Talk:Mongolian language/Archive 2

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Archive 1

Archive 2

2006 study

Latebird, I think your last edit was quite appropriate, but 91.148.159.4 was of course right that it contained OR. On the other hand, it is not OR to quote the findings of a study without quoting its conclusion, or quoting findings and conclusions separately and indeed uttering some sentence of caution. You might want to go one of these ways, only a bit more cautiously. G Purevdorj (talk) 03:43, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

An unattributed "sentence of caution" or any other kind of objection to a cited source would still be OR, as it still rests on no other scholarly authority than that of the Wikipedian editor. Of the two other ways you suggested, both seem impossible to me. Latebird can't "quote the findigs (=data?) without the conclusion", because I have already quoted the conclusion with a source and he has no justification to delete it. Furthermore, the only "findings (=data?)" from the study that Latebird could, and did cite in opposition to the authors' own claim is, as far as I see, that there was also a large-scale government campaign against illiteracy, so the introduction of Cyrillic was not the only factor diminishing it. I have retained the mention of this fact in my present wording, so he doesn't need to change anything. Still, the study makes it very clear that there were also government campaigns before the introduction of Cyrillic, and they did not have the same effect. Also, the authors' claim, as rendered by me, is only that the introduction of Cyrillic probably contributed to the rise in literacy (i.e. it was one factor), not that it was the only factor. This is a sufficiently modest and cautious claim, and efforts to "balance" it additionally are quite unnecessary.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 15:26, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

BTW, the issue of literacy raises another problem or two. First, the Mongolian-script form is placed given precedence in the lead, presumably because there are estimated to be more Mongolian speakers in Inner Mongolia than in Mongolia proper. However, not only is the estimate uncertain, but the question remains what part of them is actually literate in Mongolian at all and what part use Chinese outside of the home. In contrast, Mongolia definitely has near-universal literacy, so the likelihood of its citizens reading Wikipedia is higher. Second, the article doesn't quite clarify that the question is not merely of script, but also of dialect. From what I gather - I have a minimal idea of Cyrillic Khalkha, and none at all of Written Mongol-Mongolian with Mongol Bichig - Cyrillic is used to write Khalkha as the standard dialect of the Mongolia, but the (Uyghur-)Mongolian script normally entails, or reflects, an archaic Classical Mongolian-like form of the language which does not directly correspond to modern Khalkha or to any other specific modern dialect (this guy actually reports it being compared to the diffence between Chaucerian and Modern English, and another person from Mongolia proper even speaks of it being as incomprehensible as Beowulf!). Svantesson (p.40-41) is also illustrative in this regard. Should this be regarded as a case of extremely opaque spelling, or as some kind of diglossia - given that the Mongolian script form is regarded as supra-dialectal? I even see people have published separate grammars of "Written Mongolian" vs grammars of "Khalkha/Modern Standard Mongolian". This is probably part of what the authors of the study mean by "discrepancy between written and spoken form" (in addition to the purely phonetic opacity and complexity of the script), and what has caused resistance to the re-introduction of Mongol Bichig. On the other hand, the standard of Inner Mongolia is said to be based on the modern dialect of Chahar, but I have no idea how this combines with the use of Mongolian script. Classical Mongolian spelling, but with Chahar pronunciation? Is it the reconstructed original pronunciation or the modern Chahar pronunciation that is reflected in our transliterations of Mongol-script names then? I really have no idea - I'd guess it was the reconstructed original one (although, if the literate population of Inner Mongolia are the targets, it probably ought to be the Chahar one). This should also be specified. --91.148.159.4 (talk) 15:26, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Pls dont call her "people's republic", thks. Gantuya eng (talk) 16:09, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Excuse me, I somehow got the impression that was still the full name (I think I googled "Mongolia" and "republic", while looking for a proper name of "non-Inner Mongolia"). Anyway, I've corrected this now.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 16:17, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Script – how boring! But let me clarify a few points here. Beowulf is actually quite comprehensible to a somewhat trained lay person as I am, probable comprehensible to a similar degree as documents written in Mongolian script in the 14th century will be to contemporary Mongolians. Grammars of Written Mongolian refer to the language of the 17th and 18th century which is largely comprehensible to most literate Mongolians today, but of course shows several peculiarities that they will not understand. There is a certain difference between the grammar of modern spoken and written Standard Inner Mongolian, but funny enough it is not the subject of grammars apart from dialect grammars.

The standard of Inner Mongolian pronunciation is the Chakhar dialect, and if one disregards a few peripheral aspects concerning the non-adaption of a few extreme idiosyncrasies within Chakhar, this relates to the script in no way at all. This is one of the reasons why nobody who is not already Chakhar herself has adapted that standard. (As somebody from Eastern Inner Mongolia, you would first have to UNDERSTAND the Chakhar dialect which is quite impossible without extensive training.) The script is extremely archaic (reflecting the pronunciation of the 13th century), but it is usually possible to predict a given modern form from the script (while not the other way round), so it functions as some kind of supra-dialectal device. For people from Eastern Inner Mongolia (which has a denser population of Mongolians than the west), this archaic ancestor form of their own dialect is probably even better comprehensible than Chakhar which has (and that is my own estimation) a common ancestor with Khorchin no later than the 17th century which means that the time distance to the 21st century is the same as to Middle Mongolian. G Purevdorj (talk) 17:43, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

So, when people write with the Mongol Bichig script today, do they use the grammar of Written Mongolian (17th-18th century) or the grammar of whatever modern dialect they speak? In other words, is it just a matter of very archaic orthography (similarly to modern English, which basically reflects Middle English phonology) or is it also a matter of a different language variety? Did the adoption first of Latin, then of Cyrillic represent merely a change to phonological adaption of the orthography specifically to the modern Khalkha dialect, or did it also mean the complete adoption of the modern Khalkha dialect, grammatical peculiarities and all?

BTW, this is a minor note, but Beowulf is certainly not comprehensible to any Modern English speaker without extensive training in Old English. Old English in general (let alone the obscure poetic style of Beowulf) is very hard to learn for someone who knows just Modern English, and probably even to someone who, like you, knows both Modern English and German. This means basically learning a foreign language. And note that we're not even talking about writing, only about reading. If a native speaker of Mongolian compares Mongol Bichig to Beowulf, this is not a compliment (indeed you can check the context for yourself); not everyone is, or feels like being, a philologist. Chaucerian English would be a better candidate for comparison: it does, basically, and successfully, serve as an orthographic basis for Modern English, and, at the same time, if a couple of successive English-speaking generations were educated with a more phonetic script and were subsequently faced with the traditional spelling, they would probably find it intolerably opaque, obscure and difficult to learn.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 18:43, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

„quite comprehensible“ in my last statement was slightly exaggerated, hehe, but (with a philological set of mind) you have a fighting chance to grab some content when approaching some sentence. It’s not worse than Old German or some old forms of Norsk none of which I studied. Mongolians can do the same with Middle Mongolian – apart from the unfamiliar pronunciation (that you are already used to if you know the Mongolian script), they would have to deal with grammar beyond their reach. The grammar of writings in Mongolian script today is entirely based on an unpalatable mix of different varieties of the modern language (which is, quite explicitly, stated in the article: “The authorities have synthesized a literary standard for Mongolian in China whose grammar is said to be based on "South Mongolian"”). Individual writers will show heavy traces of dialect, but will also to some degree accommodate to this common standard (i.e. (but not only) when innovations present in their own dialect have no representation in this standard: cf. past tense negation in Standard and Khorchin).

The grammar of early modern Khalkha writings bear witness to Classical Mongolian influence, as to a lesser degree even holds true of the language used in modern novels. Journalistic texts and similar stuff still cling to a particular written standard of Khalkha, but this one is quite close to the spoken language. Due to recent developments, the script is lagging behind on issues such as fusion of verbal suffixes, but whether it might even have misrepresented some of these at the time of its creation is a question I would like to dive into at some time. There are good indications that it did. But ultimately, these are niceties. Nonliterary Mongolian Cyrillic is very close to the spoken language, closer than Standard High German and Hannover dialect are to each other. G Purevdorj (talk) 01:55, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

So, if I read you correctly, grammar is mostly a separate issue from script, and people can, in principle, write any dialect in Mongolian script, as long as they abide by its highly historical and supra-dialectal spelling for each specific word or morpheme. It's more a matter of spelling than of diglossia, then. In that case, was Khalkha (as identifiable based on grammar and vocabulary, if not on phonology) the standard written language of the state of Mongolia already prior to the introduction of Cyrillic? And, again, do our (Wikipedia's) transcriptions of Mongolian script reflect the reconstructed historical pronunciation (as seems to be the practice according to Svantesson), or do they reflect the real phonology of any of the modern dialects in Inner Mongolia? Whichever of the latter two holds true, I think there should be a footnote explaining it: otherwise the reader is puzzled why, for example, the two script versions of the word for "Mongolian language" are also transcribed differently, given that it's the same language they are supposed to represent.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 10:45, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, Khalkha (in a certain mix with Classical Mongolian grammatical features) was the standard language of the Mongolian state prior to Cyrillic. Transcription of Cyrillic reflects historical vowels, but modern consonants, and the Khalkha syllable structure of ca. 1900. G Purevdorj (talk) 03:03, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I think I understand what you mean by the vowels being "historical" in the Romanization of Cyrillic (ö and ü; indeed I just added a remark about that in the article), but it's strange that the article on Mongolian Cyrillic gives different designations for ISO 9 (ô and ù). What about the syllable structure? --91.148.159.4 (talk) 12:15, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

The authors of that study present a lot of facts and figures, and they derive a lot of interesting conclusions from that data. And then they include this one claim without any real facts to back it up (actually mentioning facts pointing in the opposite direction in the same sentence). In other words: Their report includes this claim as a statement of opinion, in contrast to most of their other claims, which are derived from analyzed data. Hightlighting this difference in Wikipedia is not original research. To the contrary: Original research would be to state this claim as scientific fact when the study doesn't. It is the duty of each editor to critically evaluate the sources at hand, and not to just blindly copy whatever someone else has written. I don't really mind how this specific detail is phrased in the article, but I do mind being accused of something that I haven't done. It's quite likely that they are actually right in their opinion. But I would expect that there is no way to actually prove that (or the opposite). We can't lose if we are honest about such details. --Latebird (talk) 14:12, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

1. While you're right that the authors don't seem to be particularly interested in the effect of Cyrillic on literacy and only mention it in passing, I absolutely can't agree with you that they don't try to justify it with facts. Indeed, the claim in question is immediately followed by a couple of figures. You may feel that the authors' justification is not convincing, or even that it is actually contradicted by their own data. It's quite possible that you are right and they are wrong. But the point is that including your own personal assessment of the validity of their conclusion is original research.

Specifically, the authors say: "Nevertheless, the Cyrillic alphabet, where reading does not differ from writing, had positively influenced this relatively rapid progress of literacy education. For instance, as a result of new literacy campaign on Cyrillic which started in 1941, 18 thousand people became literate within one year, 295807 people (or 40 percent) became literate in 1941-1948, by 1951 adult literacy rate became 87%; by 1960 72.6%." Clearly, the second sentence is meant to justify the first.

2. About policy, I don't quite follow. You say: "It is the duty of each editor to critically evaluate the sources at hand". It's true that an editor can and should evaluate whether a source as a whole is reliable or not, according to criteria given in Wikipedia:Reliable Sources: is it peer-reviewed, (relatively) neutral etc.. However, an editor should not personally evaluate (praise or criticize) specific claims or arguments presented in a source based on his own reasoning (see WP:NOR and WP:V). You're right that it can be useful to specify the difference between a finding based on a quantitative study and a sourced opinion, but it is sufficient to do that with a difference in wording: say, "Based on a statistical survey, it has been concluded that ..." vs "It is opined / considered likely that ...". In our case, there is an element of quantitative study as well as an element of subjective judgement, so I couldn't vouch for a particular wording of that sort.

3. Even if original research such as that were allowed and our judgements mattered, I still don't think the authors' opinion is as blatantly unjustified as you say. If you look at table 1 in their article, there is indeed an unprecedented and dramatic rise in literacy in the 1940s. This does indeed happen to coincide with the introduction of Cyrillic. You seemed to suggest that the real cause was the presence of a government campaign, but the article says that there were also government campaigns before that. The Cyrillic script-cum-orthography was indeed less phonetically opaque than the traditional one. All of this seems to point towards the authors' assumption. Yes, you're right that it is still possible that this particular government campaign of the 1940s was simply so much more intensive than the others that it was sufficient to cause the rise in literacy alone. One can't "prove" that this was not the case on a completely objective, hard-science basis. But one can still make a judgement about the likelihood of that (partly based on knowledge about details, context, etc.). Scholars make such judgements on a regular basis, and they must do so - for example, they must assume that social mobility, patriotic surges, fear of purges etc. were insufficient to cause the rise in literacy, even though those factors could also be proposed as alternative explanations. A degree of subjectivity is especially common in humanities. In this case, I happen to find that the scholars' judgement seems reasonable. But as I said, our personal assessments are really off-topic. --91.148.159.4 (talk) 15:59, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

You are trying to make an artificial distinction between evaluating a source in total and evaluating individual statements included in it. In practise, there is no real difference between the two. Just because a source is "on average relatively neutral" doesn't mean we have to accept every single statement in it at face value. It's not about "praising or criticizing" a statement, it is about reading carefully and comparing the data. If statement A in a source is backed up by verifiable data, and statement B isn't, then the two clearly don't have the same value in a citation. The requirement of verifiability does not end at the simple existence of a statement. You seem confused about my approach here. I am not judging the content of the statement itself (that would indeed be OR), I'm judging how well it is substantiated (not at all). And this kind of judgement is explicitly required from each editor. We should not derive our own results from the data, but we must check the results of our sources for plausibility. --Latebird (talk) 09:47, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but almost every word of the above is just wrong.

1. We are not supposed to evaluate a source based on whether its content (including the way it is subtantiated) makes sense to us personally, we are supposed to evaluate it based on whether it was published in an authoritative peer-reviewed publication and whether the author is an expert (see WP:RS). WP:V certainly does not "explicitly require" the editor to evaluate how good the substantiation of each specific statement in the source is (please cite the passage from WP:V which you think "explicitly" says that). Not only is it not required, but it is prohibited - who are you to make that judgement? We are here as librarians, not as critical reviewers. Critical reviews are the job of researchers.

2. There's no difference, for the purposes of Wikipedia, between judging the veracity of a statement and judging how adequately it is substantiated. Now this really is an artificial distinction. The substantiation is also part of the statement. In both cases, you are expressing your own opinion and reviewing the source based on your own competence, and your own competence is unverifiable (it's a basic principle of Wikipedia, unlike Citizendium, that its editors personally can't be considered reliable sources - not even if they really are experts in real life). An editor may be convinced he has a thousand good reasons to disagree with a source espousing the General Theory of Relativity, but he is not allowed to state them in a Wikipedia article, for obvious reasons.

3. It's not true that the specific statement is "not substantiated at all" - the authors' opinion is one possible interpretation of the data, you simply disagree with it and you propose other interpretations - but that is your personal original research, because you personally are not a reliable source by Wikipedia's standards.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 12:50, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Maybe there is a third way: finding sources who give some other reasons for the success of alphabetization? Yaan (talk) 10:11, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Sure, you can add other possible factors, and nobody has denied there were other factors. Both the source and my wording say Cyrillic "contributed" to the effect, thereby clearly indicating that there were other factors as well. But Latebird's desire is not to add other factors, but to either delete or somehow overtly disqualify the factor that was added first - and that is unjustifiable per Wikipedia policy. Also, only Cyrillic as a factor is relevant to the particular section where I've added it, so listing all the others there seems inadequate.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 12:50, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

The other reasons are given in this same source together with the supporting data: The later campaigns were better organized and pushed harder than the earlyer ones. Also, every literacy campaign will accelerate over time, because the early students become the teachers of the later ones. But of course, the more good sources, the merrier! --Latebird (talk) 11:26, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

As far as I can see, the only thing in the source that resembles your claim about later campaigns being harder is "Years between 1930-1950 were most effective time to eliminate illiteracy. Many activities were initiated by communities ..." etc.. Except that if you look at the data, the striking rise is not after 1930, but after 1940. Indeed, until 1935, there is almost no progress at all. As for self-acceleration by students becoming teachers, it's given in the source as the primary reason for the rise to 17% by 1940, but not for the rise to 60% by 1947. Your choice to attribute the rise in the 1940s to self-acceleration alone may be valid, but it is your original synthesis. --91.148.159.4 (talk) 12:50, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Your discussions are interesting :).

Maybe there was less success in the literacy campaign during 1930's as the writing system itself was affected by the political turmoil. They decided to adopt the Latin script and then gave it up.

There is a film (humouristic though) about the literacy campaign. An old man tells in that film that he, in his youth, went to a monastery and began learning the Tibetan alphabet. While he didn't finish it, a revolutionary came and ordered him to learn the Mongol Bichig. He began learning the Mongol Bichig, but a "boy-reviolutionary put a gun at his head" and ordered him to learn the Latin alphabet. When he was struggling to "memorise the Latin shapes", they suddenly shifted to the Cyrillic.

Maybe this humour (bitter though) reflects the cause of the slow pace of the literacy process until they finally stopped at Cyrillic?

Perhaps the literacy process in Mongolia could be studied in connection with the literacy process of the republics and autonomous provinces of the USSR because they also shifted from Arabic alphabet to Latin and then to Cyrillic. Gantuya eng (talk) 14:42, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's an interesting parallel. It's true that every change is a problem, yet scripts and orthographies also have intrinsic differences in difficulty. As for the change from Latin to Cyrillic, stupid and politically motivated as it apparently was, it doesn't seem to have had a very dramatic effect. During the second part of the period when a transition to Latin was prepared (1935-1941), there was a rise from 4,9% to 17,3%. The study doesn't actually say whether those people were literate in Latin or in Mongol Bichig. Then, during the following period (1940-1947), when Cyrillic was adopted, there was a rise to 59,8% literacy - now explicitly in Cyrillic. The authors do say the shift to Cyrillic in 1941 initially re-increased illiteracy before exerting a positive effect, but these figures suggest that the effect of the change wasn't that fatal - if there was an initial fall, it was apparently more than compensated only in seven years' time. BTW, the difference between Latin and Cyrillic in terms of typology is small when compared to Mongol Bichig; the orthographies are also very similar to each other and very different from Mongol Bichig. For someone first acquainted with Mongol Bichig, Latin and Cyrillic must have seemed nearly the same; although it seems that there weren't that many people who had ever been entirely literate in Mongol Bichig in the first place (4,9 to 17,3%, depending on which script those 17,3% of 1940 were actually literate in). Speaking of which, it would also be interesting to see figures for the rate of literacy in Mongol Bichig in Inner Mongolia today. It's a pity nobody seems to have made surveys about that.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 17:28, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

There's an interesting phrase "шинэ бичигт тайлагдсан хүн". Roughly means "literate in the new alphabet". Behind it, the Mongol Bichig was meant to be obsolete and useless in the new social system. They explicitly called Mongol Bichig a "feudal alphabet that served the exploiters of the labouring class". The very low initial level of literacy may have taken into account only those who were "шинэ бичигт тайлагдсан". Those who were literate in either Mongol Bichig or Tibetan alphabet could have been counted as illiterate. Because of the high percentage of monks, the percentage of those literate in the Tibetan alphabet should have been quite higher, not less than 20-30 percent.

The rapid pace after 1940 could be more related to a better organised campaign -- they could have accumulated more experience and resources, especially human resources (ie teaching personnel), better communication technology, etc, not only to some advantages of the Cyrillic alphabet.

Is Cyrillic more phonetic than Latin?? Does it have a higher number of explicit signs for a higher number phonemes than the Latin alphabet does? If so, would that be an advantage of the Cyrillic alphabet over the other writing systems -- Tibetan, Mongol Bichig and Latin alphabet? Even if this is an advantage, would it be decisive in its success?? Do the accented Latin letters compensate the difference? Gantuya eng (talk) 13:27, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

(after edit conflict) As far as I can see, your interpretation of the figures can't be correct, because the first census was conducted long before it had been decided that a shift to a new script was to be made at all, and before a new script had even been devised. That was in 1921, when 3,0% were found to be literate. How this can be reconciled with the percentage of monks (and whether all monks were literate, and how many they were, anyway) - I cannot say, but I suspect you are idealizing the social conditions in pre-revolutionary Mongolia in one way or another (a common tendency in post-communist countries). The Mongolian Latin script, which I haven't looked very closely at, does not seem to have had any significant drawback in comparison to Mongolian Cyrillic: both were about equally phonetic. I could be wrong, but I'm inclined to think that Russian-style Cyrillic is actually somewhat worse than Latin because of the complex values of vowel-letters such as е /je/ & /'e/, я /ja/ & /'a/ and ю /ju/ & /'u/: I've seen this kind of transmission of Russian orthographic peculiarities into other Asian Cyrillic orthographies, and it generally seems rather arbitrary. Of course, there's no dispute that both Latin and Cyrillic are clearly much simpler than Mongol Bichig - both in terms of unambiguous and unitary expression of phonemes and in terms of the closeness of the associated orthographies to pronunciation. I don't know anything about the use of the Tibetan script to write Mongolian and how it compares with the others in terms of rationality and accuracy: abugidas can be very systematic and rational - though still more troublesome than alphabets, IMO - but the differences between the phonologies of the two languages and the extreme archaicness of the orthography of Tibetan itself don't imbue me with optimism.:)--91.148.159.4 (talk) 14:49, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

You're confirming my general feeling, that the cited study is not very scientific at all. They don't present their conclusions in a systematic fasion, but just pick up some pieces as they run into them, often comparing numbers that may not really be compareable. The disputed part saying "cyrillic helped even though it caused literacy to fall" fits well into that pattern.

As to the difference between latin and cyrillic, from my own experience I would say it is neglectible. Having grown up with latin, cyrillic sometimes looks illogical to me, but I guess it might look the opposite from the other direction. After all, both scripts derive from the same greek roots. --Latebird (talk) 14:25, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

You don't know whether the numbers are comparable or not; Gantuya eng doesn't, she's just guessing; and neither Gantuya eng, nor you, nor I are qualified to engage in OR assessing that (especially based on anecdotal evidence and speculations). You are also deliberately misrepresenting the disputed part which I already quoted: it says the introduction of Cyrillic caused the literacy to fall at first (of course it did, since nobody was literate in Cyrillic at first!), and then it caused it to rise faster than ever! It seems like the more we speak, the more I tempt you to engage in original research, so I reckon I had better stop altogether. I think I've discussed this issue more than enough, and I've consumed far too much server space. Peace out. --91.148.159.4 (talk) 15:14, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

You see, that's exactly the point. The report doesn't give us enough information about what all those numbers really mean. And because of that, it is very dangerous to draw any conclusions from them. For all we know, each census was taken under very different circumstances and with very different methods. The authors of the repot don't really seem to care, they just collected whatever figures they could find, and then presented them next to each other quite uncritically (and hence unscientifically). The longer I look at it, the less this looks like a reliable source to me. --Latebird (talk) 06:25, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

I am not sure this adds to the discussion, but I think the premise of the authors of the study, that a growth from 17 to 60 percent is much better than a growth from 5 to 17% (in a time of, probably, heightened mortality among literates), is somewhat questionable. They'd have a point if literacy rates were growing linearly, but my suspicion is that exponential or some kind of logistic growth, with the inflection point not necessarily at (f^-1(0.5),0.5), would be a much more natural model. From that POV, the growth rate of literacy, which seems to be about the same for both between 1935-41 and 1941-47 (both times roughly tripled), would be more important than the differences between the respective numbers of literates. I am aware that this is only my private analysis, though. Yaan (talk) 09:47, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Tibetan was used by monks to transcribe or write in Mongolian. Gantuya eng (talk) 16:01, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

It would make sense to me to count literacy in Mongolian only – literacy in Tibetan script does not mean that you are able to use it to write Mongolian. I suppose that 30% would be too high a figure even if such literacy was included, but a combined literacy of 3% for Mongolian and Tibetan script is likely too low – the percentage of badly trained monks was substantial, but 6 of 7 monks totally illiterate? Possible, but improbable. At a time such as 1969, it would still have been more convenient for Damdinsüren to ignore Tibetan as a vehicle of literacy.

There is no indication that this article was peer-reviewed in the first place. The bibliography is written in English only and lacks publishing houses both of which does not confirm to scientific requirements. Accordingly, it should not be treated as a scientific text.

The conclusion that Cyrillic was a factor supporting alphabetization, while not necessary wrong, is completely out of the blue. There is a short argument in favor of this point of view, but the relationship between claim and proof remains tentative, so that it is hardly desirable to cite this mere point of view without sufficient backing or peer review. G Purevdorj (talk) 04:52, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

བློ་བཟང་རྒྱ་མཚོ་པི་འུ་བུལ་འི་དུང་ད་སརའི་༡༧༨ནི་འུ་དུར་མི་ཆིན་ཅིལའི་འུ་པུལ་པོག་དོ་འི་ :(blo’bsang’rgya’mtso’bi’u’bul’I’dung’da’sari’178ni’u’dur’mi’chin’jili’u’bul’bog’do’i’)

This is how Угалзын Лам Лувсанжамц wrote a Mongolian text using the Tibetan alphabet. The photocopy is found in Ирээдүйг эш үзүүлсэн бошгууд by Г. Пүрэвбат.

Children learned the Tibetan alphabet in the monasteries and then they were taught the Tibetan language. Many or even most of them might have failed to learn the Tibetan language diligently--learning a foreign language isn't easy. But it's logical to think that most of them at least learned to read the alphabet, even without understanding the Tibetan text. Once they had learned the alphabet, they should have begun applying it for their basic communication needs -- to write something in their native language, at least to write a letter to their mothers. They didn't have to experiment because the previous generations of monks had done so for centuries. Gantuya eng (talk) 12:50, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Be so nice and supply the corresponding text in Mongolian or modern script! G Purevdorj (talk) 13:56, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

བློ་བཟང་རྒྱ་མཚོ་པི་འུ་བུལ་འི་དུང་ད་སརའི་༡༧༨ནི་འུ་དུར་མི་ཆིན་ཅིལའི་འུ་པུལ་པོག་དོ་འི་ :::blo’bsang’rgya’mtso’bi’u’bul’i’dung’da’sari’178ni’u’dur’mi’chin’jili’u’bul’bog’do’i’

лувсанжамц би өвлийн дунд сарын 178-ны өдөр мичин жилийн өвөл богдын...

Gantuya eng (talk) 14:17, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

How come Inner Mongolia use traditional Mongolia Script?

It seems Chinese gov't wants to wipe out the Mongolia culture in China, at least CNN,BBC said so. How come they use the traditional script and the Mongolia use the Cyrillic alphabet, looks like Russian. As we all know language is the core of a nation's identity. Please civilize me, many thanks!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.52.65.20 (talk) 05:46, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

You can read this article, as well as Mongolian script and Mongolian Cyrillic script to educate yourself. And maybe you should take TV reports with a grain of salt... --Latebird (talk) 10:33, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

(edited:) I am not aware of CNN or BBC saying that the Chinese government wants to wipe out Mongolian culture. On the other hand, it is true that a lot of Inner Mongolians can not even speak Mongolian. The most prominent example was probably Ulanhu, long-time chairman and CCP secretary of Inner Mongolia. Compared to that, using a different alphabet and a different orthography to write Mongolian does not seem to pose a particularly grave identity problem. Maybe you are aware that both Vietnamese and Turkish have switched to an alphabet that looks like the one used to write English, without a major loss of cultural identity.

Introduction of the cyrillic alphabet to Inner Mongolia had actually been planned in the late 1950s, but put on a halt when Sino-Soviet relations worsened. So IMHO the answer to your original question is "because the CCP found it more expedient". Yaan (talk) 11:28, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Deleted list of footnotes

I just deleted the list of footnotes and integrated its sole member into the list of references. I originally had set out to categorize the footnotes into informative and non-informative one, but the border is very unsharp. All informative footnotes that do not discuss literature are very short and not worth being seperated from the text either. It was also due to this consideration that I integrated Altaic (controversial) into the text again - people are not gonna look up all references in a list of more than hundred to find out that it is indeed controversial. G Purevdorj (talk) 20:22, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

One intriguing matter here is the Language commission in Mongolia. As of December 2009, the penalty part of the law has never been applied (G. Gerel, pers. comm.). Nor does the law contain any significant entitlements, as would hold e.g. for the language law in Sweden. So this law seems to be nothing but one of a number of nationalist bullwarks that pretend to ensure the survival of Mongolian culture in the face of China. So its existence is not really significant enough to include it into the main text. Are you in agreement with me here? (We don't have any texts discussing this law, so that this inclusion would not be easy anyway.) The Chinese language legislation would merit inclusion, especially a long discussion on South Mongolian language would be in order, but I both lack the material (almost all of which is only available in Hohhot) and the time to sight it, so this has to be dropped for the time being. On the other hand, this issue is much more important than most of the questions in Mongolian dialectology. G Purevdorj (talk) 20:44, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

disagreement within the article

There is a disagreement in the article regarding the number of speakers (from what I understand). The introduction says one number and the info box says another.--Boy.pockets (talk) 06:33, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Due to two different sources. I changed that by giving priority to the more reliable of the two. G Purevdorj (talk) 15:23, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Mongolian language/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

A summary of the conclusions reached: the article was kept at GA status.

I've listed this article for reassesment over fears it may no longer meet the criteria, as it was listed in 2009 so it could do with a review. For instance " It may have about 5.2 million speakers, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia" in the lead section is unclear, as it says it may have that many speakers, but this is an accurate encylopedia, not guesses. Also, quite a few references actually seem to be in Mongolian, and ditto the Bibliography section. So, can you rereview it please? Rcsprinter^{Gimme a message} 17:16, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Hn, a lexicon can not be more exact than we know. But neither the Mongolian state nor China has any accounts on how many Mongolian nationals and non-Mongolians (e.g. Kazakh) can speak Mongolian. This is addressed in "Geographic distribution". As a lot of notable research on Mongolian happens to be written in Mongolian (which should come as no surprise), this is reflected in the sources of this article which is legitimate given the absence of English-language sources of comparable quality. So basically what do you hope to review? G Purevdorj (talk) 19:24, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, as I don't come from Mongolia or China, I don't really know the figures.(Actually I don't know how many people speak English!) But as I say it is supposed to be encyclopedic information. I'm sure it'll be fine.

But, I suppose if it is legitimate sources, it'll be OK. The thing is, the readers on the English Wiki will be looking for English things, and then if it's in Mongolian then they can't really read it. And it can't be a good article without reliable sources. Maybe somebody could translate them/the pages? I also think it should be properly re-reviewed against the full GA criteria. Get back to me. Rcsprinter^{Gimme a message} 19:45, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

The numbers given in the article follow an estimation by Svantesson et al. 2005, an English-language source that you can look up. This estimation is more reliable than the unfounded estimation of the Ethnologue.

The article did not change very substantially since it was promoted to GA, although there was some activity in the phonology section if I have the temporal order right. So the old review against the GA criteria from 2009 should probably be still valid. You can try to recheck it, if you want.

The Mongolian sources are all on paper and surpass the volume that anybody could reasonably ask to be translated. Many of them have publishers that show them to be reliable in the sense of wikipedia. There are a number of publications without publishers, but if you look up these books, you will usually still find an editor that serves as peer-reviewer. You are free to enter any Mongolian library, take out those books and see who reviewed them. The Academy of Sciences, Mongolian State University etc. have websites from which you can learn whom they employ in what position. Given the conventions for bibliographical information that are biased towards western-centered standards, information on editors is not given among the bibliographical information. But usually this is quite unproblematic. A good example is “Tömörtogoo, D. 1992. Mongol helnij tüühen helzüj. Ulaanbaatar“, [Historical grammar of Mongolian] a book written by an internationally renowned scholar and member of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences. You can find a number of journal articles which are easily identifiable from their outer shape even if you don’t understand a word of Mongolian. The reliability of these again depends on who peer-reviewed them, but they are peer-reviewed. You might be more concerned about the Japanese-language papers which are often mere working papers of universities! (Another suggestion that I can give you is to cross-check the authors of more recent publications quoted here with those cited in Linguistic bibliography.)

Still, I’d be surprised if you could find other arguments against the literature cited here except that you could not read it. But while the notion of verifiability lies with the editor, verification itself is a task for the reader! A person who is not an expert on Mongolian studies can neither write nor easily assess a lexicon article on Mongolian. You might want to try to recruit such an expert, but you cannot seriously demand that I enable you to do so!

G Purevdorj (talk) 20:49, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, well I suppose all that's alright then. But as I'm the nominator, not the reviewer, I can't recheck it against the criteria. Would you care to do it?

If you say it hasn't really changed much except the Phonology section, it might be OK. But I still want it checked against the criteria, even if it is a Quick Pass. Thanks, Rcsprinter^{Gimme a message} 06:55, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, it is a bit strange for me as the main contributor to this article to do so, but given that you have not put forward serious objections of any kind and I cannot see any sense in keeping this review open, here is my impression:

1. Well written? - not engaging, but sufficient: pass.

2. Factually accurate? - good sourcing and referencing, i.e. verifiability: pass.

3. Broad in coverage? - all areas usually treated in language articles get treated: pass.

4. Neutral point of view? - not aware of any controversies nor any obviously one-sided discussions. A more extended discussion of different opinions historical phonology might be desirable, but that is only an aside and probably is a subject deserving an article of its own: pass.

5. Article stability? - stable: Pass.

6. Images? - not quite extensive, but this tends to be difficult in language articles: pass.

But you seem to be wrong on who is to close this discussion. Here's what's written on the template at Talk:Mongolian_language:

Please add comments to the reassessment page, but the decision to list the article as a good article should be left to the editor initiating this reassessment.

You initiated it, so you can close it. G Purevdorj (talk) 16:17, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Overall

Well, I suppose in that case I'd better then. Thanks for your help. This article is still a Good Article (). Rcsprinter^{Gimme a message} 16:43, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Request for confirmations and clarifications

This article has always including phrasings that were too terse, not quite grammatical, or clumsy. Over time, I have improved on most of them. But there are one or two that I never understood, and I am skeptical of some of my own changes. Let's see if we can get them right.

(1) "The delimitation of the Mongolian language within Mongolic is a much disputed theoretical problem, one whose resolution is impeded by the fact that existing data for the major varieties is not easily arrangeable according to a common set of linguistic criteria. Such data might account for . . . ." This originally was a jumble. But it still is confused. The intended meaning seems to be that overall, each study addresses some points that other studies don't, therefore comparison is impossible on those points.

(2) "Most native linguists, regardless of which dialect they speak, claim that stress falls on the first syllable." I changed "regardless of dialect" to the current form. However, the original could be interpreted as "regardless of which dialect they are discussing".

(3) s/he without:saying it-accusative write-perfect particle In two stages about 1.5 years apart, I have expanded the translation of the gloss of just the participle to the current ‘s/he wrote it without saying [so] [i.e. without saying that s/he would do so, or that s/he had done so], I can assure you.’ There are three uncertainties with this translation. (a) Since the participle is apparently free of event parameters including tense, the sentence seems ambiguous. Perhaps in Mongolian grammar or in Mongolian vernacular usage, it is not ambiguous. (b) The scope, the target, of the sentence final particle is unclear: is it the participle or the main verb? (c) What is the most idiomatic translation of the modal particle, and indeed of the entire sentence? As for the participle, in English the event, or absence of an event, of 'without her saying' could have either preceded (she didn't speak about what she was about to do) or followed the main event. Isn't 'really' more idiomatic, if less specific, than 'I can assure you'? And is it that she really wrote it, or that she really said nothing? I am trying to identify the range of possible thorough and accurate translations of this Mongolian sentence. How much of its meaning is denotative and how much connotative? E.g., one possibility is: "She (really) did write it, even though she {{didn't / hasn't / hadn't } {mentioned it / said anything about it / said a word about it / said so / acknowledged it}}" Since the vocabulary "say" is very vague, this sentence is vague in English. There at least half a dozen interpretations. Is this sentence less ambiguous in Mongolian?

(4) Comparing transcriptions, it seems that /γ/ alternates with zero, e.g., Sechenbaγatur ~ Sechenbaatar. Somebody please explain this in this article. Dale Chock (talk) 11:07, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I am not really sure what you mean by alternating. Traditional Mongolian ᠠᠭᠠ (aγa) quite often turns into cyrillic аа (aa), but not always (e.g. ᠴᠠᠭᠠᠨ - Цагаан). Do you want this explained in the article? Or do you want a sentence explaining that transcriptions of a name written in traditional Mongolian may look different from transcriptions of the same name written in cyrillic? Yaan (talk) 20:45, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

No, the intended meaning of (1) is rather that there is no animosity what criteria to choose for comparison. Some studies take everything they come upon, some limit themselves to phonology, none goes beyond morphology. No reasonable ways of weighting are proposed. And so on.

The vagueness of (2) also applies to its source.

(4): Written Mongolian gamma turned zero in some cases, while in others it did not. Svantesson et al. try to explain this by assuming that gamma represents two different morphemes of Middle Mongolian. The name Sechenbaatar is written in different ways and different scripts on the two books in question, but it is the same author, so this ought to be unified in the style of citation.

(3): (a) I don't know, I would have to ask a native speaker. (b) The final particle has scope over the entire preposition. (c) "really" is probably worse. shüü is used when pointing out some fact that is presumably not known to the addressee, but about which the speaker assumes to have good knowledge. THERE is a general problem with the example sentences given in this article in its current stage. They are all out of context. You actually cannot know what shüü relates to. I have been considering for quite a while to replace them all with contextualized examples from the internet (which might come even closer to original research) or textbook examples. But given some ongoing research about aspect, I always feel reluctant to start changing something instead of simply waiting.

I have not yet gone through your more recent changes, but I'll definitely do so. G Purevdorj (talk) 15:22, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Nothing to criticize about your recent changes. G Purevdorj (talk) 09:00, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

/ɢ/ and /ɡ/

This article states that the +ATR vowels are /e, u, o/ and the -ATR ones are /a, ʊ, ɔ/, with /i/ being neutral. However, Mongolian cyrillic script says: "/ɡ/ and /ɢ/ are both indicated by the letter г ⟨g⟩, but the phonetic value of that letter is mostly predictable. In words with "back" (−ATR) vowels (see Mongolian phonology for details), it always means /ɡ/, because only /ɡ/ occurs in such words. In words with "front" (+ATR) vowels, it always means /ɢ/, except word-finally, where it means /ɡ/; to acquire the value of /ɢ/, it written with a mute final vowel letter а ⟨a⟩."

With this in mind, the examples given in the phonology section of this article are very confusing, as they seem to indicate the exact opposite. So, what are the determining factors for /ɡ/ and /ɢ/? Also, where does the [ə] come from? Am I missing something? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.167.33.103 (talk) 15:31, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Mongolian Cyrillic says it more precisely than you cited here. Schwa is an epenthetic, non-phonemic vowel. G Purevdorj (talk) 16:45, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for clearing up the vowel part. However, the determining factors for /ɡ/ and /ɢ/ still aren't clear. If /e, u, o/ are the +ATR vowels, and if /ɢ/ is found in words that have +ATR vowels, then one would expect words with /e, u, o/ to contain /ɢ/, but in all the examples it is the words containing /a, ʊ, ɔ/ that have /ɢ/. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.167.33.103 (talk) 21:13, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I checked the history page and saw your previous comment, which confirmed that Mongolian Cyrillic had it wrong. I'm not sure why you changed it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.167.33.103 (talk) 21:35, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I didn't read properly yesterday, so I undid my edit. I'm just too stressed these days. But I suppose I have now corrected the page on Mongolian Cyrillic properly? G Purevdorj (talk) 07:56, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, now everything makes sense. Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.247.223.31 (talk) 18:16, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Phonology

Call for an expanded phonology section to encompass allophones and such. If possible, and enough researches done, perchance a we article devoted to a in depth Mongolian Phonology. Lawful Reasoning 14:54, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Wait until Janhunen's Mongolian grammar is published, which will contain a detailed treatment of allophones, then obtain it and start writing the article! There is also a lot of stuff on phonetics in Chinese, if you'd like to work with that. I'd say there is quite some literature, if you have the necessary language skills. As for my part, I will gladly leave Mongolian phonology and other phonetics-related topics to other editors. G Purevdorj (talk) 08:58, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

You might say I'm nuts...

but it's no foul joke: when I heard the Mongolian all-girl pop band "Kiwi" in an interview speaking Mongolian, for me it sounded like Björk speaking Icelandic :) Let alone those sounds which were partly the same, especially the way Icelanders pronounce words starting with "hl...". Even though it might be by many branches, is there at least a slight correlation between these two languages? -andy 92.229.146.48 (talk) 22:48, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Rest assured that there is no relationship. Khalkha and Islandic have a mildly similar sound system, with Khalkha having 18 phones of Greenlandic's 31 phonemes. Moreover, Icelandic allows for two syllable-initial consonants. G Purevdorj (talk) 08:47, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

No relationship whatsoever. These sort of things happen in language all the time - we are all human, with the same basic thinking processes, so coincidences abound. When these languages were being formed, the germanic peoples - who spoke an IE language - didn't even know of the existence of the Mongols - who speak a Mongolic language. These two peoples are racially and culturally unconnected.HammerFilmFan (talk) 18:01, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Person or language?

The word can refer to either.

I reached the article from a link pertaining to the former, yet the article is only about the latter. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.160.210.49 (talk) 06:25, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Loan words

As linguistic evolution goes Mongolian language loan many words from different actively contacting outsiders. I have added some missing loaned Russian and English words. Orgio89 (talk) 08:51, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Reverted recent edits

Hm, I looked at the recent edits and undertake an overall revert. The Chinese state doesn’t publish statistics on language use, but given their nationality politics aimed at watering down minority culture by granting Mongolian nationality to any Han with some Mongolian ancestry, it is clear that their numbers are fundamentally flawed. Include language loss as in the Kharchin area, and we have to lower numbers massively.

Including Buryats and Oirats into this article does make sense, as far as I am concerned, but there are other opinions out there, and some have a pretty solid basis. You would have to start with the classificational section, not with the disinformation box, and from that point onwards revise the article substantially. I think this could be done, while Janhunen thinks that a unified general description of Mongolian following Luvsanvandan’s classification is not possible. Independent of who of us is right, doing so at least requires a Mongolist.

I can understand you if you think that Mandarin loans are overrepresented, but note that they pertain to all of the Mongolian state and Inner Mongolia, while the recent loans you just added don’t. In Inner Mongolia, there are several Russian loans from the 1950s, but little new vocabulary entered after the Russian-Chinese split. If we create a separate article on the Mongolian lexicon, we could reduce the number of overall examples in the main article, but this would obviously take a considerable amount of work.

G Purevdorj (talk) 13:57, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

The definition of what to call a language and what to call a dialect is, while not completely arbitrary, often a question of substantial political consideration. I could thus imagine defining the four Mongolian / Mongolic dialect groups as one language partly on the basis of well-documented popular sentiment AND well-documented interdialectal contact. One might use Mongolian-language sources for this, but somewhat extensive sourcing will be required in any case. The other approach would be going through a number of scientific sources, discussing them, and following one line in the article. This line does not necessarily have to be the main line in the literature, but it would have to be a very prominent line. Both approaches seem to require extensive use of paper sources. G Purevdorj (talk) 17:42, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Buryat Mongol and Khalmyk Mongol dialects are clearly Mongol language if you are not sure how to clearly to identify. The people who raised in Mongolia, Buryat, Khalmyk are easily fully understand one another. Perhaps given your limited knowledge of full Mongol study inside Mongolia it is better to leave local knowledge to the locals instead of giving yourself full authority while being raised and educated in europe (Germany?). Plus why this article is dominantly explaining Inner Mongolian dialects and their development situations? Like in Mongolia only Khalkha dialect spoken while in Inner Mongolia seemingly better richer dialects used and evolved something. The statements like those are clearly showing that this article is dominantly written by inner Mongolians and western educated people with very limited knowledge of Mongolian language. There fore I am reverting the last revert. Orgio89 (talk) 02:38, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Especialy for this article development situation [[1]] this original Mongolian version page is full scientific reference by any common sense!! Any future foreign editors please carefully compare with the original version!! Thank you! Orgio89 (talk) 02:54, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Another major flaw observed in this article is that most of references are sourced from outside of Mongolia. Especially that researcher who is Svantensons study source is seeing dominantly in that gigantic References section which makes an impression that he himself is solely pushing his views on some nations study or some foreign contributors are solely pushing single researcher based "scientific study article". As Purevdorj himself is claiming that he contributed major part of this article, he supposed to use multiple Mongolian book sources instead of that single Svantesson someone researchers some book(s). For any common sense any scientific study based article supposed to referred by its natural origin information sources not that sole outsider "researcher" Svantesson something source like this article example is showing. Orgio89 (talk) 06:41, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Jan-Olof Svantesson's work on Mongolian phonology is quite prominently cited (even though not by me as the phonology section is the only part of this article that I did not write), and there are some other researchers who might deserve to be quoted: Köke from Inner Mongolia, a Russian researcher whose name I just don't remember, Janhunen from Finnland. I could provide references. To the best of my knowledge, no researcher from the Mongolian state has done research of similar quality.
The Mongolian Wikipedia article is quite nice. It quotes Luvsanvandan whose classification I myself support, and it incorporates some references from the English Wikipedia article (such as Janhunen 2003d while not quoting any other texts of Janhunen from 2003). It provides a modest overall speaker number. What it does not do, however, is discussing classificational schemes held in high regard by other researchers than Luvsanvandan who is not only in disagreement with most modern Inner Mongolian and Russian researchers, but even with Batzayaa from Outer Mongolia. The current English Wikipedia article gives prominence to the majority opinion. It doesn't have to be that way, but changing it would require a large number of very careful changes in this article. I doubt that you could do it.
If Khalkhas tell me that they have substantial problems understanding those westerners in Zavhan etc., they don't lie. Dutch and Standard High German can be described as two languages, or as two dialects.
I would welcome knowledgeable native Mongolian editors, but all your unstructured native speaker knowledge does not properly enable you to analyze language. Even though some of the researchers quoted cannot speak (any variety of) Mongolian, their analytic and linguistic knowledge enables them to create knowledge that Mongolian researchers will have to (and will) accept.
While you don't discuss it here, your deletions tell that you even try to deny Mandarin influence on Mongolian. It is a bit funny that your national notions partly seem to exclude Inner Mongolia which according to conventional wisdom is closer to Khalkha dialectologically than are Oirat and Buriat.

I have not counted properly, but I think we are going to run into an editing conflict soon. I will revert you now, and if you revert me again, I will seek admin assistance. G Purevdorj (talk) 14:13, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

External links section

I was looking for GA language articles in an attempt to help with cleanup of the generally poor External links sections that we have in most language articles (recent discussions at Talk:Amharic language, ELN and RSPAM). This article looks well maintained, so I thought it would be helpful to have a discussion here.

Has anyone reviewed the section against EL? At a glance, I'd say trim it to a single dictionary and the grammar/history site. --Ronz (talk) 17:41, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the cleanup. [2]

Why leave mongoliacourses.org? --Ronz (talk) 20:23, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

It was a cleanup in several steps. I settled for three links to keep: two dictionaries, both of which are useful for non-native speakers, and one language course. I removed other language courses, none of which (still) provided extensive materials, and dictionaries, as well as all sites with any form of commercial intent. I relocated Monumenta Altaica to a WP site that fits better with its content. I hope it is OK that I removed the cleanup tag. G Purevdorj (talk) 20:35, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Not a problem.

My mistake, I meant why keep studymongolian.net? I could see how linguamongolia.com might be kept, given all the resources it has. In contrast, studymongolian.net is sparse and incomplete. --Ronz (talk) 21:50, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Studymongolian is the only such course remaining online (or at least found among the links, at any rate), so I kept it. If the course from a US university had still been online, it would have been far superior to this one. But better one free, clearly somewhat linguisticially informed course than none. The problem with linguamongolia was a bit that it on the one hand offers translation services and a dictionary for pay, on the other hand offers incomplete grammar info not structured into any form of course and provides links that relate more to Mongolian culture than language. G Purevdorj (talk) 06:53, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

I'll trust your judgement on this. Thanks for making this so quick and easy!

(I tried to figure out and fix the quotation marks that are appearing on this page after (13:54, 22 September 2009), but couldn't figure it out.) --Ronz (talk) 15:54, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

It is probably the q tags Purevdorj added in one of his edits :). Should have used < rather than <. I would fix it, but I only have a tablet to write on atm. Yaan (talk) 13:18, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Loanword lists

Any opinions about moving the loanword lists into separate articles, so as to avoid undue weight issues? Regards, Yaan (talk) 22:22, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

I'd suggest reducing that list to no more than the three most prominent examples per source language. WP:NOTDICT speaks against farming it out to a seperate article. --Latebird (talk) 11:50, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Hmm, a good discussion of loanwords would include loanword phonology (an understudied topic) and semantic fields. Consequently, it would be good if the article exemplified typical semantic fields (such as food for Chinese). I guess this will require a more flexible approach, even though the overall extent can presumably be reduced. G Purevdorj (talk) 13:26, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Example sentences

Hello Yastonovog! I agree that a sample text would not be bad, and I would not even be unwilling to help with the word-by-word translation (a work which I have at least some experience with). But I think I am against using yarianii devter-like example sentences. Instead, if we could go for a regular text, maybe some simple argument taken from an interview or something like that that is not copyrighted, I think I would be much happier with that. At any rate a bit more reflecting spoken language, just nothing legalese (such as UN materials) or novel-like, as both of these kinds of text are very unrepresentative of spoken Khalkha. If you could go about and find such stuff? Or you could make a transcription of a passage from the video that is already included into the article, that would be perfect, as people could both listen and, in parallel, read what is being said! I do appreciate your efforts, but I still think it is important to keep WP distinct from a language course. G Purevdorj (talk) 14:01, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Can you please provide the text? Then I can start helping. For now the summary deletion of my well-meaning contribution has led to the complete drainage and sapping of my creative energy. Yastanovog (talk) 03:34, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Bi süüliin üyed tun yaaruu tul yumiig haij ögch amjihgüi dee. Harin jisheelbel asuult tavisan, hariu ögsön iimerhüü soningiin yarilclaga nadad sonirholtoi sanagdmaar baina. Uls törchidtei bish, tednii hel heterhii bichgiinh. Harin magadgüi sonin door yamar negen emee, övgön ni amidraliinhaa esvel mongol ulsiin niigmiin tüühees yum ögüülbel haricangüi saarmag, nevterhii tolind orj boloh shinjtei baij bolvuu daa. Chamd öör sanaa baival heleerei, bi hariulj chadah üyed hariulna. Esvel üneheer odoo negent ögüüleliin door baigaa video-g hereglej boloh bolvuu? (Gantuya-d aguulga ni gomdmoor sanagdsan, tiimees chi eniig avah eseh shiidveriig gargahdaa bas ennii talaar bodoh heregtei.) G Purevdorj (talk) 18:38, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Romanisation

Where can I find information on how Mongolian is transcribed in the Latin alphabet? Even if there is no agreed standard, there should at least be a reference for the romanisation used by Wikipedia itself. For instance, the article mentions the word ažil, pronounced /atʃɮ/. So ž represents /tʃ/, but I only know this because I scoured the page looking for examples. It would be so much easier if there were a look-up table. 37.252.28.110 (talk) 13:56, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, this article uses a narrow orthographic transcription that at least in earlier versions was motivated somewhere and referred to a specific transliteration convention. In general, apart from this article, the transcription used for Mongolian on WP is different and can be found at Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(Mongolian). According to my current understanding, it would be just fine to adapt this article to the more general convention - if somebody has the time to do so. G Purevdorj (talk) 07:45, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Mongolian_Cyrillic_alphabet. 195.187.108.4 (talk) 15:28, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

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Perfective / Perfect / Past

I've just edited -san to be "perfect" and -laa to be a (witnessed) past. That is in accordance with a study of Binnick from 1979 that I could cite if necessary. I don't think that Binnick's study is very useful, but the problem is that most of the more insightful research on aspect in Mongolian (while available to me) has not yet been published. I have been thinking about working in the available published research in detail, but it is still to contradictory, and as there is quite a lot of research being conducted in this area now, I expect the picture to become much clearer before four years have passed. We do not necessarily have to wait that long, but I hold that it is worthwhile to wait until it gets a little clearer than now. G Purevdorj (talk) 22:36, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

мр Smylp (talk) 07:56, 12 December 2017 (UTC)