Let me start off reminding you one little bit of information from the previous Episode: the origins of the Mongolian language are under debate up until now, in other words —unclear and uncertain. All we have is theories and speculations. Introducing you to those theories, however, is not the goal of this article.
Langventuring into Mongolian gives us an opportunity to observe the changes a language can go through over time —so much so that its first known version and the modern one may be different like the sky and the earth (we could use English to make the same example, you know, but it is not on our "route")!
Understanding the fact that languages undergo evolution, I believe, is important for the learning process because then you free yourself from the erroneous belief that all the rules, spellings and pronunciations can be logically explained. It just happens that some have deep historical roots, so —yes, you can dig deep and explain the reasons or you can just accept that some things in a language are the way they are due to its history, foreign influences, changes over time, etc.
As for the Mongolian language and its evolution, we need to consider that, initially, there was a big range of various tribes who had their own languages, and those tribes were united to form an Empire sometime in the III century BC, amongst them mongol, turkic, kyrgyz, uygur and many others. Would be unreasonable to expect all this motley folk to use the same language, right?
And this is when Genghis Khan comes in. The figure of Genghis Khan is crucial to the Mongolian language especially because that man was the one to introduce a script to the language used. Before that, there was no written version of the language. However, he didn't go the "Sejong way" by creating a brand-new writing system from scratch drawing the symbols from the sounds with an idea of making it easy to learn in mind, like the Korean ruler did. He used the help of the captured Uyghur scribe called Tata-tonga, who then adapted the Uyghur alphabet —a descendant of the Syriac alphabet, via Sogdian— to write Mongol.
The question is: Was it Mongolian, the language spoken then? So if you take into the account the variety of tribes Genghis had to deal with, you might understand the pickle he got himself into. When conquering other territories with such a mixed cohort, what do you say to the conquered as to who conquered them? Would take a while to name all the tribes who participated, now wouldn't it? And that's how one comes up with a name for their group! At least, this is one of the theories. For Genghis Khan that name was Mongol —from "mangi-kol"— "the eternal army".
This means that the name for the Mongolian language, as well as for the Mongols themselves, was created to join all the different clans and tribal groups into one, but it did not exist! Genghis Khan, turns out, was not a Mongol —but became one, proclaimed himself one even. And the Mongolian language was, in fact, a mix of several and was conceptualized as Mongolian —for political reasons! Well, how about that?
But all those peoples did speak somehow; Genghis Khan did, too! What was the language they used? Once again, the subject is teeming with speculations and opinions. But the common root found more often than others is that the language used by that great Mongolian khan was a Turkic one. The basis for that?
There is a range of historical documents of Mongol Empire from the era in question written in the Turkic language by the means of Uyghur script. That language modern Mongols call the Middle Mongolian. And it bears no resemblance to the Khalkha dialect —Mongolian of today! Ancient documents written in some older version of the Mongolian language people speak today do not exist (or were never found). As there is no a predecessor of Khalkha Mongolian, a so called proto-language from which The Khalkha dialect stems.
In the XIII century, the time when Genghis Khan came onto the political arena, the majority of the people in Eurasian steppe, large flat unforested grassland, was Turkic. They and the great Khan himself, as the evidence suggests, were using a version of Turkic language to communicate —and that is not only amongst themselves, but also in diplomatic correspondence and official state documents.
The Uyghur script was misunderstood by the Western historians and called Mongolian script, even though such a thing didn't exist. Later that misconception was taken even further and the language itself got an erroneous name —Mongolian. But as you know now, that particular term had little to do with the ethnical or linguistic affiliation of the people of the Genghis Khan's Empire in the XIII century.
Actually, up until XVII century it will not be a thing. See, if you are building a Great Empire then you should know that the more territories you conquer, the thinner spreads your original army. And Mongols took a lot of territory! In fact, they ruled China for a 100 years! Chinese managed to kick them out and even attacked Mongolia killing a big chunk of their population in the process. Twice. In addition to that, the "leftovers" of the initial Mongolian elite were fighting each other for precedence.
As a result, by the XVII century the country only had something about 60,000 people of the indigenous population who technically were Turks and spoke in a Turkic language. Seeing that, the Manchu people —ethnical group in China— attacked Mongolia. The Manchu language was quite something else. Mixed with the language of the now conquered people, in one generation it turned into a Manchu-Tungus-Turkic language.
And that one is the modern day Khalkha Mongolian!
That is the story of how the language of Genghis Khan became Mongolian! How it got that "Cyrillic look", is a topic for another Episode. And it surely has to do something with history, too.
Mongolian shows us an interesting concept in a language formation —a political side of it, the one people tend to forget about when learning a language. The evolution and the history of a language have quite an importance, which I am sure you understand now. So sometimes, when you don't get the logic of this or that rule/pronunciation/etc., remember that the language you are learning might have gone through a lot of change, just as Mongolian did.
Or maybe was even a different one ages ago!
Амжилт хүсье! Ahm-jilt hoo-sey! Good luck!
"Whoa! That's deep! Great approach to the language learning!"
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