Mongolian Letter A

It writes the Mongolian vowel sound a in words.

The traditional Mongolian script adapted the Old Uyghur alphabet around 1204. That earlier script developed through Sogdian, a Central Asian writing system, from Aramaic, an older Middle Eastern script. Chinggis Khan's new government needed written records by 1206; an inscription on the Yisüngge stele, an upright inscribed stone, may date to 1224–25.

Mongol bichig runs in vertical columns from top to bottom, with columns ordered left to right. Later Todo, Manchu, and Sibe writing traditions adapted or shared parts of its repertoire.

Why does Mongolian A change shape?

Its shape depends on position and neighboring letters.

The text stores one base letter, but shaping shows an isolated, initial, medial, or final form according to its place in a joined word. The standalone form can therefore differ from the form inside a word.

Some words use a detached final vowel. In that pattern, Mongolian Vowel Separator comes before the vowel and changes how the letters join. Free Variation Selectors are invisible controls for forms that context cannot predict, especially in special or foreign-word cases.

Where is traditional Mongolian script used?

It remained in use in Inner Mongolia and China in 2024.

Mongolia changed its official writing to Cyrillic in the early 1940s and began reviving the traditional script in the early 1990s. In Inner Mongolia, attempts to shift to Cyrillic or Latin writing from 1954–1980 did not displace it.

Mongolia's state and local administrations use Cyrillic and the traditional script in parallel as of 2025. Which one readers encounter depends on the region and institution.