The Soyombo script ( mn, Соёмбо бичиг, ''Soyombo biçig'') is an

abugida An abugida (, from Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel n ...

developed by the monk and scholar

Zanabazar Öndör Gegeen Zanabazar, , , "High Saint Zanabazar"; 1635–1723 (born Eshidorji) was the sixteenth '' Jebtsundamba Khutuktu'' and the first ''Bogd Gegeen'' or supreme spiritual authority, of the Gelugpa (Yellow Hat) lineage of Tibetan Buddhism ...

in 1686 to write Mongolian. It can also be used to write Tibetan and

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

. A special character of the script, the

Soyombo symbol The ''Soyombo'' symbol (; mn, Соёмбо, ; from sa, svayambhu) is a special character in the Soyombo alphabet invented by Zanabazar in 1686. The name "Soyombo" is derived from Sanskrit ''svayambhu'' "self-created". It serves as a national ...

, became a national symbol of

Mongolia Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol Nation" or "State of Mongolia" () is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of , with a population of just 3.3 million, ...

and has appeared on the national flag and

emblem An emblem is an abstract or representational pictorial image that represents a concept, like a moral truth, or an allegory, or a person, like a king or saint. Emblems vs. symbols Although the words ''emblem'' and '' symbol'' are often us ...

of Mongolia since 1911, as well as money, stamps, etc.

Creation

The script was designed in 1686 by

, the first spiritual leader of

Tibetan Buddhism Tibetan Buddhism (also referred to as Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, Lamaism, Lamaistic Buddhism, Himalayan Buddhism, and Northern Buddhism) is the form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet and Bhutan, where it is the dominant religion. It is also in majo ...

, who also designed the Horizontal square script. The Soyombo script was created as the fourth Mongolian script, only 38 years after the invention of the

Clear script Clear Script ( xal, , Тодо бичиг, , ''todo biçig''; mn, Тод бичиг, ''tod bichig'', , bxr, Тодо бэшэг, ''Todo besheg'' (), or just todo) is an alphabet created in 1648 by the Oirat Buddhist monk Zaya Pandita for t ...

. The name of the script alludes to this story. It is derived from the

word ''Svayambhu'' "self-created". The syllabic system in fact appears to be based on

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental writing system), based on the ...

, while the base shape of the letters is derived from the

Ranjana alphabet The Rañjanā script (Lantsa) is an abugida writing system which developed in the 11th centuryJwajalapa

. Details of individual characters resemble traditional Mongolian alphabets and the

Old Turkic alphabet The Old Turkic script (also known as variously Göktürk script, Orkhon script, Orkhon-Yenisey script, Turkic runes) was the alphabet used by the Göktürks and other early Turkic khanates from the 8th to 10th centuries to record the Old Tu ...

Use

The eastern Mongols used the script primarily as a ceremonial and decorative script. Zanabazar had created it for the translation of Buddhist texts from Sanskrit or Tibetan, and both he and his students used it extensively for that purpose. As it was much too complicated to be adopted as an everyday script, its use is practically nonexistent today. Aside from historical texts, it can usually be found in temple inscriptions. It also has some relevance to linguistic research, because it reflects certain developments in the Mongolian language, such as that of long vowels.

Form

The Soyombo script was the first Mongolian script to be written horizontally from left to right, in contrast to earlier scripts that had been written vertically. As in the Tibetan and Devanagari scripts, the signs are suspended below a horizontal line, giving each line of text a visible "backbone". The two variations of the ''Soyombo'' symbol are used as special characters to mark the start and end of a text. Two of its elements (the upper triangle and the right vertical bar) form the angular base frame for the other characters. Within this frame, the syllables are composed of one to three elements. The first

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wi ...

is placed high within the angle. The

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

is given by a mark above the frame, except for u and ü which are marked in the low center. A second consonant is specified by a small mark, appended to the inside of the vertical bar, pushing any u or ü mark to the left side. A short oblique hook at the bottom of the vertical bar marks a long vowel. There is also a curved or jagged mark to the right of the vertical bar for the two diphthongs.

Alphabet

The first character of the alphabet represents a syllable starting with a short ''a''. Syllables starting with other vowels are constructed by adding a vowel mark to the same base character. All remaining base characters represent syllables starting with a consonant. A starting consonant without a vowel mark implies a following ''a''. In theory, 20 consonants and 14 vowels would result in almost 4,000 combinations, but not all of those actually occur in Mongolian. There are additional base characters and marks for writing Tibetan or Sanskrit, and some of the symbols used in these two languages will also not be used in Mongolian.

Mongolian

A syllable in Mongolian can contain the following elements: consonant or vocal carrier (C_b), vowel (V), length marker (L), diphthong marker (V_d) and a final consonant C_f).

Vowels

Mongolian uses seven vowels, all of which have a short and a long form. The long form is indicated with the length mark: Diphthong markers are used with other vowel signs to represent diphthongs in Mongolian:

Consonants

A final consonant is written with a simplified variant of the basic letter in the bottom of the frame. In cases where it would conflict with the vowels u or ü the vowel is written to the left.

Sanskrit and Tibetan

A syllable in Sanskrit or Tibetan can contain the following elements: Consonant in prefix form (C_p), consonant or vocal carrier (C_b), stack of medial consonants (C₂…C_n), vowel (V) and length marker (L). For Sanskrit, there are two diacritics:

anusvara Anusvara (Sanskrit: ') is a symbol used in many Indic scripts to mark a type of nasal sound, typically transliterated . Depending on its location in the word and the language for which it is used, its exact pronunciation can vary. In the context ...

(S_a) and

visarga Visarga ( sa, विसर्गः, translit=visargaḥ) means "sending forth, discharge". In Sanskrit phonology ('' ''), ' (also called, equivalently, ' by earlier grammarians) is the name of a phone voiceless glottal fricative, , written as: ...

(S_v). In Tibetan, syllables can be separated by tsheg (T), a small triangle-shaped sign comparable to a space.

Vowels

Sanskrit contains additional vowels ṛ, ṝ, ḷ and ḹ. An anusvara diacritic indicates nasalization (transcribed as ṃ). A visarga indicates post-vocalic aspiration (transcribed as ḥ).

Consonants

Soyombo contains the full set of letters to reproduce Sanskrit and Tibetan. Note that some of the letters represent different sounds in Mongolian, Sanskrit, and Tibetan. The primary difference between the three occurs in Mongolian where letters for Sanskrit voiceless sounds are used for voiced stops, while the letters for voiceless aspirated sounds are used for voiceless stops. In Mongolian, letters used specifically for Tibetan and Sanskrit are called 'гали' ''galig'' noting they are characters used for the transcription of foreign sounds. Consonant clusters in Sanskrit and Tibetan are usually written by stacking several consonants vertically within the same frame. In existing sources clusters occur with up to three consonants, but in theory they could contain as many as possible. Four consonants, ra, la, śa and sa, can also be written as a special prefix, consisting of a small sign written to the left of the main triangle. They are pronounced before the other consonants.

Punctuation

Apart from the

, the only punctuation mark is a full stop, represented by a vertical bar. In inscriptions, words are often separated by a dot at the height of the upper triangle (''tsheg'').

Unicode

Soyombo script has been included in the

Unicode Standard Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, whic ...

since the release of Unicode version 10.0 in June 2017. The Soyombo block currently comprises 83 characters. The proposal to encode Soyombo was submitted by Anshuman Pandey. Th
Unicode proposal
was revised in December 2015. The Unicode block for Soyombo is U+11A50–U+11AAF: The Menksoft IMEs provide alternative input methods.

References

External links

Soyombo script
- Omniglot

(TeX/Metafont)

(TTF)

Creation

Use

Form

Alphabet

Mongolian

Vowels

Consonants

Sanskrit and Tibetan

Vowels

Consonants

Punctuation

Unicode

See also

References

External links

Further reading