Preface
Mongolia plans to integrate with Inner Mongolia?
For a long time since Mongolia's independence, Cyrillic Mongolian has been the language, but in 2020, Mongolia adopted the National Outline of the Mongolian Script and decided to fully resume the use of Uighur Mongolian from 2025.
It is difficult to change the language of a place after a long period of use, so why does Mongolia suddenly change the language of its own country? What is the purpose here?
Outer Mongolia that "re-learned" Mongolian
Mongolia is located in the northern part of the continent, sandwiched between the mainland and Russia, and is a truly landlocked country, however, in ancient times, Mongolia was also part of the mainland.
After independence, Mongolia covers an area of more than one million square kilometers, and relative to the number of people, the country is also a vast and sparsely populated type, and the living ethnic groups are mainly Khalkha Mongols.
Mongolia and Inner Mongolia on the mainland belong to the same ancestry, and the script they used was once Uighur Mongolian, and their living habits were also very similar.
However, although the Outer Mongolians bear the name of "Mongolia", they do not use the traditional Uighur Mongolian script, but the so-called Cyrillic Mongolian script.
This continued for quite some time, until recently, when many difficulties in translating traditional Mongolian texts prevented much of the traditional Mongolian culture from being understood, which led to the Mongol side having to re-learn the Uighur Mongolian language from Inner Mongolia.
Why, then, did the former Mongols abandon the Uighur script in favor of the unfamiliar Cyrillic Mongol script? How exactly was the Mongolian script changed?
Why the Uighur Mongolian script was abandoned
The Mongols were nomadic and had no fixed script until the Mongols became more powerful and gradually ruled most of the steppe, and the Uighur Mongolian script was used uniformly.
Later, with the decline of the Qing Dynasty and the infiltration of Russian influence, Mongolia began to have the idea of independence, until 1924, with the support of the Russians, Mongolia officially became independent, and the following year after independence, Mongolia proposed a writing reform plan.
At first, Mongolia reformed the Uighur script that it had been using, but then, under the influence of the Soviet Union, it abandoned the Uighur script in favor of Latin.
With the collapse of the Latin reform program in the Soviet Union, the Latin reform in Mongolia naturally ended in failure, and the use of the Mongolian script during this period was very chaotic due to the failure of the back and forth reforms.
As a result, during that period, the books published in Mongolia appeared in a variety of languages, including Uighur, Latin, and Cyrillic languages.
As the Soviet Union became more and more influential on its culture and nation, Mongolia eventually abolished the centuries-old Mongolian script, the "Uighur Mongolian", and replaced it with Cyrillic Mongolian, which was created in the Slavic alphabet.
This greatly deepened the influence of the Soviet Union on Mongolia, but instead alienated Mongolia from Asian countries, and also had a profound impact on Mongolia's cultural customs.
The use of Cyrillic Mongolian has greatly improved Mongolia's literacy rate and has played a profound role in promoting Mongolia's development in all aspects.
It is not easy to unify the use of the written language, and it also has a role in promoting development with Mongolia, so why should this stable situation be disrupted?
In fact, it was not stable at all, and although Cyrillic Mongol increased Mongolia's literacy rate, the use of the reformed script fragmented Mongolia's history and had a great impact on the cultural practices of Mongolia's native ethnic groups.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mongolia as a whole has also undergone great changes, and after the absence of Russian control, Mongolia slowly began to recover the wave of its native national culture.
Without asylum, Mongolia began to seek its own national identity, and nationalism flourished in its country, where it proved itself to be the legitimacy of the Mongolian people in various ways.
They used Genghis Khan as their spiritual totem, but the embarrassing thing is that the Uighur Mongolian script created by Genghis Khan was difficult to find a shadow of existence in Mongolia at that time.
It is worth mentioning that the Uighur Mongolian script is widely used in the Inner Mongolia region of the mainland, and it is the official script, while in Mongolia it is the script created by the Russians.
Their so-called Mongolian orthodoxy and their desire to find a sense of Mongolian identity pale in comparison.
As a result, in order to assert his so-called legitimacy and gain a more appropriate sense of national identity, there was a growing voice in Mongolia to revert to the use of the Uighur Mongolian script.
Since the 90s of the last century, Mongolia has introduced the teaching of Uighur Mongolian in secondary school textbooks, and in 1992 the decision was made to officially restore Uighur Mongolian.
However, due to the limited number of teachers in Mongolia, the country's economic development has been relatively slow, and the impact of historical writing reforms, this project has been very slow.
In order to restore the Uighur Mongolian script, Mongolia in 2010 mandated that all diplomatic activities and documents issued by other institutions be written in the Uighur Mongolian script.
Mongolia's information ministry has also solved the problem of the use of Uighur Mongolian script on the Internet, and once again promoted the reform of the written language, so in 2020 the country officially adopted a document deciding to fully use Uighur Mongolian script by 2025 and establish its official status.
epilogue
In the early days of Mongolia's independence, it was very reluctant to interact with the mainland, but as the mainland's economy became more and more prosperous, China's status as a great power became more and more obvious.
From Mongolia's decision to restore the Uighur Mongolian language, it can be seen that Mongolia's current situation is not optimistic, and only by taking the economic fast ship of the mainland can it change its economic outlook.
The mainland has always taken a friendly attitude toward other countries that have established diplomatic relations with the mainland, and as long as they have no ill intentions toward Mongolia, we are naturally willing to put aside our past suspicions and extend a helping hand to them.
Resources
People's Daily Online: "Mongolia plans to resume the use of traditional Mongolian in 2025 and is expected to enter the era of the simultaneous use of two Mongolian languages", March 23, 2020
China Economic Net: "Mongolia will fully resume the use of Uighur Mongolian from 2025", March 19, 2020
Shangguan News, "Mongolia to fully resume the use of Uighur Mongolian from 2025," March 19, 2020
Overseas Network: "Overseas Online Commentary: Mongolia's Restoration of Traditional Mongolian, What Does It Mean", March 20, 2020
China Fortune Network: "Mongolia will re-use Uighur Mongolian, how many faces does Mongolian have in Mongolia?" April 1, 2020