Alphabet Letters
Mongolian E ᠡ
Mongolian Letters
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Origin Adapted from the Old Uyghur alphabet around 1204 CE, at the founding of the Mongol state.
E writes the open front vowel and belongs to the front class of the vowel harmony, standing opposite A in the back class. Inside a word the two are written alike, so what tells them apart is the class of the word rather than the shape on the page. This is the first of the script's ambiguities a learner meets, and it is characteristic: the alphabet records what is needed to recover a word already known and leaves the rest to the reader. It was adapted from the Old Uyghur alphabet around 1204, and that alphabet came through Sogdian from Aramaic, so these letters stand at the end of a long chain of borrowing that begins in the Near East. It remains the official script of Inner Mongolia, where it is taught and printed, and it has been revived alongside Cyrillic in the state of Mongolia.
Facts
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceEncoded at U+1821 MONGOLIAN LETTER E in the Mongolian block. 2Tradition: The Mongolian script Meaning in the Attesting SourceThe traditional alphabet, called Hudum, is one of several writing systems built on the same letters. Todo, Sibe and Manchu extend it and are encoded in the same Unicode block, but they are separate systems and are not part of this alphabet. 2Tradition: The Mongolian script Meaning in the Attesting SourceVowel harmony sorts the vowels into a back set and a front set, with i neutral to both. A word normally draws its vowels from one set, and the class of the word governs the shape some consonants take. 1Tradition: The Mongolian script Identity
Script TypeAn alphabet written in vertical columns running top to bottom, with the columns ordered left to right, a direction unique among national scripts in current use. 1Tradition: The Mongolian script PositionSecond of the thirty-five letters of the traditional Mongolian alphabet, in the order the script is recited and encoded 2Tradition: The Mongolian script How the Letter JoinsCursive: the letters join along a continuous vertical spine, and each takes a different shape at the start of a word, inside it and at its end. Those three are positions of one letter, not separate letters. 1Tradition: The Mongolian script Attributions
Associated SoundThe open front vowel e, of the front class of the vowel harmony; written inside a word exactly as a is written 1Tradition: Mongolian phonology Origins
Origin PeriodAdapted from the Old Uyghur alphabet around 1204 CE, at the founding of the Mongol state. 1Tradition: The Mongolian script Place of OriginThe Mongol steppe, from an Old Uyghur alphabet that reached it through Sogdian from Aramaic. 1Tradition: The Mongolian script Origin of the NameNamed for the open front vowel it writes, e, following the same phonetic naming convention as its back-class partner A rather than an inherited word of its own. 1 Sense of the Namethe vowel e; the front partner of A 1Tradition: The Mongolian script Practice
Liturgical and Scriptural RoleFrom the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the script carried a large Buddhist literature in Mongolian, including the translation of the Kangyur, and it carries religious writing still. 3Tradition: Mongolian Buddhism Learn More
Mongolian E: The Front Partner of A
E writes the open front vowel and stands second in the traditional order. It is the front class partner of a, and the pair is the clearest illustration of how Mongolian vowel harmony works: the vowels of the language sort into a back set and a front set, a word normally draws its vowels from one set only, and suffixes change their vowels to match the word they attach to. Inside a word, e is written exactly as a is written, with the same plain tooth on the spine, and nothing in the shape distinguishes them. The distinction is carried by the rest of the word. If the other vowels present belong to the back class the tooth is read as a, and if they belong to the front class it is read as e, so the harmony is not merely a phonological rule but a working part of the reading system. At the head of a word the two are separated, which is where the alphabet does mark them apart, and at the end each has its own trailing form.
Unicode encodes e at U+1821, immediately after a, preserving the order in which the alphabet is recited. A reader coming from a European alphabet should resist the assumption that an ambiguous letter is a defect. Scripts routinely leave to the reader what the language itself makes predictable, and Mongolian harmony is predictable enough that a fluent reader is rarely in doubt.
Mongolian E and How Vowel Harmony Organises a Word
Vowel harmony is the single fact about Mongolian that a reader of the script has to hold in mind, and the letter e is where it becomes visible. The vowels divide into a back series and a front series, with i standing outside and belonging comfortably to either. A native word takes its vowels from one series throughout, so a word containing e will not also contain a, and a suffix arriving at the end of that word will present its front form rather than its back one. This is not decoration. It is the mechanism that lets an ambiguous script stay readable, because a shape that could be two different vowels is settled by the company it keeps. The same principle reaches into the consonants: the velar written for back class words is not the velar written for front class words, and the choice between them is governed by the vowels around them rather than by anything the speaker chooses.
Harmony of this kind is common across the languages of northern Asia, and it is one of the features that first led scholars to group Mongolian with Turkic and Tungusic languages, a grouping that has since been argued about at length without being settled. What is not in dispute is the pattern itself, which any page of traditional Mongolian writing displays, and which the alphabet was reorganised around when it was borrowed.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Related To
The two open vowels of the alphabet and the clearest pair in the vowel harmony: a belongs to the back class and e to the front. Inside a word the two are written with the same plain tooth on the spine and are told apart by the class of the word rather than by their shape.
E and A are the two open vowels of the alphabet and the clearest pair in the vowel harmony: A belongs to the back class and E to the front. Inside a word the two are written with the same plain tooth on the spine and are told apart by the class of the word rather than by their shape.
The seven vowels that carry the vowel harmony form a closed system of a back series, a front series and one neutral member. Ee stands outside those seven, an addition to a set that was already complete, and it is listed after them and before the consonants.
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