Mongolian Alphabet

Mongolian (монгол хэл) in Mongolia is written in Cyrillic, adopted in the 1940s in place of the vertical traditional Mongolian script that had been used since the 13th century. Its 35 Cyrillic letters include Ө and Ү, which write two Mongolian vowels. Mongolians call the alphabet цагаан толгой, literally "white head", and a letter is үсэг; children learn it as "35 үсэг".

In Mongolian alphabetical order the letters are: А Б В Г Д Е Ё Ж З И Й К Л М Н О Ө П Р С Т У Ү Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я. Ө comes right after О and Ү right after У. The country is Монгол Улс, and its capital, Ulaanbaatar, is Улаанбаатар, "red hero".

К, Ф and Щ are used almost only in words taken from Russian and other languages, such as компьютер and кофе, and Ъ is rare. Mongolian punctuation uses guillemets « » for quotations, „ “ for quotes inside quotes, a long dash — in dialogue, and № before numbers.

Mongolian alphabet pronunciation: Ө, Ү and long vowels

Ө ө and Ү ү are romanised ö and ü, as in Mörön (Мөрөн), Ölgii (Өлгий) and Sükhbaatar (Сүхбаатар). They are often compared to German ö and ü, but in standard Khalkha speech Ө is a close, rounded o and Ү an oo sound as in "food", while plain О and У are said more open and further back. These sounds run through everyday words such as өдөр (day), үг (word) and үсэг (letter).

Long vowels are written by doubling the letter: аа in баярлалаа (thank you), ээ in ээж (mother), өө in өөр (other), уу in Сайн уу? (hi). Long i is written ий after front vowels and ы in endings after back vowels, which is where Ы mostly appears: Монголын (of Mongolia), хотыг (the city, as an object). Ь softens the consonant before it, as in морь (horse), and Е, Ё, Ю and Я begin with a y sound.

Mongolian vowel harmony sorts words into back-vowel words (а, о, у) and front-vowel words (э, ө, ү), and suffixes change to match. The ending meaning "from" shows it: Улаанбаатараас (from Ulaanbaatar), гэрээс (from home), хотоос (from the city), өдрөөс (from the day). That is why Ө and Ү turn up in long runs: one in a root brings more in its endings.

How to type Mongolian letters on a keyboard

Windows includes a Mongolian (Cyrillic) keyboard layout: add the Mongolian language under Settings › Time & language › Language & region. It has its own arrangement: its letter rows begin Ф Ц У Ж Э Н, Ө and Ү have their own keys, and the tugrik sign ₮ sits on the number row. Linux has the XKB layout "Mongolian". On a phone, choose Mongolian in a keyboard app such as Gboard, or copy the letters from this page, which works as a Mongolian keyboard online.

Without a Mongolian layout, Microsoft Word types any letter from its code followed by Alt+X: 04E9 ө, 04AF ү, and for capitals 04E8 Ө, 04AE Ү; 20AE gives ₮. On a Mac, the Character Viewer (Control+Command+Space) finds them by their Unicode names, "barred o" and "straight u". In HTML, write ө for ө, ү for ү (Ө and Ү for the capitals) and ₮ for ₮.

Watch the look-alikes, because search, spell-checking and sorting treat them as different characters: Mongolian Ү is not the Latin Y or the Kazakh Ұ with a stroke, and Ө is not the Latin Ɵ, the Greek Θ or the old Cyrillic fita Ѳ. Texts typed on Russian keyboards sometimes use such stand-ins, or plain о and у, which turns өдөр into a different-looking word; they are worth replacing.

Mongolian Cyrillic vs the traditional Mongolian script

The traditional Mongolian script (монгол бичиг), taken from the Old Uyghur alphabet, is written top to bottom in columns that run from left to right, and its letters change shape at the start, middle and end of a word. It is the standard script for Mongolian in Inner Mongolia in China, it is taught in schools in Mongolia, and Mongolia has been bringing it back into official use beside Cyrillic. Its letters have their own Unicode block; see the traditional Mongolian script collection for them.

The two scripts do not map letter for letter. Cyrillic spells today's Khalkha pronunciation, while the traditional script keeps an older spelling shared across dialects, so converting between them is a matter of words, not single characters. Mongolia's flag 🇲🇳 carries a third Mongolian creation, the Soyombo symbol 𑪞, the head mark of the Soyombo script that the scholar and monk Zanabazar designed in 1686.

Where Mongolian is spoken

Mongolian is the state language of Mongolia, and Unicode's CLDR estimates about 3 million speakers there; the Cyrillic alphabet on this page is the one they use every day. In China, mainly in Inner Mongolia, CLDR estimates about 3.7 million more speakers, who write the language in the traditional script. Prices in Mongolia are in tugrik (төгрөг), with the sign after the number: 5,000₮.

Mongolian is a Mongolic language, not a Turkic one, though centuries of contact give it much in common with Kazakh and Kyrgyz, which also write Ө and Ү in Cyrillic, with different alphabet positions and partly different sounds. Its closest relatives are Buryat in Russia, written in Cyrillic with Ө, Ү and Һ, and Kalmyk. For their alphabets see the Buriat, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Russian collections; for 🇲🇳 and the country's emoji see Mongolia.