Kalmyk writing

Until the middle of the 17th century, Oirats and Kalmyks used Old Mongolian script to write their language . The Old Mongolian script was poorly adapted to convey the phonetic features of the living Oirat language, which required its reform. In 1648, the Buddhist monk Zaya Pandita reformed the Old Mongolian script, bringing it closer to the Oirat language. In particular, the designation of all Oirat vowels was introduced, the writing of long vowels was simplified, the foundations of spelling standards were developed. This alphabet is called Todo Bichig ( clear writing ). Like Old Mongolian writing, Todo Bichig had the direction of writing from top to bottom. Despite attempts to bring the letter closer to spoken language, the written Oirat language had many words borrowed from the Mongolian language and not used in live speech. So, already at the beginning of the 18th century, two written forms of the Kalmyk language were recorded - the “book” language, used in religious practice and having numerous Mongolian and Tibetan borrowings and preserving archaic language forms, as well as the “colloquial” language used in private correspondence and reflecting changes taking place in the language ^{[1] [2]} .

Todo-bichig, also called by the name of its creator, the "Zaipandi script" with minor changes existed among the Kalmyks until 1924. Oirates of China use it to the present ^[3] .

In the XIX - early XX centuries, a number of both original books and brochures translated from Russian were published in Todo-Bichig ^[4] , but the literacy of the Kalmyk population of the Russian Empire remained very low - 2.3% in 1913 ^[5] .

In the late XIX - early XX centuries, the Orthodox Missionary Society published a number of school books in the Kalmyk language, using Cyrillic graphics. The first edition of this kind was the “Primer for Kalmyk ulus schools” (1892). The alphabet used in this primer had the following composition: A a, B b, C c, G d, D d, E e, Z s, I and K, L, M m, N n, O o, P n, R r, C s, T t, U y, X x, Ts c, H h, W sh, b, E e, Yu, I, Ӓ ӓ, Ā ā, Ǟ ǟ, Ӧ ӧ, Ō ō, Ȫ ȫ, Ӱ ӱ, Ӯ ӯ, Ӱ̄ ӱ̄, JJ, Ng ng, II, іy, Ye ye, Yӧ yӧ, Ӓy ӓy, Ӣ ӣ, ̄ ē, Yū yu, Ya ya ^[6] . In 1902, the “Primer for Kalmyks” was published, where a different version of the alphabet was used: A a, B b, G d, D d, Z s, I and Y, K, L, M m, N n, O about , R r, C s, T t, U y, X x, Ts c, H h, W sh, b, E e, Ӓ ӓ, Ā ā, Ǟ ǟ, Ӧ ӧ, Ō ō, Ȫ ȫ, Ӱ ӱ , Ӯ ӯ, Ӱ̄ ӱ̄, JJ, Ҥ ҥ, Ӣ ӣ, Ē ē ^[7] . However, the Todo-bichig script continued to be used ^[8] .

On January 6, 1924, a meeting of the Kalmyk public was held in Astrakhan . At this meeting, by a majority of votes, the Zai-Pandit script was recognized as obsolete - it was noted that it was difficult to write and learn, lack of fonts, inability to use by telegraph, and so on. In this regard, it was decided to translate the Kalmyk language into Cyrillic script. On January 12, the alphabet was adopted, consisting of the following letters: A a, B b, C c, G d, D d, E e, F, Z, I and K, L, M m, N n, Oh, P p, R p, C s, T t, U y, F f, X x, Ts c, H h, W sh, Shch, U s, E e, Yu, I, b , Th, ä , ö , ӱ , ң , ӝ . Over long vowels it was supposed to put a line ( macron ), but in practice this was not carried out. Also, despite the absence in the approved draft, the letter стала began to be used to designate vague vowels. Since January 1926, the newspaper Ulan Halmg ^[9] began to print in this alphabet. The Kalmyk literary language was based on the Torgut dialect, but later the norm began to focus not only on the Torgut dialect, but also on the Derbet dialect ^[10] . Sometimes in editions of that time the letter ң was replaced by ҥ or н̈ , and the letters Е е, Ж, Ф ф, Щ щ were not officially included in the alphabet ^[11] .

On September 7, 1926, at a meeting at the Kalmyk Pedagogical College in Astrakhan, it was decided to make changes to the alphabet. So, all additional letters were canceled, and D d, V v, H h were entered instead. In June 1927, this alphabet was introduced into official use, but a significant part of the literature and press was still published in the 1924 alphabet ^[12] .

On February 5-8, 1928, the next meeting on Kalmyk writing was held, at which the alphabet was again reformed. The letters D d, V v, H h were canceled, and the letter Ә ә was introduced to indicate obscure vowels. It was decided to designate the longitude of the vowels by doubling the corresponding letters. This alphabet was used until 1930 ^[13] .

In the late 1920s, the process of Latinization of writing began in the USSR . In the course of this process, in January 1930, the IX Kalmyk Regional Congress of Soviets legalized a new latinized alphabet of the Kalmyk language. Its actual use began in newspapers from the end of September of that year ^[14] . The letters in this alphabet were arranged in the following order ^[15] : A a, B b, C c, Ç ç, D d, E e, Ә ә, G g, H h, I i, j, K k, L l, M m, N n, ꞑ, O o, Ө ө, P p, R r, S s, Ş ş, F f, Y y, Z z, Ƶ ƶ, U u, T t, V v, X x, b .

On January 10-17, 1931 at the conference of scientists of the Mongolian group of peoples held in Moscow , it was decided to change the phonetic meaning of the two letters of the Kalmyk script, as well as to change the alphabetical order of letters. In May of the same year, the Kalmyk Regional Conference on Language and Writing, held in Elista III, confirmed this decision. The alphabet took the following form ^[16] :

The letter b , unlike most other Soviet latinized alphabets, meant palatalization ^[17] . In this form, the alphabet lasted until 1938.

In the second half of the 1930s, the process of translating scripts into Cyrillic began in the USSR. The Kalmyk alphabet was translated into Cyrillic in 1938. Initially, the Kalmyk Cyrillic alphabet included all the letters of the Russian alphabet , as well as Ä ä, ъ г Дж, JJ, ъ ъ, Ö ö, Ӱ ӱ . In 1941, the alphabet was again reformed - the style of additional letters was changed ^[18] . However, due to the deportation of the Kalmyks that soon followed, the transition to a new version of the alphabet was carried out only after their rehabilitation - in the late 1950s ^[19] .

Currently, the Kalmyk alphabet looks like this:

Unicode Kalmyk Alphabet

Fonts and text input in Kalmyk language

On Windows, the letters of the Kalmyk alphabet are included in the fonts Arial Unicode MS, Courier New, Times New Roman and others. For typing, you can use the Tatar keyboard layout, which is included in the package of the main operating systems, adding it to the keyboard settings. There are also layouts created specifically for the Kalmyk language, one of which is included in Ubuntu 9.04 under the name Russia Kalmyk. In Kalmyk Wikipedia, additional letters can be entered through the quick insert panel at the bottom of the editing page by clicking on the corresponding letter.

• C. D. Nominkhanov. Essay on the history of Kalmyk writing. - M .: "Science", 1976. - 140 p. - 1000 copies.