LWM 429: Classical Mongolian

Classical Mongolian

Alice Sárközi
University Eötvös Loránd, Budapest

The present work is a brief grammar of Classical Mongolian, or, in other words, Written Mongolian that has been the literary language of all the Mongols (Khalkhas, Oirats, Buriats, Kalmüks, etc). It has never been spoken in this form and served as the language of books. Today a little modified version of this written language is used in Inner Mongolia, in the Xinjiang Autonom territory. They write and publish books in the Uighur script, however the pronunciation is far from the written form. Nowadays, the Uighur script is going to be reintroduced in the Mongolian Republic, it is taught in the elementary school side by side with the Cyrillic scrip.

The monuments of Written Mongolian cover large-scale literary forms: inscriptions, Buddhist sûtras, historical chronicles, folklore texts, and poetical and prosaic works of poets and writers of the centuries. This short grammar may help anybody interested in Mongolian culture to get closer to these literary monuments.

The work was carried out in the framework of the project of description of grammars of the Altaic languages fulfilled by the members of the Research Group of Altaic Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Science and the Department of Inner Asian Studies of the Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem of Budapest.

ISBN 9783895868597. Languages of the World/Materials 429. 60pp. 2004.