Traditional Mongolian Script Research Articles

Implementation of Language Policy in USSR in 1930s (Buryat-Mongolian Language)

The study focuses on analyzing the development of the Buryat-Mongolian language and writing system amidst socio-cultural transformations during the Soviet period. Textbooks, methodological guides, as well as ethnographic and sociolinguistic reports from the 1930s, serve as the research materials. Educational materials on teaching methods for the Buryat-Mongolian language and writing in general education institutions are of research interest for analyzing approaches to practical implementation of the educational process and material content. This historical period is marked by the transformation of societal structures resulting from extensive sociopolitical processes not only in our country but also in the Mongolian People’s Republic and the People’s Republic of China. The Soviet leadership reasonably paid special attention to eradicating illiteracy and implementing language policy in the country. It was revealed that education in the Buryat-Mongolian ASSR faced linguistic, methodological, and staffing contradictions. The process of studying the native language underwent systematic reforms within a relatively short historical period. The traditional Old Mongolian script was replaced by Latin in 1931 and then by Cyrillic in 1939, leading to a decline in educational quality. Such transitions were accompanied by restructuring educational and methodological aspects of the educational process.

The Problem of the Establishment of a Legitimate Language on the Example of the Introduction of Latin Graphics in the Mongolian People’s Republic during the 1930s

In this article, the adoption of a legitimate language by the Mongolian People’s Republic following the language reform of the 1930s, which involved the switch to the Latin script, is considered. The language policy pursued by the MPR in the early 20th century is investigated from the perspective of the legitimate language theory. By that period, the traditional Mongolian script had become outdated and needed to be reformed. Furthermore, the illiteracy rate among Mongolian people was very high, and the old Mongolian script was difficult to study. Another reason is that the language turned into the main tool for promoting the new cultural and ideological values of the USSR. Thus, the shift of Mongolia to the writing system based on the Latin alphabet was a political phenomenon and played a key role in broadcasting the cultural policy of the new state. In the early years of the MPR, the Latin-based writing solved several problems at once: it promoted literacy among Mongolian people, gave greater publicity to the policy of the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party and the new culture, and became a platform to bring together Mongolia and the USSR. To substantiate the importance of the Latin graphics as the official state script, Pierre Bourdieu’s “Language and Symbolic Power” is analyzed, in which the author discusses the origin of the legitimate language and script, as well as their role in the process of nation building. Here, the documents in both Russian and Mongolian are also examined. The obtained results demonstrate that, despite various difficulties, the Latin script was adopted for a quite short period of time as legitimate in the MPR, which had a great influence on the development of the socialist culture and the Mongolian national identity.

Traditional Mongolian on Modern Devices

Computer operating systems have been slow to adopt the Traditional Mongolian script for the Mongolian language due to its vertical, left-to-right orientation. Prior research shows that Webkit-based browsers struggle to display the Traditional Mongolian script, while Blink-based browsers like Google Chrome are able to display Mongolian text to a certain extent. However, this research is outdated and fails to look at these issues with reference to the operating system being used to host each browser. This study will determine the accessibility of the Mongolian script on modern computer systems by examining the problems that major operating systems have with the Traditional script. Data was collected through a needs assessment, where quantitative analysis of the data was employed. Operating systems included Android 12, iOS 15, and Windows 10, in which Google Chrome, Safari, Microsoft Edge, and Samsung Internet were hosted. Initial results showed that browsers ran in iOS contained a higher amount of text rendering problems compared to other variables, while browsers ran in Android and Windows had the most amount of support and were the most usable. Text rendering problems generally varied based on the operating system being used rather than the browser displaying the text, meaning that Mongolian support problems were moreso dependent on the operating systems. These findings indicate that Mongolian display problems lie more with the operating systems themselves, meaning that distributors like Apple, Android, and Windows should consider which aspects of localization support should be focused on when providing language options for the Traditional Mongolian script.

Between Communist Doctrines and Nationalist Agendas: Writing Reforms in Inner Mongolia, 1954–1980

The writing reforms of the Mongolian language in Inner Mongolia from 1954 to 1980 are a notable case of Maoist China’s language planning projects. In those years, the Chinese government attempted to implement two consecutive reforms featuring Cyrillization and Latinization of the Mongolian writing system, but neither reform yielded any substantial result and the traditional Mongolian script remains in use today. This article explores the domestic and international dynamics behind these two closely related reform attempts and examines their origins, rationales, processes of implementation, and reasons for failure. Although the rationales of both reforms lay in the communist doctrine favoring easier, more regular, and more universal writing systems that could improve literacy and facilitate communication, hidden behind both reforms were nationalist agendas. The Cyrillization reform sought linguistic unity with the Mongolian People’s Republic, while the Latinization reform sought unity of writing systems among languages in China. In both cases, the hidden nationalist agendas undermined the original goals of the reforms, and the reforms lost momentum once contending agendas prevailed.

Recognition of traditional Mongolian script using primitives and template matching methods

Recognition of traditional Mongolian script using primitives and template matching methods

USING THE TWO-LEVEL MORPHOLOGY ON MODERN MONGOLIAN LINGUISTICS

This study compiles primarily the word structure of Modern Mongolian language and further more focused on the possibilities of description of Mongolian language in PC KIMMO, a two level processing method of morphological parsing. The rules file and lexicon presented in the paper describe the morphology of Mongolian words. A lexicon containing the root words of contemporary Mongolian is used in the testing. As a result the two-level morphology is determined as completely possible to be used for Mongolian linguistics. In addition PC-KIMMO description of traditional Mongolian script is considered as being possible.

Traditional Mongolian Script Feature Extraction based on Black Pixels in Bounding Box

Traditional Mongolian Script Feature Extraction based on Black Pixels in Bounding Box

Developing a Digital Library of Historical Records in Traditional Mongolian Script

This article discusses the authors' approach in creating a digital library which can be used to access ancient historical documents written in traditional Mongolian script using a query in modern Mongolian Cyrillic. They introduce a Traditional Mongolian Script Digital Library TMSDL, which aims to preserve over 800 years of historical records written in traditional Mongolian for future use and to make them available for public viewing. The authors present their approaches to solve two major problems for realizing such a digital library; 1 accessing ancient documents using a query in modern Mongolian, and 2 rendering traditional Mongolian script properly. They implement an ancient-to-modern information retrieval method, which takes into account historical differences in the writing systems of the ancient and modern Mongolian languages. The authors' results are explored further in the article.

Multi-font printed Mongolian document recognition system

Mongolian is one of the most common written languages in China, Mongolia, and Russia. Many printed Mongolian documents still remain to be digitized for digital library applications. The traditional Mongolian script has a unique vertical cursive writing style and multiple font variations, which makes Mongolian Optical Character Recognition challenging. As the traditional Mongolian script has subcomponent characteristics, such that one character may be a constituent of another character, in this work we define a novel character set for recognition using segmented components. The components are combined into characters in a rule-based post-processing module. For overall character recognition, a method based on Visual Directional Features and multi-level classifiers is presented. For character segmentation, segmentation points are identified by analyzing the properties of projection profiles and connected components. Mongolian has dozens of different printed font types that can be categorized into two major groups, namely, standard and handwritten-style groups. The segmentation parameters are adjusted for each group. Additionally, script identification and relevant character recognition kernels are integrated for the recognition of Mongolian text mixed with Chinese and English. A novel multi-font printed Mongolian document recognition system based on the proposed methods is implemented. Experiments indicate a text recognition rate of 96.9% on the test samples from real documents with multiple font types and mixed script. The proposed methods can also be applied to other scripts in the Mongolian script family, such as Todo and Sibe, with significant potential for extension to historic Mongolian documents.