Script Tutorial 2

Script Tutorial 2

Welcome to part 2 of the script tutorial In this part we will concentrate on the various writing rules. You may have noticed that some of the letters in the Alphabet table represent two different sounds, letter no. 14, for example, can either be ‘d’ or ‘t’. And letters no. 3 and 4 can be either ‘o’/’u’ or ‘ö’/ü’. Therefore the proper reading of a word can sometimes cause great trouble for beginners. Some commentators have claimed that the Mongolian script is ambiguous, however in actuality it is not too far removed from the script that we use. Just as we would make no distinction between the letter ‘c’ as used in ‘cat’ and the letter ‘c’ as used in ‘centre’, Mongolians would make no distinction between letter no. 14 as used in dalai (sea) and the same letter as used in teneg (foolish). If you look at the example below you will see that I have written the words ‘cat’ and ‘centre’ in Mongolian, and in order to do this had to use two separate letters to represent what, in English, is just one (‘k’ letter no.20 and ‘s’ letter no.12).

From the Mongolian point of view then, there is no ambiguity. It might help if you keep this in mind as you study, as far too often people are put off unnecessarily by excessive emphasising of the ‘unpredictable nature of the Uighur script’ . Once you have seen, written, and read enough Mongolian words you will come to realise that there are very few combinations of letters that really present a problem. There is however one very important principle which will aid you tremendously, and which is a fundamental feature of the Mongolian language - Vowel Harmony.

The rules of vowel harmony state that the vowel which appears in the first syllable of a word determines the quality or ‘flavour’ of all subsequent vowels in that word. Mongolian vowels come in two flavours - back and front. The reason why they are called back and front is because one set of vowels is pronounced at the back of the mouth, and the other set at the front. The back vowels are ‘a’, ‘o’ and ‘u’ and the front vowels are ‘e’, ‘ö’ and ‘ü’. The vowel ‘i’ is not affected by vowel harmony and is therefore regarded as a neutral vowel.

If you look at the example 1 below (a word you should recognise by now), you will see that the first syllable ‘qa’ contains a back vowel, therefore all the vowels in this word must also be back vowels.

These two words also serve to demonstrate another important rule which will be of great benefit to you. The letters ‘q’ (no. 8) and ‘gh’ (no. 9) can only occur in back-vowel words. Therefore although example 1 and 2 above could also read ‘qeghen’ and ‘eghüle’ respectively, the rules of vowel harmony prevent this, making only one pronunciation possible.

Staying with the examples above for a moment we can also derive another useful rule. Example 1 could actually have two more readings - if you look carefully you will notice that both example 1 and 2 end in the same letter, yet in example 1 this is an ‘n’ and in example 2 it is an ‘a’. How can you tell the difference? Well, each Mongolian word is basically a simple alternation vowels and consonants, e.g. CVCVC or VCVCV etc. The only time you will find two consonants following each other consecutively is when one syllable ends in a consonant and the next syllable begins in a consonant, as in al-tan (gold/golden) and tob-ci (book/summary). Mongolian does have several diphthongs (two vowels in a row) but these are relatively rare, and when they do occur they are relatively easy to identify, and almost always involve two different vowels, doubled vowels appearing only in certain set words such as degüü (elder brother) and ghuu-a (beautiful). Bearing this in mind, you will see that although example 1 above could also be read qaghaa or even qaghq (see the final form of q (letter no. 8)) this would do great injustice to the basic from of the Mongolian word, not to mention being difficult to pronounce! The same is true for example 2 which could be pronounced aghuln, but again this doesn’t really make sense.

So, when you are faced with a Mongolian word, without a transcription, try to remember these guidelines and when you have worked out what you think to be the correct pronunciation always ask yourself ‘does this actually sound plausible’. If you’ve worked out a transcription that sounds unpronounceable then you’ve probably got it wrong, but if it sounds vaguely ‘Mongolian’ then the chances are you’ve hit on the right reading.