Mongolian

Mongolian is the principal language of the Mongolic family, native to the Mongolian Plateau and carried across Eurasia by the Mongol conquests. The oldest surviving Mongolian text, the Stele of Yisüngge, was carved around 1224 in the Uyghur-based vertical Mongolian script, which Genghis Khan's empire adopted from the Uyghurs.

The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries also saw the 'Phags-pa script of 1269 and Chinese-character transcriptions in the Secret History of the Mongols. Under the Yuan dynasty Mongolian served as the guoyu, or national language, and after the dynasty fell in 1368 the retreating Mongol courts kept the tradition alive in the steppe.

Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries a standardized written form known as Classical Mongolian emerged, used for the translated Kangyur and Tengyur Buddhist canon, historical chronicles and, from 1686, the Soyombo alphabet.