Mongolian Script Letters

The Mongolian script, Mongol bichig (ᠮᠣᠩᠭᠣᠯ ᠪᠢᠴᠢᠭ), is the alphabet Mongols have written since the time of Chinggis Khaan; tradition dates its adoption to 1204. It came from the Old Uyghur alphabet, which itself goes back through Sogdian to Aramaic, so it is a distant cousin of the Hebrew and Arabic scripts. Somewhere on that road it turned on its side: Mongolian is written in vertical columns from top to bottom, and the columns follow each other from left to right.

The letters of a word join along one vertical stem, like Arabic letters join along a line, and many letters have different forms at the start, middle or end of a word. Unicode stores one code for each letter, ᠮ ma, ᠣ o, ᠩ ng, and the rendering system selects the shapes from the font, so ᠮᠣᠩᠭᠣᠯ, Mongol, comes out as one flowing word. Many apps and web pages lay it out sideways, from left to right, unless vertical writing is switched on; that is a display limit, not a mistake in the text you paste.

The spelling is old, and speech has moved on. Written Mongolian keeps sounds the spoken language has dropped: čaγan ᠴᠠᠭᠠᠨ is said tsagaan (white), naγadum ᠨᠠᠭᠠᠳᠤᠮ is Naadam, and bayin-a ᠪᠠᠶᠢᠨ᠎ᠠ is said baina (is). Readers learn the written form as its own standard, which is one reason the script can be read across Mongolian dialects.

Mongolian script letters: vowels, consonants and loanword letters

There are seven native vowels, in the order ᠠ a, ᠡ e, ᠢ i, ᠣ o, ᠤ u, ᠥ ö, ᠦ ü. They follow vowel harmony: a word has either the back vowels a o u or the front vowels e ö ü, and i goes with both. The script relies on that: ᠣ o and ᠤ u are written the same way, as are ᠥ ö and ᠦ ü, and in the middle of a word t and d also share a shape, so a reader tells them apart by knowing the word. The eighth vowel, ᠧ ē, is a later addition for loanwords.

The consonants follow in the order ᠨ n, ᠩ ng, ᠪ b, ᠫ p, ᠬ q, ᠭ γ, ᠮ m, ᠯ l, ᠰ s, ᠱ š, ᠲ t, ᠳ d, ᠴ č, ᠵ ǰ, ᠶ y, ᠷ r, ᠸ w. Two of them change with vowel harmony too: ᠬ is a throaty kh in back-vowel words and k in front-vowel words, and ᠭ is a throaty γ or a plain g. Learners traditionally recite the letters as syllables in this order: na ne ni no nu nö nü, ba be bi …

The letters after ᠸ, ᠹ f, ᠺ k, ᠻ kh, ᠼ ts, ᠽ z, ᠾ h, ᠿ zr, ᡀ lh, ᡁ zhi and ᡂ chi, were added over the centuries to spell foreign words: Tibetan and Sanskrit terms of Buddhism, Chinese names (ᡁ and ᡂ write the Chinese syllables zhi and chi) and modern words from Russian and other languages. Mongolian calls such letters galig.

Mongolian numbers, punctuation and the invisible shaping controls

The Mongolian numbers ᠐ ᠑ ᠒ ᠓ ᠔ ᠕ ᠖ ᠗ ᠘ ᠙ work like 0 to 9, so 2026 is ᠒᠐᠒᠖. In print they are written in the column with the text. Everyday life in both Inner Mongolia and Mongolia uses the ordinary digits too.

A traditional text may open with the birga ᠀, a decorative head mark. Inside it the comma ᠂ and full stop ᠃ do their usual work, ᠄ is the colon and ᠁ the ellipsis, and the four dots ᠅ close a chapter or a whole text. The question and exclamation marks ? ! are borrowed. The nirugu ᠊ extends a word's vertical stem for spacing or joins the parts of a compound word without a line break.

Because one letter has several written forms, Unicode gives the writer invisible free variation selectors: FVS1, FVS2 and FVS3 (U+180B to U+180D) and FVS4 (U+180F, added in Unicode 14.0), each placed after a letter to request a particular glyph variant. Two more invisible characters matter in real text, though they are not in the grid. The Mongolian vowel separator U+180E detaches a final a or e as in ᠪᠠᠶᠢᠨ᠎ᠠ and now also marks separated suffixes. The narrow no-break space U+202F was formerly used for the gap before such suffixes. If a pasted word looks wrong in one app and fine in another, those controls and the font are usually why.

How to type Mongolian script

To copy single characters, click them in the grid. For real typing on Windows, add the language Mongolian (Traditional Mongolian) in Settings › Time & language, which brings a Traditional Mongolian keyboard; you type letters in order and the text-rendering system shapes and joins them. On phones, people in Inner Mongolia often use dedicated Mongolian input apps; if your phone or Mac does not list a traditional Mongolian keyboard, copy from this page.

In Microsoft Word, type the code and press Alt+X: 1820 gives ᠠ, 182E gives ᠮ, 1810 gives ᠐. In HTML any letter can be written as a code, ᠠ for ᠠ, and the CSS rule writing-mode: vertical-lr sets Mongolian in its proper columns, top to bottom and left to right. You need a font with Mongolian support for the letters to join; without one you see boxes or loose letters.

Where Mongolian script is written today

The largest community of Mongolian script writers is in Inner Mongolia and the neighbouring Mongolian areas of China 🇨🇳, where Mongolian has been written in this script without a break: CLDR's estimate of the literate, functional population there is about 3.7 million. Street signs, shop names, newspapers and school books carry it, usually beside Chinese. The money there is the yuan, ¥.

In Mongolia 🇲🇳 everyday Mongolian has been written in Cyrillic since the 1940s; that alphabet, with its Ө and Ү, is in our Mongolian collection, and the country's flag, the tögrög ₮ and its emoji are in the Mongolia collection. The traditional script never left: it is taught in schools, written by calligraphers, printed on the banknotes and in logos, and the government has set out to use it next to Cyrillic in official documents.

The script has relatives. The Oirat Todo or Clear script was made from it in 1648, and Manchu, still written by the Sibe, was adapted from it in 1599; their extra letters live in the same Unicode block. The Buryats wrote the Mongolian script before switching to Latin and then Cyrillic in the 20th century, and Mongolian Buddhist books share many loanwords with the Tibetan collection. The China collection has the country's other scripts and symbols.