Old Mongol

Old Mongol is the hypothetical ancestor language of the modern Mongolic languages. It is very close to the Mid Mongol, the language spoken at the time of Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire. Most features of modern Mongolic languages can thus be shown to descend from Middle Mongol. An exception would be the Common Mongolic pluritative voice suffix -cAgA- 'do together', which can be reconstructed from the modern languages but is not attested in Mid Mongol.

According to Juha Janhunen in his book The Mongolic Languages, "[b]y definition Old Mongol was spoken at a time when the differentiation in the present-day Mongolic languages had not yet begun", meaning that it was spoken before there were different Mongolic languages, so it can be concluded that all Mongolic languages descend from Old Mongol.


Regarding the precise time period when Old Mongol was spoken, Janhunen writes: "The absolute dating of Old Mongol depends on when, exactly, the linguistic unity of its speakers ended", meaning Old Mongol evolved into other Mongolic languages; this event took place "only after the geographical dispersal of the ancient Mongols under Chinggis Khan", which was "not earlier than the thirteenth century." As a result, "[t]his means that the present-day differences between the Mongolic languages are likely to be the result of less than 800 years of divergent evolution."

References

Category:Mongolic languages