Since ancient times, the many tribes of the Mongol people have used correspondingly numerous written systems. reflecting the peculiarities of the development of the Mongolian language or dialects of that time. Historical data provide evidence of the fact that the primitive ancestors of the nomadic Mongols had their own script. The most antique of these indications pertain to the Huns and Uhuan. The Chinese historical works Wei shu and Sui shu say that the Tabghach (Toba) had developed a new script and mention lists of books written in the Xian pi language (sixth century). Following the formation of the Liao empire (AD 916-1125), the Kidan scholars invented two kinds of script (AD 920 and 925), which have not yet been fully deciphered. It is interesting to note that the Kidan script was used by the Jurchen. Later, the Jurchen invented their own ‘big’ script on the model of the ‘big’ Kidan script (AD 1119). and a few years later their own ’small’ script based on the ’small’ Kidan script (AD 1138). Thus, the history of the scripts created and used by the nomadic Mongols in the past dates back to antiquity. There are at least nine or ten such scripts.
(Old) Mongolian Script
In works on Mongol studies related to the origin of the Mongolian script, many scholars believe that it originated from the Sogdiaii letters. But a majority of them considered that at the end of the first thousand years AD the Uigurs adopted their alphabet from the Sogdians and in the thirteenth century the Mongols in turn borrowed it from the Uigurs. More recently, a number of Mongolian scholars, after studying newly found materials on the Mongols and the Mongolian language and writing, have advanced the theory that the Mongols did not adopt their writing from the Uigurs in the thirteenth century, but simultaneously with the Uigur they adopted it from the Sogdian when Uigur culture was at its peak. In the political and religious spheres, the need to transmit foreign words, including words from Sanskrit. Tibetan and Chinese, caused the evolution of the system of transcribing into the Mongolian script called ali-kali, devised by Ayush-gush in 1 587. Amongst all the Mongolian scripts, (old) Mongolian is considered the most viable and is still used today. The most ancient monument of the Mongolian script. Genghisun chuluu (the Genghis stone, 1224/1225) is the first of the ’stone books’ of the nomadic Mongols. For some time, the Manchurians used the Mongolian lettering, and later it served as the basis of the Manchurian script, created in 1599.

Mongolian is a member of the Altaic family of languages, which includes Finnish, Hungarian, Turkish, Kazakh, Uzbek and Korean. The traditional Mongolian scripts look like Arabic turned 90 degrees, and it is still used by the Mongolians living in China (Inner Mongolia, divarts of Xinjiang, Qinhai, Liaoning and Jilin). In 1944, the Cyrillic alphabet was adopted with two additional characters. It remains in use today in Mongolia and also in the two autonomous republics of Russia – Buryatia and Kalmykia. It’s important to give double vowels a lengthened pronunciation, as getting it wrong can affect meaning. If all vowels in a word are short, the first will take the stress and the rest will become ‘neutral’ (as the ‘e’ in ‘open’). In words with one long vowel, stress will fall on that vowel and any short vowels in the word will become neutral. If there is more than one long vowel the stress will generally fall on the penultimate syllable.