3.8.1. Mongolian - Language
Description
This article is from the Mongolia FAQ, by Oliver Corff with numerous contributions by others.
3.8.1. Mongolian - Language
Mongolian belongs to the Altaic family of languages showing structural
(and partially lexical) similarities with languages of the Tungusic
group of this family (e.g. Manju) and the Turkic group of this family
(e.g. Turkish). Mongolian has strong vowel harmony: all vowels within
one word and even all grammatical particles must be chosen from one of
two vowel sets which are known as male and female or back and front
vowels. Mongolian has a total of seven short vowels. There are also
seven long vowels. The distinction between short and long vowels is
essential as it alters the meaning: [tos] is ``grease, oil'' while
[toos] is ``dust''. Besides simple short and long vowels there are
also diphtongs which have duration values similar to long vowels. The
stress is usually put on the first syllable if all syllables of a word
are short; otherwise the stress is put on the first syllable carrying
a long vowel. The set of consonants has many constraints: [r] may not
occur at the beginning of a word. [f] only occurs in foreign loans and
is frequently converted to [p]. [w] and [b] though phonetically
different do not form an opposition on the phonological level. The
same holds true for [c] and [q] ([c] as [ts]ar, [q] as [ch]ill) as
well as [j] (as in [j]eep) and [z] (best described as fairly unvoiced
[ds]). Both pairs are expressed by the same symbol in Classical
writing and the development of different phonetical realisations is
mainly due to vowel environment and dialect situation. The consonants
[k] and [g] are linked to vowel harmony. In words containing back
vowels, [k] changes to [x] and [g] becomes [G] (a voiced velar).
Beginners frequently confuse the latter with something like a French
[r].
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