Mongolian Chi ᡂ

Chi is the thirty-fifth and last letter of the traditional Mongolian alphabet. Like the letter before it, it stands for a syllable met in words taken from Chinese rather than for a single sound, and it exists because the alphabet could not spell that syllable out of its own letters. Unicode encodes it at U+1842, the last of the alphabet's letters in the Mongolian block, which runs from U+1800 to U+18AF and holds a good deal besides. The alphabet ends where it does for a reason that is visible in the order. It opens with the seven vowels of the native system, continues through the native consonants to the labial glide at the twenty-fifth position, and then adds ten letters for foreign sounds, moving from single consonants through a cluster to two whole syllables.

The last letter is therefore the furthest point of a long adaptation, and reciting the alphabet from the first letter to this one is reciting its history in order. What lies beyond it in the same Unicode block is not more of this alphabet: it is the Ali Gali apparatus for Sanskrit and Tibetan, and the letters of Todo, Sibe and Manchu, which are separate writing systems built on the same inherited shapes and no part of the thirty-five counted here.

Counted properly, the traditional Mongolian alphabet is thirty-five letters, and the count only means something once it is said what has been counted. Twenty-five are the inherited core, taken from Old Uyghur when the script was adopted around the founding of the Mongol state, and sufficient to write the Mongolian language: seven vowels sorted by harmony, and the consonants of the native system, with the ambiguities the language itself resolves. Ten were added afterwards for sounds met in Chinese, Tibetan and Sanskrit vocabulary, moving from single consonants to a cluster and finally to two syllables.

Beyond those thirty-five lies the Ali Gali apparatus, encoded separately, for writing Sanskrit and Tibetan in full. And beyond that, in the same Unicode block and built on the same shapes, are Todo, Sibe and Manchu, which are separate writing systems and no part of this alphabet however similar their letters look. Any figure quoted without those boundaries is unreliable, and figures for this script are quoted carelessly rather often. The alphabet proper is a finished object with a clear internal history: an inheritance, an extension, and a boundary where other systems begin. That the last letter of it stands for a Chinese syllable rather than for a Mongolian sound is a fitting place to stop, since it says as plainly as anything could that this alphabet has spent eight centuries writing more than one language.