Ordos Mongolian Explained

Ordos Mongolian should not be confused with Urdu.

Ordos
States:China
Region:Gansu, Qinghai
Date:1982 census
Familycolor:Altaic
Fam1:Mongolic
Fam2:Central Mongolic
Fam3:BuryatMongolian
Fam4:Mongolian
Fam5:Peripheral Mongolian
Isoexception:dialect
Glotto:ordo1245
Glottorefname:Ordos
Ethnicity:Ordos Mongols

Ordos Mongolian (also Urdus; Mongolian ; Chinese 鄂尔多斯 È'ěrduōsī) is a variety of Central Mongolic spoken in the Ordos City region in Inner Mongolia and historically by Ordos Mongols. It is alternatively classified as a language within the Mongolic language family or as a dialect of the standard Mongolian language.[1] Due to the research of Antoine Mostaert,[2] the development of this dialect can be traced back 100 years.

The Ordos vowel-phoneme system in word-initial syllables is similar to that of Chakhar Mongolian, the most notable difference being that it has [e] and [e:] instead of [ə] and [ə:].[3] In southern varieties, pronounced as /

/ merged into pronounced as //ʊ//, e.g. while you still say pronounced as /ɔrtɔs/ in Ejin Horo Banner, it has become pronounced as /ʊrtʊs/ in Uxin or the Otog Front Banner. In contrast to the other dialects of Mongolian proper, it retains this distinction in all following syllables including in open word-final syllables, thus resembling the syllable and phoneme structure of Middle Mongolian more than any other Mongolian variety. E.g. MM pronounced as //ɑmɑ// Ordos pronounced as //ɑmɑ// Khalkha pronounced as //ɑm// 'mouth', Ordos pronounced as //ɑxʊr// Khalkha pronounced as //ɑxr// (pronounced as /[ɑxɑ̯r]/) 'short; short sheep's wool'.[4] Accordingly, it could never acquire palatalized consonant phonemes. Due to their persistent existence as short non-initial phonemes, pronounced as //u// and pronounced as //ʊ// have regressively assimilated *ø and *o, e.g. * > pronounced as //ʊtʊ// 'star', pronounced as / / > pronounced as //ɡʊmʊdal// 'offence', pronounced as / / > pronounced as //tʰuru// 'power'. An analogous change took place for some sequences of *a and *u, e.g. *arasu > pronounced as //arʊsʊ//.[5]

Ordos retains a variant of the old comitative case and shares the innovated directive case.[6] The verb system is not well researched, but employs a notable innovated suffix, (guːn), that does not seem to adhere to the common division into three Mongolic verb suffix classes.[7]

The lexicon of Ordos is that of a normal Mongolian dialect, with some Tibetan and Chinese loanwords.[8]

Bibliography

Notes and References

  1. Georg 2003: 193, Sečenbaγatur et al. 2005: 167–168
  2. e.g. Mostaert 1937, 1941-1944
  3. Sečen et al. 2002: 5
  4. see Sečen et al. 2002: 19, 38
  5. Sečen 2003: 35-36
  6. see Sečen et al. 2002: 122
  7. Soyultu 1982
  8. Georg 2003: 193-194 (implicitly) based on Mostaert 1941-1944, Sonum 2008: 21-26 (together with C. Norǰin)