The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology
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20 The Linguist Vol/57 No/2 2018 www.ciol.org.uk FEATURES ('message'), fail ('file'); boiler and teller. The trend, particularly among urban youth, is firmly towards more direct borrowing and it is increasingly common to see more than one Cyrillic spelling of the same loan-word. Efforts have been made by the National Council for Language Policy, affiliated to the Presidential Office, to standardise the spellings of such words or to substitute with local vocabulary, but with only partial success. Since 2017, 1 September has been designated as the Day of the Mother-Tongue, intended to promote and preserve authentic Mongol language as a key element in the national cultural identity. Learning challenges At the basic grammatical level, as an agglutinative language, Mongolian is remarkably student-friendly. Learning a noun or a verb gives instant access to numerous other useful words, formed by adding different standard suffixes. For instance, the basic stem uz- of the verb uzeh (үзэх; 'to see') can be joined to various suffixes to form many new words, such as үзвэр ('a display'); үзэшгүй ('disgusting'); үзүүлэх ('to show') and үзэмжтэй ('good-looking'). Students who grasp this can expand their vocabulary very quickly. Beyond the foundations of the language, in practice, Mongolian now takes significantly different forms according to cultural context. For instance, the traditional language of rural life is rich in highly specific herding and natural history vocabulary, which is increasingly unknown to the growing urban population. The language of politics is still formal and bureaucratic. The vocabulary of finance and commerce is heavily indebted to direct and indirect loan-words. Electronic media has brought another wave of borrowed or newly constructed vocabulary. Media language is particularly rich in loan-words relating to fashion and celebrity culture, with English as the main source. Therefore a foreigner learning Mongolian for use in the financial sector needs a very different linguistic grounding from one who will be interacting with herding communities in rural areas. Someone studying Mongolian politics or traditional historical records will similarly be working in a different linguistic environment. Thus successful delivery of Mongolian language training, especially when time and resources are limited, depends on a clear understanding of the student's aims, objective and requirements. In addition to competent pedagogic skills and native-level fluency, the teacher needs to have confident knowledge of the cultural aspects of the language requirement. In general, Mongolian language textbooks are increasingly well- presented and practical, but are unlikely to be sufficient in themselves. Particularly in the context of one-to-one training, tailormade programmes require subject-specific reading and listening materials. Once in the field, students will encounter not only different cultural contexts but also varied individual accents and deliveries. If they have tuned in to a single teacher's voice they may feel under-prepared for this. Early exposure to recordings of, and encounters with, different native speakers is advisable. Prepared in this way, students of Mongolian will be able to unlock the cultural treasures of Mongolia's unique linguistic heritage. HISTORIC INSIGHTS Map showing the boundary of the 13th-century Mongol Empire compared to Mongolia today (main image). The red areas show where the majority of Mongolian speakers live; and (above) Mongolian script and Mongolian Cyrillic appear on a statue of Damdin Sükhbaatar, leader of the 1921 revolution, in the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar MONGOLS MAP VIA WIKIPEDIA (CC BY-SA 3.0)