Alphabet Letters
Mongolian Na ᠨ
Mongolian Letters
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Origin Adapted from the Old Uyghur alphabet around 1204 CE, at the founding of the Mongol state.
Na writes the dental nasal and is the first consonant of the alphabet. Before a vowel it is distinguished from the medial vowel teeth by a dot written to the left of the spine, but the dot is optional in ordinary writing and is often left out, so an n and an a or e can be identical on the page. This is the second great ambiguity of the script after the rounded vowel pairs, and it is resolved the same way, from the word. The long stroke that carries the column is the spine, and the teeth, tails and hooks written to its left and right are what tell one letter from another. Every letter joins its neighbours along a continuous vertical spine and takes a different shape at the start of a word, inside it and at its end. Those are positions of one letter, not separate letters.
Facts
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceEncoded at U+1828 MONGOLIAN LETTER NA in the Mongolian block. 2Tradition: The Mongolian script Meaning in the Attesting SourceThe traditional alphabet, called Hudum, is one of several writing systems built on the same letters. Todo, Sibe and Manchu extend it and are encoded in the same Unicode block, but they are separate systems and are not part of this alphabet. 2Tradition: The Mongolian script Meaning in the Attesting SourceVowel harmony sorts the vowels into a back set and a front set, with i neutral to both. A word normally draws its vowels from one set, and the class of the word governs the shape some consonants take. 1Tradition: The Mongolian script Identity
Script TypeAn alphabet written in vertical columns running top to bottom, with the columns ordered left to right, a direction unique among national scripts in current use. 1Tradition: The Mongolian script PositionNinth of the thirty-five letters of the traditional Mongolian alphabet, in the order the script is recited and encoded 2Tradition: The Mongolian script How the Letter JoinsCursive: the letters join along a continuous vertical spine, and each takes a different shape at the start of a word, inside it and at its end. Those three are positions of one letter, not separate letters. 1Tradition: The Mongolian script Attributions
Associated SoundThe dental nasal n; distinguished before a vowel by a dot that ordinary writing often leaves out 1Tradition: Mongolian phonology Origins
Origin PeriodAdapted from the Old Uyghur alphabet around 1204 CE, at the founding of the Mongol state. 1Tradition: The Mongolian script Place of OriginThe Mongol steppe, from an Old Uyghur alphabet that reached it through Sogdian from Aramaic. 1Tradition: The Mongolian script Origin of the NameNamed for the dental nasal it writes, n, following the script's phonetic naming convention rather than an inherited word. 1 Sense of the Namethe sound n 1Tradition: The Mongolian script Practice
Liturgical and Scriptural RoleFrom the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the script carried a large Buddhist literature in Mongolian, including the translation of the Kangyur, and it carries religious writing still. 3Tradition: Mongolian Buddhism Learn More
Mongolian Na: The Dental Nasal and Its Missing Dot
Na writes the dental nasal, the sound spelled n in English, and it is the first consonant of the alphabet. Its written form is the same plain tooth that serves for the open vowels, and the alphabet's device for telling them apart is a single dot placed to the left of the tooth when the letter stands before a vowel. In ordinary writing that dot is frequently omitted, which means the most common consonant in the language is regularly written with a shape that could equally be a vowel. As with the rounded vowels, the reader resolves it from the word. The dot is not decorative and is not optional in principle; careful manuscript hands and printed editions use it, and it appears in the modern digital encoding as part of the letter rather than as a separate mark. It simply belongs to a class of distinctions that fluent writing lets slide.
Unicode encodes na at U+1828, at the head of the consonants and immediately after the vowels. Anyone learning to read the script encounters this letter early and encounters with it the general lesson that a Mongolian tooth on the spine is a question rather than an answer, to be settled by counting the strokes, by the position in the word, and by recognising the word itself.
Mongolian Na and What Dots Do in This Script
Dots in the traditional Mongolian script are a repair rather than a foundation. The inherited alphabet did not have enough distinct shapes for the sounds Mongolian distinguishes, and rather than invent new letterforms the tradition added marks to existing ones. The dental nasal is separated from a vowel by one dot; the voiced velar is separated from the back class velar by dots; other pairs are separated the same way. The device is familiar from elsewhere in the same family of scripts, since Arabic and Syriac both use points to multiply a small stock of shapes into a larger alphabet, and Mongolian inherited the habit along with the letters.
What is peculiar to Mongolian is how readily the dots are dropped. In Arabic the points are obligatory in ordinary text and their omission is an archaism; in Mongolian the omission is normal in handwriting and common in print, and the script is designed to survive it. That tells you where the tradition places the burden of reading. The written form is a strong hint rather than a complete specification, and the reader is expected to bring the language with them. It is also why transcribing a Mongolian manuscript is a task requiring knowledge of Mongolian rather than only knowledge of the alphabet.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Related To
Both are written as a plain tooth on the spine. The dental nasal is separated from the vowel by a dot placed before a vowel, and ordinary writing frequently omits it, so the most common consonant in the language shares its shape with the first vowel of the alphabet.
The alphabet's two nasals outside the labial one. The dental nasal stands anywhere in a word; the velar nasal never begins one, so a chart printing an initial form for it is filling out a table rather than recording a shape anyone writes.
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