Mongolic languages
| Mongolic | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution: |
Mongolia; Inner Mongolia and regions close to its border, Xinjiang, Gansu, Qinghai (China); Buryatia, Kalmykia (Russia) and Herat (Afghanistan) |
| Linguistic classification: |
Khitan–Mongolic? (see below) Otherwise one of the world's primary language families |
| Proto-language: | Proto-Mongolic |
| Subdivisions: | |
| ISO 639-5: | |
| Glottolog: | mong1329 |
Geographic distribution of the Mongolic languages
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The Mongolic languages are a group of languages spoken in East-Central Asia, mostly in Mongolia and surrounding areas plus in Kalmykia. The best-known member of this language family, Mongolian, is the primary language of most of the residents of Mongolia and the Mongolian residents of Inner Mongolia, China with an estimated 5.7+ million speakers.
The closest relative of the Mongolic languages appears to be the extinct language Khitan. Some linguists have grouped Mongolic with Turkic, Tungusic, and possibly Koreanic and Japonic as part of a larger Altaic family, but this has been widely disputed.
Contemporary Mongolic:
The classification and speaker numbers above follow Janhunen (2006) except for Southern Mongolic which follows Nugteren (2011). In another classificational approach, there is a tendency to call Central Mongolian a language consisting of Mongolian proper, Oirat and Buryat, while Ordos (and implicitly also Khamnigan) is seen as a variety of Mongolian proper. Within Mongolian proper, they then draw a distinction between Khalkha on the one hand and Southern Mongolian (containing everything else) on the other hand. A less common subdivision of Central Mongolian is to divide it into a Central dialect (Khalkha, Chakhar, Ordos), an Eastern dialect (Kharchin, Khorchin), a Western dialect (Oirat, Kalmyk), and a Northern dialect (consisting of two Buryat varieties). The broader delimitation of Mongolian may be based on mutual intelligibility, but an analysis based on a tree diagram such as the one above faces other problems due to the close contacts between e.g. Buryat and Khalkha Mongols during history thus creating or preserving a dialect continuum. Another problem lies in the sheer comparability of terminology as Western linguists use language and dialect, while Mongolian linguists use the Grimmian trichotomy language (kele), dialect (nutuγ-un ayalγu) and Mundart (aman ayalγu).
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