Linguistic History
The earliest surviving Mongolian text may be the Stele of Yisüngge, a report on sports composed in Mongolian script on stone, which is most often dated at 1224 or 1225. The Mongolian-Armenian wordlist of 55 words compiled by Kirakos Gandzaketsi (13th century) is the first written record of Mongolian words. From the 13th to the 15th centuries, Mongolian language texts were written in four scripts (not counting some vocabulary written in Western scripts): Uighur Mongolian (UM) script (an adaptation of the Uighur alphabet), Phagspa (Ph) (used in decrees), Chinese (SM) (The Secret History of the Mongols), and Arabic (AM) (used in dictionaries). While they are the earliest texts available, these texts have come to be called "Middle Mongol" in scholarly practice. The documents in UM script show some distinct linguistic characteristics and are therefore often distinguished by terming their language "Preclassical Mongolian".
The next distinct period is Classical Mongolian, which is dated from the 17th to the 19th century. This is a written language with a high degree of standardization in orthography and syntax that sets it quite apart from the subsequent Modern Mongolian. The most notable documents in this language are the Mongolian Kanjur and Tanjur as well as several chronicles. In 1686, the Soyombo script (Buddhist texts) was created, giving distinctive evidence on early classical Mongolian phonological peculiarities.
Read more about this topic: Mongolian Language
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—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
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