Talk:Mongolian language

Loanwords from Chinese
I have added some Chinese for the more simple and obvious borrowings. I would like to see a source that jurj (tangerine) is really a borrowing from the Chinese. The Chinese word that comes to mind would be 橘子/桔了, but it does not really look like a cognate for jurj. Yaan (talk) 16:01, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

P.S. some more possible cognates, ones that I am less confident in: tsonh 窗户, goimon 挂面 Yaan (talk) 16:11, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

chuānghù > congku seems fairly straightforward. Lessing has it as well. goimon is WM goyiming. Lessing gives two different Kanji, though the left one only differs by having an additional three strokes for "hand" at its left border. The right one has the same right part as 眄, while the left part is illegible. Also mian in modern Mandarin. For jürji, Lessing doesn't dare to give a Chinese etymology (which only means that it was not totally obvious). I removed this word and also changa (strongly) and zuukh (stove) from the article. Until demonstrated, especially cingga looks very Mongolian to me. G Purevdorj (talk) 19:14, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Could this be caused by me taking a shortcut and only giving simplified characters? Traditional for 挂面 would be 掛麵 (edit: or 掛麪).
 * Also: luuvan = 萝卜[蘿蔔] (with b->v and an additional n)?
 * Yaan (talk) 19:31, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Some more guesses from the dictionary: huanli 皇历/-曆/黄-; intoor 樱桃儿; wandui 豌豆; lantuu 浪头/-頭.
 * tsai might be from 茶.
 * Yaan (talk) 21:01, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, it's 掛麪. "luuvan" is a likely candidate, but there must have been "ng" at some stage in Chinese, else it shouldn't be there in Mongolian. b > v is totally unproblematic. For 浪头/-頭, two online dictionaries only gave 'wave', not 'sledgehammer'. Entered the other words. G Purevdorj (talk) 09:49, 15 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Well, blowing up the list even more makes no sense now. These words are meant to illustrate what kind of Mandarin words were borrowed, and possibly when. So a thematic structuring of the words might make sense. Moreover, most readers just don't know Kanji, so we need to include the actual phonetic version of words that were borrowed. For more recent borrowings, this can be pinyin, but old borrowings might have borrowed from slightly older forms of Chinese words that differ from late 20th century Mandarin. luuvan might be a case in point, as -o is not so likely to get borrowed as -ang, at least not a priori. G Purevdorj (talk) 15:12, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * My mistake, it is 榔头. Dictionary says the first character might also be 狼 or 鎯. Yaan (talk) 15:26, 15 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Is there any real evidence proving that luuvan (萝卜 lúobo), moog (蘑菇 mógu), and khuluu (葫芦 húlu) are loanwords from Chinese to Mongolian? These words look like possible loanwords in Chinese. Of course, the phonetic shape of the word (e.g. beginning with /l/) more clearly indicates a non-native origin in the case of Mongolian luuvan, but the Chinese words seem to have murky origins, too. Ebizur (talk) 14:45, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Video Example of People Speaking Mongolian
Thank you to the unnamed hero who FINALLY replaced the grainy video of aging herders babbling around a campfire with a modern, well-produced example of the language. The old video file really made it seem like this language was the subject of field study preservation efforts and not the official language of a modern country. --36.225.218.215 (talk) 13:16, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Hey, guess what, a possible Ural-Altaic nationalist of apparent Hungarian ethnicity (who btw are barely Uralic or Turkic genetically) has removed your beloved CCP propaganda and restored the shitty quality field recording "to its rightful place"! I get that as a "blatant advertisement" (though not one that 99%+ of English-speaking Wikipedia would understand anyway), it can't be used as an example, but good Lord is the current recording garbage. I also believe the remover's motivations were not pure (there is a sector of Ural-Altaic nationalists who absolutely despise the Han Chinese as a group and especially the CCP). Could this Wikitongues video be sourced instead? The audio quality isn't as crisp as the Huawei video, but it's definitely better than the current and is probably available for free use. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7l8wsBlSCpQ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hr8WDHUABYGjW (talk • contribs) 02:37, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Vowel length
Help:IPA/Mongolian says that "Vowel length is not phonemic." but here it says "Length is phonemic for vowels". Is one of them incorrect? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.158.188.9 (talk) 02:38, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Vowel length is phonemic, though non-initial syllables only contrast full vowels with schwa. IPA/Mongolian was incorrect, so I deleted that. G Purevdorj (talk) 13:11, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Peripheral Mongolian
The infobox gives the code for "Peripheral Mongolian" and there is a test wiki for that language linked to in the external-links section, but the text of the article does not mention it at all. This should be addressed in the article. - dcljr (talk) 07:39, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
 * The infobox should be changed. "Peripheral Mongolian" is an inadequate term from the Ethnologue that does not correspond to any historically establishable linguistic variety. G Purevdorj (talk) 13:08, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Whatever it's called, it has an ISO 639-3 code (mvf) and an Incubator test wiki. SIL calls it "Peripheral Mongolian". Ethnologue calls it "Mongolian, Peripheral" with alternate names "Inner Mongolian, Menggu, Monggol, Mongol, Southern-Eastern Mongolian". Seeing as how SIL is (apparently) the registration authority for ISO language codes, the article text should probably mention the name they use for what they call the language with code mfv, even if (or perhaps especially if) there is legitimate disagreement as to whether that name/code is meaningful. - dcljr (talk) 00:36, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia advertising Huawei
Why is the video in the Phonology section ("Modern day Mongolians speaking the Khalkh which is the dominant dialect of Mongolia") a Huawei commercial? Is Wikipedia an advertisement platform? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.200.16.57 (talk) 19:19, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for spotting that. I've removed the video now. – Uanfala (talk) 20:16, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I remember there was an other video illustrating Mongolian speech a few years back. That one was non-commercial. Maybe we could restore it to its rightful place. [[File:MOV00979.ogg]] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.200.16.57 (talk) 07:56, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Done. I hope it will stay there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.200.16.57 (talk) 08:13, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

incomplete
There is no discussion here of whether this is an ergative language, whether verbs are aspectual or tense, how tense is indicated in verbs, and so on. The morphological description almost completely keys on nouns. 71.178.191.144 (talk) 16:06, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Is the vowel table correct? I can't seem to find a reference with that table
Hi there. I just wanted to check the reliability of the vowels table in the Phonology section, as I'm not sure where that table is from? It doesn't seem to be from Janhunen's or Svantesson's books on Mongolian so does anyone know where it came from? Does it need redoing? Thanks CcfUk2018 (talk) 01:01, 19 February 2020 (UTC)


 * I think it may need redoing. I don't have access to either book though. I've recently started taking Mongolian classes, and the table seems mostly right (though I'll admit to not having an ear for this sort of thing), but the diphthongs ай, ой, уй seem to be commonly vocalized as monophthongs distinct from the basic seven. In particular ай (ai) is pronounced as æ. Ой and уй I haven't really got a handle on yet. Ashorocetus (talk&thinsp;&#124;&thinsp;contribs) 16:12, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Status of Ordos
I tried to undo an edit by Florian Blaschke from 2019: In Janhunen 2003, Ordos is mostly treated as a language because of extensive early description. Khalkha, Ordos and Oirat share a great deal of innovations (cf. Rybatzki 2003: 387) and in terms of grammar are not further apart than Khalkha and Khorchin. The reason why Oirat might perhaps be somewhat further apart is its rather distinct lexicon, but this wasn't true of Mostaert's Ordos and is much less true of contemporary Ordos. Linguists in Inner Mongolia officially list it as one of their "aman ayalgu", as compared to the distinction of Oirat vs. Chakhar on the higher level of "nutug-un ayalgu", while still treating all of "Common Mongolic" / "Central Mongolic" as one language. In Russia, all is divide et impera, so Buryat, Kalmyk and Khalkha are all "languages". Some colleagues there try to get "Khorchin/Kharchin" one level up (including e.g. B. Sodu), but Khalkha and Ordos are pretty much mutually intellegible. For those who want to treat the list of contents of Janhunen 2003 as a taxonomy, please remember that even Oirat and Kalmyk got separate entries there, and I know no serious linguist (including Janhunen himself) who would agree with that (and least perhaps people like Cenggeltei or Attila Rakos that worked on the inner-Oirat taxonomy). The main point that sets Ordos apart is its Middle-Mongol-like syllable structure, though for the contemporary variety, I would be less sure about that. I could imagine that some master students of Köke might have explored that area (without drawing far-reaching conclusions, of course), but I haven't seen a dedicated publication. As it is, it feels grossly improper to leave Darkhad and Alasha in the list of dialects of Mongolian, while dropping Ordos from that list. I would ask for help for changing that back. I tried to change it back myself, but I somehow destroyed the template (and much more along with it) when I tried to do the edit. G Purevdorj (talk) 12:13, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Words starting with R
The article claims (in the "consonants" section of changes in phonology) that no Mongolian words start with R, but this is not true. There are several loanwords from Russian that start with "r" ("р" in Cyrillic), such as радио or размер. Ashorocetus (talk&thinsp;&#124;&thinsp;contribs) 14:22, 21 September 2022 (UTC)