Why Is Mongolia Changing Its Alphabet?

What do you think of when you think about Mongols? Horse archers, throat singing, Genghis Khan.. How about language? Mongolian of course, but how is that magical speech actually written down? If you walk around in Ulaanbaatar or any other Mongolian city and you’ll see the signs are written in Cyrillic as in neighbouring Russia. If you cross the border into Inner Mongolia in China, the people use a very different script, the traditional Mongolian script that is written vertically from top to bottom with an intricate system of strikes, dots and slashes that differs from the calligraphy of written Chinese as much as it does from the Latin or Cyrillic alphabet. But as of March 2020, the Mongolian government has decided to change its official script from Cyrillic, which it has used since 1941 and instead is exchanging it for the traditional Mongolian Script and in this video I want to find out why by looking at the history of Mongolian scripts and how Mongols chose in which script they would write their language.
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#Mongolia #Language #Geography

[historywithhilbert]

Thanks for watching everyone, hope yous enjoyed the video! Be sure to check out my other videos on the Mongols and their history if you found it interesting and give me a thumbs up or considering subscribbling if you're new!

[ennb]

Hi, I enjoyed your video, it was very informative. As a Mongolian, I do want to clarify that this is not a sudden shift. We have been learning via K-12/secondary education to write and read in both Cyrillic and traditional Mongolian for a long time now since the rise of democracy in the 1990s. Traditional Mongolian was primarily used in official and government documents. For example, my high school diploma has two versions, one written in Cyrillic and one written in Traditional Mongolian. So this is definitely not sudden or surprising. But I do think we will keep using Cyrillic for a long time, because we have so many books and resources written in Cyrillic and especially many old people don't know traditional Mongolian, given that they were born and raised in Socialist era. My parents for example don't know traditional Mongolian, because they graduated school in the 80s. Hope this was helpful.

[Chris-ttcc]

Kazakhstan is also looking to change its alphabet from Cyrillic. I think these changes are politically driven.

[historyrhymes]

Hilbert: When we hear Cyrillic we think of Russia.

Me a Bulgarian:

[oohforf]

I remember reading about this script as a kid and wishing that Mongolia would revert back to it since it looked so cool lol

[IKNFLY]

Traditional Mongolian script, which was inspired by Uyghur script, which was inspired by Sogdian script, which was inspired by Assyrian script, which was inspired by Egyptian script, which was inspired by Phoenician script, which was amazing how the evolution of language can lead to.

[Riinkun]

Mongolia: "We're changing our official script!"
Kids who just finished learning how to read: >:C

[vortex_design]

Genghis Khan script looks like arabic or persian written vertically

[erozionzeall]

I'm a Mongolian high school senior and they are actively trying bring back it. From my experience Mongolian script is difficult to learn compared to the Cyrillic we use.

[adhdlama]

I have absolutely no stake in this whatsoever. But I smile at the thought of a language being as uniquely... "itself" as possible! To have such a unique script lost would have been a tragedy. The world should be filled with diversity like this!
I really really hope they make it work.

[ise]

7:12
The word you are looking for is "Sinicized"

[mickeycz]

"Give Flanders Back"? LOL ... actually, the page of Hangul that you showed, is partly Hangul WITH the majority being Chinese script (Hanja): the reason was, that Korean is not the same language group as Chinese, and Buddhist monks imported the Chinese alphabet - however, Korean unlike Chinese does conjugate and has a system of pre- and suffixes and so the Chinese alphabet was not fully suitable to be used for Korean -thus the Hangul was used to add the Korean endings - or prefixes to the Chinese nouns - just like the case in Japan with Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana

[TywysogCraig]

They are getting ready for a new King!

[CostantinoVercetti]

"Beware the Kara Khitai, they are without honour."

[adamclarkuk]

The English spelling of Genghis Khan comes from Italian after Marco Polo, and there's a reason why there's an "h" after the second "g", but not after the first. In Turkish it's written "Cengis." It's good that you are pronouncing his name correctly, akin to Jenga.

[ThePhoenix]

Looks like arabic but upside down.


Probably because they were influenced by Turkic tribes, who in turn were influenced by Iranian people in Central Asia. The Iranian tribes of central asia(sogdians, bactrians) in turn used a script that derived from Aramaic. Later they switched to Arabic. That wasnt a big change because Arabic and Aramaic are related to eachother.

[tinypenguinhk]

I always feel glad when I see news of countries restoring parts of their traditional culture. It totally helps the people once again pick up the heritage that they had dropped earlier in history. I hope that one day my country could restore our traditional writing and culture as well.

[napoleonibonaparte]

Writing Mongolian downwards will make the comment section too long to scroll

[fnizarm]

They are literally writing things "down"

[abirato]

This is really awesome— I’ve been so fascinated by the traditional Mongolian script ever since I was given some Mongolian money as a child from my cousin who was working there. It looks so beautiful and unique! Good luck to Mongolia, hope the transition isn’t too tough on everyone.