Mongolian writing systems
It has in turn spawned several alphabets, either as attempts to fix its perceived shortcomings, or to allow the notation of other languages, such as Chinese, Sanskrit and Tibetan.
In the 20th century, Mongolia briefly switched to the Latin script, but then almost immediately replaced it with the modified Cyrillic alphabet because of its smaller discrepancy between written and spoken form, contributing to the success of the literacy campaign, which increased the literacy rate from 17.3% to 73.5% between 1941 and 1950[1] Nevertheless, Mongols living in Inner Mongolia as well as other parts of China continued to use alphabets based on the traditional Mongolian script.
In 1587, the translator and scholar Ayuush Güüsh created the Galik alphabet, inspired by Sonam Gyatso, the third Dalai Lama.
It primarily added extra letters to transcribe Tibetan and Sanskrit terms in religious texts, and later also from Chinese and Russian.
Later some of these letters were officially merged into traditional alphabet as a group named "Galig usug" to transcribe foreign words in modern use.
Therefore, during the Yuan dynasty (c. 1269), Kublai Khan asked a Tibetan monk, Drogön Chögyal Phagpa, to design a new script for use by the whole empire.
The Soyombo script is an abugida created by the Mongolian monk and scholar Bogdo Zanabazar in the late 17th century, that can also be used to write Tibetan and Sanskrit.
Subjects from the Middle East hired into administrative functions would also often use Perso-Arabic script to write their Mongolian language documents.
The adoption of the Cyrillic script a short time later, almost simultaneously with most Soviet republics, suggests political reasons.
In March 2020, the Government of Mongolia announced plans to use the traditional Mongolian script alongside Cyrillic in official documents starting from 2025.
