Mongolian Alphabet

The Old Mongolian alphabet appeared in the XIII century. It descended from the Old Uighur alphabet, which is the ancestor of the Syrian one. The oldest monument dates back to 1224-1225. The writing goes vertically from top to bottom, and the columns are placed from left to right. Many letters have several variants of spelling, depending on the location in the word (at the end, beginning or middle).

In 1941 Mongolia adopted an alphabet based on  Cyrillic  0410–0474 to better match the pronunciation, thus practically replacing Old Mongolian. However, the latter is still used and it has been official since the 90s of the XX century.