My father was from Kalmykia. He spoke both Mongolian and Kalmyk. He wouldn't let his children learn the language. He wanted us to be American. I regret to this day that I never learned how to speak my father's native tongue. He knew quite a few languages as he was born in 1931 during all the turmoil his family was marched around a lot. He spoke polish, Russian, German English and some that I've forgotten.

[utmprod]

I’m Mongolian and I must admit that you did a veeery veery good job. Nearly everything mentioned in this video are true and you even knew things which an average Mongolian doesn’t know. Your pronounciations were nicely pronounced.

[amartuvshinaltaisaikhan]

Wow! I was nervous to see how your pronunciations would go, but they were SPOT ON!!! Amazing job!
Thank you so much for making a video about Mongolian.
Everything you said were just as how I was taught, and now I appreciate your work even more!
Keep up the good work!

[azizmasimov]

I'm uyghur. Hello to my Mongol cousins. Wish you all the best

[darkmind]

I am a Mongolian and your pronouncing skills were good! And you did search deep into our language and history and other things. Everything in this video was right and not wrong. Good job!

[MrSimur]

Man, I'm from Russia, and I wanna say that u r very talented, u can switch between accents so smooth, u pronounce each foreign word in their particular accent

[NostalgikProductions]

Big Chungus: I am the best.

Big Chinggis: *hold my beer*

[serik]

I live in Turkey and to this day, we spell xaan as "Kağan" and give it as a name to our sons. (Genghis as Cengiz, Temujin as Timuçin etc.) Also my father's name is Oktay, which is a later form of Ögedai.

[JTM]

Been to Mongolia many years ago. Ranks at the top of my vacations ever. What a great experience, amazing friendly people and beautiful nature. And Chinggis Khan was everywhere. There is a beautiful modern museum of Mongol history located close to the historical capital of Kharkhorin (Karakorum). I would recommend that to everyone. 2 weeks was not enough for such a vast country.

[NativLang]

I've long wanted this to exist. Winner of an exciting patron poll (over Ancient Egyptian!), the most enthusiasm I've seen when name-dropping a future topic in conversation and the most research I've done for one tale. Enjoy!

[lasthairbender]

Just packed up the ol' yurt when I got the notification, currently watching atop my horse.

[ptptpt]

A NativLang video, this is a good day.

[TumeeZCI]

as a citizen from Mongolia i want to deeply thank you for this video, we get a lot of misunderstandings between foreigners (they usually think that these mongolian scrypts writing and the language itself is from China which is a big mistake) China and Mongolia is a whole different countries!!!

[StudentInFrance]

The word Baatur (hero) was also introduced into many non-Turkic languages as a result of the Turco-Mongol conquests, and now exists in different forms such as Bulgarian: Багатур (Bagatur), Russian: Богатырь (Bogatyr), Polish: Bohater (meaning "hero"), Hungarian: Bátor (meaning "brave"), Persian Bahador, Georgian Bagatur, and Hindi Bahadur. Impressive influence!

[TsukiCondor]

If any Mongols are seeing this comment... I just wanna say your people have an fascinating history and culture.
Update:Well Im glad I got shared good vibes :D

[anrtura]

you really worked hard, learning mongolian accent is difficult but u handled very well

[koolio_tt]

As a Mongolian this makes me feel ✨special✨

[則鳴黃]

I am a native Chinese speaker.

When we were learning about both ancient and middle poetry and writings, we often met the literature of the northern horde. Whenever it mentioned the word "emperour", it would always be written in "可汗", which is pronounced as Kè Khán.

I found this is very similar to the xaxan you mentioned in this video. Because in the literature, they spelled the word "emperour" with two syllables, and so do "the middle Mongolian" in the video.

Perhaps there was actually a transition period of the language when consonant omission started to taking place.