Comments on: Fighting for ‘pure’ Mongolian

By: How to maintain Mongolian in Australia? – Language on the Move

How to maintain Mongolian in Australia? – Language on the Move — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 21:48:30 +0000

[…] The separation had linguistic consequences, too: in Mongolia, Mongolian is written in the Cyrillic alphabet but in Inner Mongolia the traditional Mongolian script is still in use. […]

By: В монгольской степи жгли монгольские словари | заметки о языках и лингвистике

Thu, 22 Jul 2021 17:42:26 +0000

[…] Источник […]

By: Nazzia

Nazzia — Fri, 15 Nov 2019 12:46:35 +0000

I have noticed this use of of loan words from English even in a lot of Indian languages. Although regional equivalents of these words exist, it is becoming common usage to use the English words, e.g., words such as but, telephone, etc. This could affect the way “pure” varieties of languages end up being lost to a more functional variety becoming more popular.

By: Sasha Sunshine

Sasha Sunshine — Fri, 15 Nov 2019 09:45:05 +0000

This article has shed light on the issue of how many cultures are being pushed towards using loan words from dominating languages thus, forgetting their native language. We should be aware of this and protect these cultures and languages. There is a clash of course, between wanting to maintain ones language and culture as well as fitting into the outside world. This is quite similar to case of Aboriginals in Australia, who find it hard to acquire jobs if they speak their own language as compared to English.

By: AK

AK — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 15:55:01 +0000

Thank you for sharing this interesting article. This post reminded me of what is happening in Morocco. It has become the dominate language there, French, not Arabic language. Even in the schools and universities, the main language is French. The problem in Morocco is because all the young people and children do not speak the mother tongue which is Arabic, only the elderly speak the mother tongue. Consequently, there is no longer a use of Arabic, specifically the Moroccan accent.

By: Irene Nguyen

Irene Nguyen — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 12:29:37 +0000

Thank you for this sharing. I feel sincerely sorry for the Mongolians as they are, to some extent, forced to escape from their original mother-tongue. However, it is true that it’s apparently difficult to retain your language as well as a culture since they are obviously superannuated. Actually, Mongolian is not the only case. There have been quite a lot of other languages that are at their edges of extinction since the influence of global electronic communication via the booming of the Internet and technology has been great keeping languages on the move. Thus, those languages which are incapable to keep itself on this language race will inevitably be left behind

By: yofa

yofa — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 10:55:13 +0000

I feel really sorry to the Mongolians who are somehow forced to “forget” their pure mother tongue little by little as the Chinese loanwords are dominating. Moreover, I personally am struck by the fact that less Mongolian textbooks are published and this phenomenon has a similar sense with the scarceness of books written in Javanese as Indonesian education has regulated all textbooks to be printed in Bahasa Indonesia. Books published in certain countries are closely linked to the language used in school, therefore, as Javanese is less spoken -and written- and only put as an additional subject at school, the books written in Javanese are definitely at risk.

By: Teufeld

Teufeld — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 09:35:21 +0000

In my opinion, it is necessary to learn and use pure Mongolian. People should use their own language to learn and protect their history and culture. Language study may be affected by political policy or educational reform, however, it is citizens’ rights to learn and use own language.

By: luwen huang

luwen huang — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 07:31:29 +0000

In China, the phenomenon that the ethnic minorities are assimilating by the Han nationality occurs not only in the Mongolian but also in other minority communities. My hometown is in Guizhou, where is a minority area like Mongolia. The young generation of the local minority has rarely said minority languages. Chinese is the only language that is used by them in their daily life. As mentioned in this article, the process of urbanization is the main cause of this phenomenon. With the process of urbanization, the context of the Chinese is in a dominant position in all aspects of their lives. Ethnic minorities receive Chinese education rather than their language. In addition, Chinese is the official language while minority languages are only available in certain places. Therefore, in order to adapt to the Chinese context, the number of speakers of minority languages has become less and less. At the same time, the language of a few ethnic groups is in a dangerous position.

By: Sue

Sue — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 07:11:13 +0000

The awareness of protecting a specific culture or language is a great thing. It seems there is a dilemma between maintaining a traditional language and the eager desire to take more participant in the out world. With worldwide increasing globalization and urbanization, people realize it is a trend to learn more about the outside world in order to achieve personal development, career advance or business success. It is a big challenge that how to get more from the outside world and at the same time retain his/her own culture and language. Take aboriginal Australian for example, who speak and keep their own aboriginal languages, they find it difficult to find a good job in cities such as Sydney or Melbourne. It is a global issue that getting beneficial from urbanization based on keeping specific tradition.

By: Yongqi

Yongqi — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 06:55:27 +0000

Thanks for sharing this article. It is a surprise to me as I did not realize that there is such a serious language conflict between Chinese and Mongol. However, it is not big news that conflicts exist between languages. Minor languages are more likely to be affected by dominant languages due to urbanization, socialization and globalization. Protecting own culture is important in contemporary society in order to retain global cultural diversity. However, negatively eliminating and restricting culture from other languages would not benefit the preservation of the own culture. Mongolian government should work on positive attempts to promote its own culture and expand its influence on the world.

By: Chi Tam Nguyen

Chi Tam Nguyen — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 06:31:15 +0000

I am convinced that it is not easy to entirely maintain a long-established culture or language use in the current era due to the neck-breaking speed of the urbanisation and modernisation. The code-switching between two languages seems to become more prevalent in the language use of the new generations. Besides, in my view, the internet and social media have a significant impact on the language use. In many posts in social media, it could be seen that there is a mixing way of using language to express a personal identity.
Anyways, burning books is not cool at all, it is hot.

By: Pramanandra Joshi

Pramanandra Joshi — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 00:53:26 +0000

Language is a part of social recognition, language has close intimacy with culture and civilization of particular country. Above given article raises genuine issue regarding language transformation. Mongolian people’s rage against inclusion of Chinese language in their dictionary is for the preserving their mother tongue. This article reminded me the language issue in Nepal, in my country there is massive impact of Hindi language in Nepali language. Nationalist organizations of Nepal have been raising voice against influence of Hindi language in Nepali language. Preserving mother tongue is going complex because young generation is quite not interested in preserve mother tongue it is because of modernization and globalization. Thus preserving mother tongue without effecting by other language is becoming today.

By: Katy D

Katy D — Sun, 03 Nov 2019 20:43:00 +0000

Thank you for sharing such an interesting post on the close relationship between language and culture. It is evident that both cultures and languages can have modification when the time passes by. The world is becoming more and more modern, which threatens traditional cultures and customs. I personally believe that young generations tend to immerse themselves into the new and modern world and put less importance to the values of traditions. This also explains the less and less interest in Mongolian lately. The fact that “pure” Mongolians are more likely to be left out did shock me and upset me a lot even though Mongolian is not my mother tongue. It is like a part of traditional value fading into ashes.

By: Thi Thanh Huyen Do

Thi Thanh Huyen Do — Sun, 03 Nov 2019 15:17:44 +0000

Mongolian in China can be considered a moderately-threatened language. Though it is the national language of Mongolia, more than half the world’s Mongolian speakers live in China, and most major dialect branches are spoken only in China. The spread of Chinese among Mongolian speakers, and the maintenance versus the loss of Mongolian among children in bilingual communities. It also demonstrates a new method for the quantitative study of language shift and intergenerational language transmission in language communities that are too large to be observable through ethnography alone. The loss of Mongolian has been much more gradual, and there is no identifiable “shifting generation” or “transitional generation”. Instead, the rate of shift among children raised by Mongolian-Chinese bilingual parents remains the same for all age cohorts born in the latter half of the twentieth century. Urban versus rural residence, however, plays an important role. The proportion of shifting individuals is much higher among children raised in large cities than among those raised in medium-size towns or rural areas, regardless of birth year. As China’s population becomes more urbanized, the shift from Mongolian to Chinese may accelerate in the near future. Even if the rate of shift stays the same, a steady proportional decline in each generation will still have a cumulative effect, resulting in an exponential decline in the population of Mongolian speakers.

By: fidjicz

fidjicz — Sun, 03 Nov 2019 07:58:43 +0000

It seems increasingly difficult to preserve traditions, customs and languages of small nations or ethnic groups. Generations of young people will perhaps always be enthusiastic to immerse themselves into other cultures which means that also inevitably use their vocabulary. It is perhaps the responsibility of older generations to try and maintain their language and culture, while also continuously education their younger ones about the importance of one’s cultural heritage. The article mentioned that there has been a sharp decline in text books published in the Mongolian language. Why does it happen? Does it mean that Mongolians are not interested in buying those text books, or in buying books written in Mongolian? Or are the books too expensive so they become unaffordable? It is a very sad statistic, but it might be the key to a change. High quality text books and literature could help reverse this situation that makes many Mongolians unhappy.