Mongolian/Inner Mongolian vocab differences

5 Responses to Mongolian/Inner Mongolian vocab differences

1. TUMBA says:

   20/03/2012 at 4:56 am

   I LIKE THOSE CARDS. GOOD OBSERVATIONS. I GUESS YOU READ MONGOLIAN script.
   inner mongolians also use words like kadr – cadre, yumor – humor that outer mongolians don’t use
2. khanbaliqist says:

   20/03/2012 at 7:25 am

   That is very interesting. The word кадр (kadr) is, I should think, obviously from Russian, so it is quite strange that it is used in Inner Mongolia and not in Mongolia itself. (In Mongolia, it’s used in a different sense, that of ‘frame’ or ‘exposure’ in movie film, also obviously from Russian, but originally I assume from French).

   The word юмор yumor also appears to be from Russian. Again it is strange that it’s not used in (Outer) Mongolia. Another interesting thing about юмор is the missing ‘h’. It is not only the Russian word юмор that lacks it; Chinese 幽默 yōumò and Japanese ユーモア yūmoa are both missing the ‘h’. I’m guessing the word entered these languages from French rather than from English…
   • khanbaliqist says:

     27/03/2012 at 6:23 am

     My guess that it was from French was way off. I wasn’t aware of this, but the older British English pronunciation does not pronounce the ‘h’. The Russian is direct from the English. The Chinese and Japanese are possibly also modelled on the h-less pronunciation.
3. Tumba says:

   08/10/2012 at 11:30 am

   I agree those words are probably from Russian and I think via Outer Mongolia in maybe 1930s-1950s. Because during the time in Mongolia many people preferred to use Russian words, especially those words with communist connotation like ‘kadr’, ‘tovarishch’ and it was a time when (50s) Inner mongolia was copying everything Outer Mongolia did and sent students to Mongolia. They even briefly switched to cyrillic alphabet in the 50s and switched back to Mongolian alphabet later.
   In Mongolia, people gradually avoided to use strong communist words and direct Russian words, starting 70s. I remember, in the 80s, there were campaigns to avoid to use Russian words. At the time I thought it wouldn’t be successful, but now I see success. At that time, everyone used creolized russian words like yavlag (yabloko) for apple/alim, galavsa (kolbasa) for hiam/sausage and it was thought funny if you said it in real Mongolian. Now, it’s the other way around.
   In old Mongolian movies of the 50s, 60s, I heard movie characters saying ‘kadr’ a lot. Probably, in the 70s, the word was completely replaced by mongolian word.
   But, I guess, there is still possibility that the word yumor (humor) came via Chinese language from English.
   In Inner Mongolia, one often hear people describing a person to be ‘yumorlig’ meaning having a good sense of humor.
4. tumba says:

   03/12/2012 at 4:00 pm

   I was watching Inner Mongolian TV and heard saying “moraal’tai” (meaning good mannered.) which reminded me that I actually hear the word quite often by Inner Mongolians. The world “moraal” (moral) probably from Russian language and almost never used by Outer Mongolians.
   http://www.nmtv.cn/vod/my/nhy/2012-12/02/cms444847article.shtml

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