From: karttu@mits.mdata.fi (Antti Karttunen)
Subject: Re: Uighur & other scripts.
Organization: MITS, Helsinki, Finland
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 14:32:05 GMT

In article <Bx6uFs.3tn@hpwin052.uksr.hp.com> dan@hpwin051.uksr.hp.com (Dan Bennett) writes:
>Hyvaa Paivaa, Antti  (you ARE Finnish, aren't you?),

Oikein arvattu...

>
>Here are some answers to your questions.
>
>Currently in (outer) Mongolia the Cyrillic script is used, which has two
>extra letters compared to Russian itself. This script is used almost every
>where, and literacy is pretty well 100%.
>
>The "Uighur" script is confusingly named, on account of the fact that it
>was used by the Uighur people of the 12th century. The present Uighurs
>in Xinjiang province are not descendants of the earlier Uighurs, as far as
>I know. Anyway, the script known as "Uighur" script is a vertical, cursive
>script, which looks a bit like Arabic on its side. It is currently used,
>as you say, in Inner Mongolia (China). It was used in (outer) Mongolia
>until about 1940 (I think), when the Soviet-style government imposed the
>Cyrillic alphabet on the Mongols (just as Stalin imposed it on the Uzbeks,
>Tadzhiks, Chechen, Kazakhs, Turkmen, etc, etc, etc, etc....).

Well, now I found it, my photocopies of "Writing Systems of the World",
by Akira Nakanishi (Published by the Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc.
ISBN 0-8048 1293-4)

From page 82:

      Nomads in northern Asia scarcely employed such intricate
    characters <e.g. the Chinese ideograms>; they invented simpler
    scripts: Uighur, Mongolian, and Manchu. These are descendants
    of Aramaic script, being composed of pure phonemic signs.
    Tibetan, Khotanese, Lepcha, and Passepa scripts, however, are
    related to Indian scripts.

page 84:

    Sinkiang [shinjang; shinchiang]
    In the Sinkiang Uighur autonomous region, Uighur (Turkish/Altaic)
    and Kazakh (Turkish/Altaic) are spoken; both are written in
    Arabic script. The arabic alphabet for Uighur consists of thirty
    letters, adding <sorry, can't reproduce with ascii ;-> and
    excluding <ditto>. This arabic writing system expresses vowels
    completely. Recently, Latin script has also been used for Uighur
    and Kazakh.

    Inner Mongolia
    In the Inner Mongolian autonomous region, Mongolian (Mongolian/
    Altaic) is generally spoken and newspapers are published in it.
    Mongolian is written in Mongolian script in Inner Mongolia, while
    in (Outer) Mongolia Russian script is used.

page 85:

    MONGOLIA
      Formerly, Outer Mongolia. The official language is Mongolian,
    which has been written in Russian script with the additional
    letters <another looks like a greek theta and another somewhat
    like Y> since 1941. Newspapers are published in Mongolian with
    Russian script, but traditional Mongolian script is also in
    daily use.
    <Postage stamp is shown with "MONGOLIA" written with Latin,
    Cyrillic and Mongolian scripts.>

page 90:

    Mongolian Script

    Mongolian script traces its origin to ancient Aramaic script
    via Sogdian <who were they?> and Uighur scripts. It has a pure
    phonemic system and has an impressive appearance because of
    the vertical line of each word.
    ...
    There is no distinction between capital and small letters but
    there are three forms: initial, medial, and final.
    ...
    Mongolian vowels are classified as masculine, feminine and
    neuter; masculine and feminine vowels should never appear
    together in one word. This is called the principle of vowel
    harmony, and it allows readers to distinguish between vowels
    whose medial or final forms are the same.
    <Note: there is vowel harmony also in Finnish, so that 'dotted'
    vowels a", o" and y (which is the same as German u") don't
    appear together with a, o or u in the same _single_ word.
    However, in compound words they can appear together. So I guess
    the compound words in Mongolian are written separately?>
    ...
    Mongolian script runs from top to bottom on vertical columns
    shifting from left to right, with a space between each word.

>
>Now that there is a strong sense of National identity in Mongolia, there
>is a strong movement to get the Uighur script reinstated as the official
>one. Children are now learning it in school, so currently it's only the
>old and the young who know it. Many signs are now written exclusively in it,
>which is a bit of a pain to someone like me, because I know a bit of
>Mongolian, and I *have* studied the Uighur script, but I wouldn't say I'm
>fluent in its use. I think the aim is to have the script as the official
>script from 1994, but I don't think they'll achieve it that quickly.
>
>One of the problems with the Uighur script is that it's not a simple
>matter of rewriting mongolian words in the old script. When a word is
>written in Uighur script, it must be written with its classical Mongolian
>spelling, which is often very different to the modern. For example,
>"Ulaanbaatar" in classical spelling is more like "Ulaghanbaghador". So
>good luck to any scholars of Uighur writing!

I have some hazy memory that it means "Red Hero" or something like
that. So I would guess that its name would get changed also,
maybe back to an old "Urga"???

>
>As for Tuva, I don't know what script they use. But I should think
>they were Stalinized like everyone else (except Georgia and Armenia, by
>the way).
>
>Regards,
>
>Dan Bennett.
>

--
Antti Karttunen / karttu@mits.mdata.fi / $B%"%s%C%F%#!!%+%k%C%H%%%M%s(J
Xref: sparky alt.culture.tuva:177 sci.lang:7932