Thread by @Mslinguistic

1. So, how about that time Genghis Khan kidnapped a Uyghur academic in order to create the Mongolian alphabet? 🧵

2. The Mongolian languages are thousands of years old, but it wasn't until the 1200's that Genghis Khan decided they needed their own writing system. Chinese characters and runic scripts weren't working out.

3. So in the year 1204, the army of Mongol leader Genghis Khan kidnapped prominent Uyghur scholar Tata Tonga from his comfortable home in modern-day Turpan.

(Unclear why he couldn't just hire him to consult instead of KIDNAPPING him, but ok)

4. Genghis Khan had long admired the efficient script used by the Uyghurs to document their language.

Btw, this is not the same script that Uyghur uses today, Uyghur currently uses the Arabic script (a story for another day).

The old Uyghur script looked like this.

5. Why kidnap a Uyghur? At the time of Tata Tonga's kidnapping, the language was one of the most prominent languages of knowledge in the region.

Thanks to both cultural diversity and geographical fortune, the Xinjiang region had long served as a hub for religion and trade.

6. So, who better to design the alphabet than a Uyghur scholar?

Under some duress, Tata Tonga successfully helped design a script that would best suit the sounds and system of the Mongolian language.

This is what that alphabet looks like now. Gorgeous, right?

7. After all that, the country of Mongolia eventually switched to the Cyrillic (Russian) alphabet.

But the original script is still used in Inner Mongolia today (modern-day China).

Here are some pics from Hohhot - note the Mongolian "KFC" just above the Chinese!

8. Plot twist: The country of Mongolia now has plans to switch BACK to their original script in the year 2025. They wouldn't be the first language to switch alphabets: Turkish changed from Arabic to Latin script, Kazakh changed from Arabic to Latin to Cyrillic.

9. Still, it will be an enormous undertaking! They will probably need to enlist the help of ethnic Mongolians living in China, since very few "Outer" Mongolians know the script well enough to teach it.

10. Worth it though, in my opinion! Mongolian is one of the most beautiful alphabets out there, change my mind.