The
Mongolian language (
,
Mong?ol kele,
Cyrillic ?????? ???,
Mongol khel) is the best-known member of the
Mongolic language family and the
language of most of the residents of
Mongolia, where it is officially written with the
Cyrillic alphabet and of around three million Mongolian speakers in the
Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China, where it is officially written with the traditional
Mongolian script. It is also spoken in some areas in the
Russian Far East and
Kyrgyzstan. The majority of speakers in Mongolia speak the
Khalkha (or
Halh) dialect, while those in China speak one of multiple Inner Mongolian dialects. There is officially a standard pronunciation “based” on the Chakhar dialect of the
Plain Blue Banner. A standard grammar and vocabulary is from a so-called “Inner Mongolian dialect” which is contrasted to the
Oirat and
Barghu-Buryat dialect
[2]. A so-defined “Inner Mongolian” is comprised of dialectal varieties that differ from each other so substantially as to effectively preclude a common standard.
Mongolian is a Mongolic language. The Altaic theory proposes that the Mongolic family is a member of the larger Altaic family, which would also include the Turkic and Tungusic languages. Related Mongolic languages in any case include the probably extinct Moghol language of Afghanistan, Khamnigan (in the Khentij ajmag of Mongolia and the Ewenki Autonomous Arrow of the Old Bargut Banner of Inner Mongolia) and Dagur in the East of Greater Mongolia and Shira Yugur, Bonan, Santa and Monguor in Qinghai and Gansu. Oirat (consisting of Kalmyk and Oirat varieties spoken in China) and Buryat are sometimes considered to be major dialects and sometimes as Mongolic languages of their own right, and there are scientists who hold that Ordos is an independent language as well.
Mongolian is the national language of the Republic of Mongolia where it is spoken by more than two million people and an official language of Inner Mongolia where it is spoken by up to three million speakers. However, as many Inner Mongolians are bilingual in Chinese, the use of Mongolian is declining among younger speakers in urban areas.
The delimitation of the Mongolian language is a problem to which different scholars hold notably different opinions and that – in order to get a conclusive answer – would require comparable criteria within one dialectological framework that would ultimately account for the sociolinguistic as well as for the historical situation of the Mongolian dialect continuum. And while phonological and lexical studies are comparatively well developed [3], the basis for a comparative morpho-syntactic study, eg between such highly diverse varieties as Khalkh and Khorchin[4], is not yet given.
