Sunday, September 6, 2009
The thing about learning to read Mongolian is this: first you have to learn the Cyrillic alphabet. And then you have to realize that the Cyrillic alphabet does NOT do a good job of representing the sounds of the Mongolian language.
Before we arrived in Mongolia, Frank eagerly tackled this task of learning the (modified) Cyrillic alphabet. But this time, it was I who lagged behind.
The real problem is this: when you look at the letters, they all look so familiar. But that is the problem of so-called "false friends."
To get started, try remembering the following:
The letter Р is an "r" sound
The letter И is an "i" sound
The letter C is an "s" sound
The letter Л is an "l" sound
The letter У is a "u" sound
The letter H is an "n" sound
Okay, time to test your knowledge! What does the picture at right say?
Okay, time to test your knowledge! What does the picture at right say?
"Crystal Town"
But here's the bad thing: that's just an English word that's been "spelled" phonetically in Mongolian. You still need to learn some real Mongolian words. Maybe another day...
