Mongolic languages

The stages of Historical Mongolic are:

• Pre-Proto-Mongolic, from approximately the 4th century AD until the 12th century AD, influenced by Common Turkic, and previously by Bulgar Turkic.
• Proto-Mongolic, from approximately the 13th century AD, spoken around the time of Chinggis Khan.
• Middle Mongol (depending on classification spoken from the 13th century until the early 15th century[6] or late 16th century;[7] given the almost entire lack of written sources for the period in between, an exact cutoff point cannot be established)
• Classical Mongolian, from approximately 1700 to 1900
• Standard Mongolian The standard Mongolian language has been in official use since 1919, and this form of the language is used in the economic, political, and social fields.The script for standard Mongolian uses a version of the Russian alphabet called the Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet. It was introduced in the 1940s in the Mongolian People's Republic under Soviet influence, after a brief period where Latin was used as the official script. After the Mongolian democratic revolution in 1990, the traditional Mongolian script was considered to replace Cyrillic, but this plan was not adopted.

Contemporary Mongolic languages are classified as follows.

Mongolic

• Dagur (96,000 speakers)
• Central Mongolic
  • Khamnigan (2,000 speakers)
  • Buryat (330,000 speakers)
  • Mongolian proper (5.2 million speakers)
  • Eastern and Central dialect
    • Khalkha
    • Chakhar
    • Khorchin
  • Ordos (123,000 speakers)
  • Oirat (including Kalmyk) (360,000 speakers)
• Southern Mongolic (part of a Gansu–Qinghai Sprachbund)
  • Shira Yugur (4,000 speakers)
  • Shirongolic
    • Monguor (150,000 speakers)
    • Bonan (6,000 speakers)
    • Santa (Dongxiang) (200,000 speakers)
    • Kangjia (1,000 speakers)
• Moghol (200 speakers)

Alexander Vovin (2007) identifies the extinct Tabγač or Tuoba language as a Mongolic language.[8] However, Chen (2005)[9] argues that Tuoba (Tabγač) was a Turkic language. Vovin (2018) suggests that the Ruanruan language of the Rouran Khaganate was a Mongolic language, close but not identical to Middle Mongolian.[10]

The classification and numbers of speakers above follow Janhunen (2006)[11] except for Southern Mongolic, which follows Nugteren (2011).[12] In another classificational approach,[13] there is a tendency to call Central Mongolian a language consisting of Mongolian proper, Oirat and Buryat, while Ordos (and implicitly also Khamnigan) is seen as a variety of Mongolian proper. Within Mongolian proper, they then draw a distinction between Khalkha on the one hand and Southern Mongolian (containing everything else) on the other hand. A less common subdivision of Central Mongolic is to divide it into a Central dialect (Khalkha, Chakhar, Ordos), an Eastern dialect (Kharchin, Khorchin), a Western dialect (Oirat, Kalmyk), and a Northern dialect (consisting of two Buryat varieties).[14] The broader delimitation of Mongolian may be based on mutual intelligibility, but an analysis based on a tree diagram such as the one above faces other problems because of the close contacts between, for example, Buryat and Khalkha Mongols during history, thus creating or preserving a dialect continuum. Another problem lies in the sheer comparability of terminology, as Western linguists use language and dialect, while Mongolian linguists use the Grimmian trichotomy language (kele), dialect (nutuγ-un ayalγu) and Mundart (aman ayalγu).

Rybatzki (2003: 388-389)[15] recognizes the following 6 areal subgroups of Mongolic.

• Northeastern Mongolic (NE) = Dagur
• Northern Mongolic (N) = Khamnigan Mongol–Buryat
• Central Mongolic (C) = Mongol proper–Ordos–Oirat
• South-Central Mongolic (SC) = Shira Yughur
• Southeastern Mongolic (SE) = Mongghul–Mangghuer–Bonan–Santa - Kangjia
• Southwestern Mongolic (SW) = Moghol

Pre-Proto-Mongolic's position on the chronological tree of Mongolic language

Pre-Proto-Mongolic is the name for the stage of Mongolic that precedes Proto-Mongolic.

Proto-Mongolic can be clearly identified chronologically with the language spoken by the Mongols during Genghis Khan's early expansion in the 1200-1210s.

Pre-Proto-Mongolic, by contrast, is a continuum that stretches back indefinitely in time. It is divided into Early Pre-Proto-Mongolic and Late Pre-Proto-Mongolic. Late Pre-Proto-Mongolic refers to the Mongolic spoken a few centuries before Proto-Mongolic by the Mongols and neighboring tribes like the Merkits and Keraits. Certain archaic words and features in Written Mongol go back past Proto-Mongolic to Late Pre-Proto-Mongolic (Janhunen 2006).

Proto-Mongolic, the ancestor language of the modern Mongolic languages, is very close to Middle Mongol, the language spoken at the time of Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire. Most features of modern Mongolic languages can thus be reconstructed from Middle Mongol. An exception would be the voice suffix like -caga- 'do together', which can be reconstructed from the modern languages but is not attested in Middle Mongol.

The languages of the historical Donghu, Wuhuan, and Xianbei peoples might have been related to Proto-Mongolic.[17] For Tabghach, the language of the founders of the Northern Wei dynasty for which the surviving evidence is very sparse, and Khitan, for which evidence exists that is written in the two Khitan scripts which have as yet not been fully deciphered, a direct affiliation to Mongolic can now be taken to be most likely or even demonstrated.[18]

Juha Janhunen (2006) classified the Khitan language into the "Para-Mongolic" family, meaning that it is related to the Mongolic languages as a sister group, rather than as a direct descendant of Proto-Mongolic.[1] Alexander Vovin (2017)[19] has also identified several possible loanwords from Koreanic languages into the Khitan language.

Vovin (2015) identified the extinct Tuyuhun language as yet another Para-Mongolic language.[20]

• List of Mongolic languages
• Inscription of Hüis Tolgoi

• Ethnic map of Mongolia
• Monumenta Altaica grammars, texts, dictionaries and bibliographies of Mongolian and other Altaic languages