Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Digraphia in Mongolia

2001; De Gruyter; Volume: 2001; Issue: 150 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1515/ijsl.2001.037

1613-3668

Stéphane Grivelet,

Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology

Two writing systems are used nowadays in Mongolia for writing the Mongolian language. The main one is the Cyrillic script, which was introduced in the 1940s, when Mongolia was a satellite country of the USSR; the second one is the Mongolian script, the traditional script of Mongolia, in use since the time of Gengis Khan, and reintroduced recently in the country during the democratization of the political regime. Although the Mongolian script has a strong symbolic value for the Mongols, it did not succeed in replacing the Cyrillic script. This paper analyzes various aspects of the Mongolian digraphia, from the historical background to the implementation of the reform, with a strong interest in the political and social implications of the reintroduction of the Mongolian script. It also considers what the future of the Mongolian digraphia could be and for which reasons it may be a lasting one.