ᠳᠡᠯᠡᠬᠡᠢ ᠶᠢᠨ ᠡᠯ᠎ᠡ ᠭᠠᠵᠠᠷ ᠤᠨ ᠬᠠᠭᠤᠴᠢᠨ ᠮᠣᠩᠭᠤᠯ ᠬᠡᠯᠡ ᠬᠢᠭᠡᠳ ᠤᠢᠭᠤᠷᠵᠢᠨ ᠮᠣᠩᠭᠤᠯ ᠬᠡᠯᠡ ᠵᠢᠭᠠᠨ ᠰᠤᠳᠤᠯᠭᠠᠨ ᠠᠴᠠ ᠥᠭᠦᠯᠡᠬᠦ ᠨᠢ .pdf

NOV. 2020, ISSUE 1 g27g33g30g2Eg3g35g29g26g3g29g2Ag34g35g30g33g3Ag3g30g27g3g35g26g22g24g29g2Ag2Fg28g3g22g2Fg25g33g26g34g26g22g33g24g29g2Ag2Fg28g3g35g29g26g3g38g33g2Ag35g35g26g2F g9g16Bg24g2Dg22g34g34g2Ag24g22g2Dg16CgAg3g2Eg30g2Fg28g30g2Dg2Ag22g2Fg3g2Dg22g2Fg28g36g22g28g26g3g22g2Fg25g36g2Ag28g29g36g33gEg2Eg30g2Fg28g30g2Dg2Ag22g2Fg3g34g24g33g2Ag31g35g3g22g2Dg2Dg3g22g33g30g36g2Fg25 g35g29g26g3g38g30g33g2Dg25 Birtalan Ágnes (Eötvös Loránd University, Department of Mongolian and Inner Asian Studies Budapest, Hungary) Effugere non potes necessitates, potes vincere. (Seneca) “You cannot escape necessities, but you can overcome them.” NOV. 2020, ISSUE 1 Lectori salutem! Dear Colleagues! With this brief essay, I plan to start a series aiming to introduce the long history of teaching and researching the Mongolian language and Uighur-Mongolian script in different countries all around the world to put it on the website of IAMS. Even though Hungary was not the first country to announce lectures on written Mongolian in university education, but in the second half of the 19th century it belonged to the pioneers who recognised the significance of studying Mongolian. In Hungary – as I have written several times in my books and articled dedicated to the research results of Gábor Bálint of Szentkatolna (1844−1913) – “classical” philological research and fieldwork among various Mongolian groups proceeded side by side. This time I wish to acquaint the distinguished audience with the first teaching “aid” of Written Mongolian (1889) compiled by József Budenz (1836−1892), an internationally recognised linguist, professor of the predecessor of today’s Eötvös Loránd University (that time University of Budapest). He was the first professor of the Department of Altaic Studies established in 1872, the forerunner of the current Department of Finno- Ugrian Studies. NOV. 2020, ISSUE 1 The booklet for teaching the Written Mongolian language is entitled in Hungarian Rövid mongol nyelvtan “Brief Mongolian Grammar”. In the foreword Budenz mentioned Bálint’s Buryat grammar (1877) and emphasised that learning classical Mongolian was as important as studying the vernacular Mongolian languages. The primary sources for his booklet were O. E. Kovalevskij’s (1835) and I. J. Schmidt’s (1831) grammars, and Budenz used Kovalevskij/Kowalewski’s dictionary (1844−1849) and B. Jülg’s tale collection (1868) as well. Budenz followed the conventional descriptive structure and method in creating the sketch of the grammar of Written Mongolian. For the beginners, he used the academic transcription of the Uighur-Mongolian letters. The grammatical explanations in Hungarian and the reading specimens were the first steps to acquire the basic knowledge of Written Mongolian. However, obtaining some skills in reading the texts in Budenz’s transcription was only the beginning. The second step was to read the original editions written in Uighur- Mongolian script: the three readings are the “Starving tigress parable” (Schmidt 1831 p. 129.), “The story of Qasar and Belgüdei” from the Erdeni- yin tobči (Schmidt 1829 p. 72) and the “King with donkey ears” from Jülg’s Siddhi-kür collection (Jülg 1868 pp. 40−45). Although the short grammar was published as an article in the foremost journal of linguistical research, Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 21/4. (1889) “Linguistic Communications”, it aimed to become a teaching aid for learning the basics of Written Mongolian. The Mongolian – Hungarian wordlist attached to the end of the grammatical sketch and the sample texts attest the author’s goal. This valuable booklet was the first attempt to offer a learning aid for the students of Altaic and Uralic linguistics (at Budenz’s department) and further also for those researchers who wanted to have an insight into the structure of the “classical” i. e. Written Mongolian language. To close, let me make a personal remark: when I was on the first course of Mongolian philology (Eötvös Loránd University, Department of Inner Asian Studies), Professor György Kara began teaching us using Budenz’s booklet and very soon, almost parallel with it – we attempted to read the original Uighur-Mongolian versions, too. NOV. 2020, ISSUE 1 1. Cover page of Budenz’s Grammar in the edition of Lajos Ligeti (1977). 2. Example from Budenz’s Grammar: cases of nominal declension: Ablativus, Instructivus (i. e. Instrumental), Comitativus and Nominativus (Budenz Grammar p. 283). 3. Transcription of the “Starving tigress parable” in Budenz’s Grammar (based on Schmidt’s Grammar; Budenz Grammar p. 305). 4. The beginning of the “Starving tigress parable” in Uighur-Mongolian script (Schmidt’s Grammar. NB! The page numbering is incorrect, rightly p. 129). NOV. 2020, ISSUE 1 5. First page of the “King with donkey ears” in Uighur-Mongolian script (Jülg’s Mongolische Märchen p. 40.), the source the sample text in Budenz’s Grammar. NOV. 2020, ISSUE 1 Bálint, Gábor 1877. Az éjszaki [sic!] burját-mongol nyelvjárás rövid ismertetése. In: Nyelvtudományi Közlemények XIII. 169–248. [A brief description of the northern Buryat-Mongol dialect. In: Linguistic Communications]. Budenz, József 1889 (1977). Rövid mongol nyelvtan. In: Nyelvtudományi Közlemények XXI/4. 274−320. Re-edited by Lajos Ligeti in 1977. [Brief Mongolian grammar. In: Linguistic Communications]. Jülg, Bernhard 1868. Mongolische Märchen-Sammlung. Die neun Märchen des Siddhi-Kur nach der ausführlichen Redaction und die Geschichte des Ardschi-Bordschi Chan. Mongolisch mit deutscher Uebersetzung und kritischen Anmerkungen. Innsbruck, Wagner. Ковалевкий, О. Е. 1835. Краткая грамматика монгольского книжного языка. Казань, Университетская типография. Kowalewski, Joseph É. 1844−1849. Dictionnaire mongol-russe-français. I−III. Kazan, Impr. de l’Université; Reprint: Taipei, SMC Publishing Inc. 1993. Schmidt, Isaac Jacob 1831. Grammatik der mongolischen Sprache. St.- Petersburg, Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften. Schmidt, Isaac Jacob 1829. Geschichte der Ost-Mongolen und ihres Fürstenhauses, verfasst von Ssanang Ssetsen Chungtaidschi der Ordus; aus dem Mongolischen übersetzt und mit dem Originaltexte, nebst Anmerkungen, Erläuterungen und Citaten aus andern unedirten Originalwerken. St. Petersburg − Leipzig, Carl Cnobloch. References