modern mongolian vs classical mongolian

[lamasu]

Hello everybody!

This year my university will probably (finally) have a course of mongolian that I hope to be able to follow.
But I am a little bit curious: how different is classical mongolian from modern mongolian?
I mean, a person speaking modern mongolian, can understan a text written in classical mongolian?

For instance, those among you speaking mongolian, can understand a text like this one?

www.linguamongolia.com/Muhammad%20al-Samarqandi.pdf

and if not, how would it be in modern mongolian? you know, to have an idea of the distance of the two languages..

[Subu'atai]

Sept 14, 2011 14:18:32 GMT 3 lamasu said:

Hello everybody!

This year my university will probably (finally) have a course of mongolian that I hope to be able to follow.
But I am a little bit curious: how different is classical mongolian from modern mongolian?
I mean, a person speaking modern mongolian, can understan a text written in classical mongolian?

For instance, those among you speaking mongolian, can understand a text like this one?

www.linguamongolia.com/Muhammad%20al-Samarqandi.pdf

and if not, how would it be in modern mongolian? you know, to have an idea of the distance of the two languages..

"Modern" Mongolian is Khalkha Mongolian, and is written in both classical script and cyrillic, however, only in Dzungaria, and Inner-Mongolia is the classical script still used (though some dialects - they aren't Khalkha). In Mongolia the official alphabet is still cyrillic, but classical mongolian is still taught in schools.

[lamasu]

Thank you! Ok, for what concern the writing systems I am fine, but my question was about the language itself.

I mean, for instance, my mother tongue is Italian, but if I read a text in "classical Italian" (like Dante's "Divina commedia", about 1300 A.D. ) I can manage to understand it, but with some difficulty (because words, syntactical structures, morphological features, etc.. have changed). Even if the writing system is the same.

Or if you want another example, take modern turkish and ottoman turkish: even if you transcribe it in latin alphabet, ottoman turkish is relatively difficult to understand for a speaker of modern turkish (because is full of arabic and persian words and structures)

So my question is: if you know the "modern Mongolian" language, is it possible to understand a text in "classical mongolian"? For instance, a native speaker of mongolian can understand the poem I linked (more or less 1300 A.D.), independently from the script (in the page I linked there is also the transcription in latin alphabet)?

[Ardavarz]

I envy you - I never had such opportunity in my university .

However back in my studentship I managed to obtain a textbook for classic Mongolian script. In the exercises there are given many examples of Old Mongolian words to be memorized because they've had different meaning and spelling once, but in modern Mongolian they have become homonyms.

Here's some examples from that textbook:

Old Mongolian em ("cure") and eme ("woman, female") both become em in Modern Mongolian.
Old Mongolian öl ("nutritiousness"), öli ("hill") and ölü ("gray") become öl in Modern Mongolian.
Old Mongolian amara- ("to rest"), amar ("easy") and amur ("successfull") become amar in Modern Mongolian.
Old Mongolian abagai ("wife") and abugai ("revered, esteemed") become avgay in Modern Mongolian etc.

So, my guess is that it would be difficult to understand an Old Mongolian text by means of modern Mongolian language. But it's just my opinion - I haven't studied the language itself and I don't know how the native speakers feel about it.

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

As far as I know, there are quite a lot of vowel droppings and sound changes between Classical and Khalkha Mongolian, such as k -> h (x, kh), j -> z, b-> v, Köke/Kökö -> Höh (Khökh), Qara -> Har (Khar), etc.