The traditional or classical Mongolian alphabet

Mongolian alphabet

Many alphabets have been devised for the Mongolian language over the centuries, and from a variety of scripts. The oldest, called simply the Mongolian script, has been the predominant script during most of Mongolian history, and is still in active use today in the Inner Mongolia region of China...

, sometimes called Hudum 'traditional' in Oirat

Oirat language

Oirat belongs to the group of Mongolic languages. Scholars differ as to whether Oirat is a distinct language or a major dialect of the Mongolian language...

 in contrast to the Clear script (Todo 'exact'), is the original form of the Mongolian script

Mongolian script

The classical Mongolian script , also known as Uyghurjin, was the first writing system created specifically for the Mongolian language, and was the most successful until the introduction of Cyrillic in 1946...

 used to write the Mongolian language

Mongolian language

The Mongolian language is the official language of Mongolia and the best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner...

. It fails to distinguish several vowels (o/u, ö/ü, final a/e) and consonants (t/d, k/g, sometimes ž/y) that were not required for Uyghur

Uyghur alphabet

Uyghur is a Turkic language spoken in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, administered by China, by the Uyghur people. It is a language with a long literary tradition, and has been written using numerous writing systems through time...

, which was the source of the Mongol (or Uyghur-Mongol) script. The result is somewhat comparable to the situation of English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, which must represent ten or more vowels with only five letters and uses the digraph

Digraph (orthography)

A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...

th for two distinct sounds. Ambiguity is sometimes prevented by context, as the requirements of vowel harmony and syllable sequence usually indicate the correct sound. Moreover, as there are few words with an exactly identical spelling, actual ambiguities are rare for a reader who knows the orthography.

Letters have different forms depending on their position in a word: initial, medial, or final. In some cases, additional graphic variants are selected for visual harmony with the subsequent character.

Letters

Characters				Transliteration		Notes
initial	medial	final		Latin	Cyrillic
				a	А	Distinction usually by vowel harmony (see also q/γ and k/g below)
				e	Э
	Following a consonant, Latin transliteration is i. Following a vowel, Latin transliteration is yi, with rare exceptions like naim ("eight") or Naiman.			i, yi	И,Й, Ы, Ь	At end of word today often absorbed into preceding syllable
				o, u	О, У	Distinction depending on context.
				ö, ü	Ө, Ү	Distinction depending on context.
	Character for front of syllable (n-). Character for back of syllable (-n).			n	Н	Distinction from medial and final a/e by position in syllable sequence.
				ng	Н, НГ	Only at end of word (medial for composites). Transcribes Tibetan ང; Sanskrit ङ.
				b	Б, В	In classical Mongolian v is used only for transcribing foreign words, so most "В (V)" in Cyrillic Mongolian correspond to "Б (B)" in Classical Mongolian.
				p	П	Only at the beginning of Mongolian words. Transcribes Tibetan པ;
				q	Х	Only with back vowels
				γ	Г	Only with back vowels. Between vowels pronounced as a long vowel in oral Mongolian. Examples: qa-γ-an (khan) is shortened to qaan unless reading classical literary Mongolian. Some exceptions like tsa-g-aan ("white") exist. The "final" version only appears when followed by an a written detached from the word.
				k	Х	Only with front vowels, but 'ki/gi' can occur in both front and back vowel words Word-finally only g, not k. g between vowels pronounced as long vowel. Example: de-g-er is shortened to deer. Some exceptions like ügüi ("no") exist.
				g	Г
				m	М
				l	Л
				s	С
				š	Ш
				t, d	Т, Д	Distinction depending on context.
				č	Ч, Ц	Distinction between /tʃ'/ and /ts'/ in Khalkha Mongolian.
				j	Ж, З	Distinction by context in Khalkha Mongolian.
				y	-Й, Е*, Ё*, Ю*, Я*
				r	Р	Not normally at the beginning of words. Transcribed foreign words usually get a vowel prepended. Example: Transcribing Русь (Russia) results in Oros.
				v	В	Used to transcribe foreign words (Originally used to transcribe Sanskrit व)
				f	Ф	Used to transcribe foreign words
					К	Used to transcribe foreign words
				(c)	(ц)	Used to transcribe foreign words (Originally used to transcribe Tibetan /ts'/ ཚ; Sanskrit छ)
				(z)	(з)	Used to transcribe foreign words (Originally used to transcribe Tibetan /dz/ ཛ; Sanskrit ज)
				(h)	(г, х)	Used to transcribe foreign words (Originally used to transcribe Tibetan /h/ ཧ, ྷ; Sanskrit ह)
				(zh)	(-,-)	Transcribes Chinese 'zhi' - used in Inner Mongolia
				(ř)	(-,-)	Transcribes Chinese 'ri' - used in Inner Mongolia
				(chi)	(-,-)	Transcribes Chinese 'chi' - used in Inner Mongolia

Notes: