Linguistic study of Mongolian traditional classical translation.

Mostly consists of works composed in Tibetan, with translations into Mongolian, on the Soyombo script.

Mongolian philosophical underpinnings of well‐being were expressed in the form of mythology, shamanism and Mongolian Buddhism before the development of modern nursing in Mongolia. Among these forms, the philosophical underpinnings of well‐being, mythology and shamanism were formed as a result of the roots of Mongolian philosophy, whereas Buddhism spread relatively late. As a result of Mongolian mythology, an alternative approach calleddom zasalwas formed, and it remains one of the important foundations of the idea of well‐being among (...) people. Among the various concepts of shamanism, the concept ofsunesubest expresses the underpinning of well‐being, and the idea that healing and nursing care can be provided not only by those living in this world but also by spirit beings. Since Mongolians still use these ideas even in modern times, it should be noted that following them too narrowly may conflict with concepts based on scientific evidence. Along with the development of Buddhist philosophy in Mongolia, the Oriental philosophical underpinnings of well‐being have spread. One of the most important concepts is the five basic elements of life (tavan mahabhutas) and three elements of the body (khii, shar andbadgan). While developing the concepts of life and the body, thearga‐bilegmodel (yin‐yang in Chinese), developed at the theoretical level in Chinese philosophy, has become a popular basis for culture and customs among Mongolians. Therefore, it has been difficult to judge whether the origin of thearga‐bilegmodel is Mongolian or Chinese; however, this is undeniably an important underpinning for well‐being in both countries. (shrink)

The alphabet effect that showed that codified law, alphabetic writing, monotheism, abstract science and deductive logic are interlinked, first proposed by McLuhan and Logan, is revisited. Marshall and Eric McLuhan’s insight that alphabetic writing led to the separation of figure and ground and their interplay, as well as the emergence of visual space, are reviewed and shown to be two additional effects of the alphabet. We then identify more additional new components of the alphabet effect by demonstrating (...) that alphabetic writing also gave rise to Duality, and reductionism or the linear sequential relationship of causes followed by effects. We then review McLuhan’s claim that electrically configured information reversed the dominance of visual space over acoustic space and led to the reversals of cause and effect, and figure and ground. We then demonstrate that General System Theory first formulated by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, which also includes chaos theory, complexity theory and emergence and Jakob von Uexküll’s notion of umwelt also entail the reversal of many aspects of the alphabet effect such as the reversals of cause and effect, and figure and ground. (shrink)

“Morality” is a Western term that brings to mind all sorts of associations. In contemporary Western moral psychology it is a commonplace to assume that people (presumably across all cultures and languages) will typically associate the term “moral” with actions that involve considerations of harm and/or fairness. But is it cross-culturally a valid claim? The current work provides some preliminary evidence from Mongolia to address this question. The word combination of yos surtakhuun is a Mongolian translation of the Western (...) term “moral”. However, freelisting data indicates that Mongolians do not typically associate the term yos surtakhuun with actions that involve considerations of harm and/or fairness. Instead, the most cognitively salient category is respect (khündlekh). The lack of convergence between moral and yos surtakhuun suggests that the term “moral” does not refer to universal “moral” cognition that specifically deals with harm and/or fairness. On the contrary, I would argue that the term “moral” brings to mind exclusively WEIRD associations, and yos surtakhuun brings to mind specifically Mongolian associations. Thus, pointing to different historically shaped cultural models of “moral” behavior. (shrink)

Mongolian historians divide the spread out Buddhism in Mongolia three periods: The first period of Hun empire, the second period of the Mongol empire and third period from XVI century onwards. From the XVI century Mongols translated the numerous Buddhist moral doctrines: “Subashid”, “Eulogies of Paramita”, “The Stages of the path to enlightenment”, “Shastra of wood”, “Sahstra of water”, “Songs of the world of vessel and contents”, “Lamp for the path to enlightenment”, “A drop of Nourishment for People” of (...) Nagarjuna, etc. Therefore, ethical doctrine occupies an important place in Mongolian Buddhism. Mongol scholars made their own commentaries and took as an example the works of Indian and Tibetan great scholars who created their own ethical doctrines. An influence on Buddhist rituals and theology via Buddhist ethical doctrines was spread among the nobles and the ordinary people. The late Academician Ch. Jugder saw the period from the 16th to 18th centuries as important period for Buddhism in Mongolia. It permeated in nomadic way of life and national customs. Especially, Madhyamaka prasangika philosophy was developed, while Mongolian Buddhist philosophical works started from the first Mongolian Bogdo Lama Undur Gegeen Zanabazar’s works. Mongol thinkers contributed greatly in the development of Buddhist ethics. (shrink)

BackgroundThe relatively young and inexperienced healthcare professionals in Mongolia faced with an unprecedent service demand in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the small size of the healthcare workforce the Mongolian Health Ministry had no choice but to mandate continuous and long workhours from the healthcare workforce. Many of the healthcare professionals exhibited signs and symptoms of mental health disorders. This study aimed to discern the prevalence various mental health concerns, i.e., depression, anxiety and stress, insomnia, and to (...) discern the factors that increased susceptibility to mental health disorders among frontline healthcare professionals providing healthcare services for COVID-19 patients in Mongolia.MethodsA Cross-sectional research design was implemented. We collected data from 965 healthcare professional, randomly selected from 18 government hospitals, in four regions of Mongolia. Data were collected using the Depression Anxiety Stress-21, the General Self-Efficacy Scale, and the Insomnia Severity Index instruments. We constructed the scale of Pandemic Response Symptoms which captured stress, depression, and anxiety. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Kruskal–Wallis statistical test and multinominal logistic regression analysis.ResultsPrevalence of depression, anxiety, and stress was documented among Mongolian healthcare professionals. Perception of self-efficacy reduced susceptibility to PaReSy either at mild/moderate or severe/extremely severe level. Within each stratum of insomnia, the risk of experiencing PaReSy increased almost linearly both in the category of mild/moderate PaReSy and in the category of severe/extremely severe PaReSy.ConclusionImproving self-efficacy and sleeping quality can assist healthcare workers to manage depression, anxiety, and stress. Findings provide important evidence to implement measures and strategies to assist healthcare professionals in low- and middle-income countries to constructively address their mental health concerns and needs. (shrink)

The Mongolian Tanjur Version of the Bodhicaryavatara. Edited and Transcribed, with a Word-Index and a Photo-Reproduction of the Original Text. Igor de Rachewiltz. Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1996. xx, 231 and 52 pp. Cloth, DM 198.00/ÖS 1544.00/SFR 198.00. ISBN 3-447-03594-3.

As children in elementary school we were taught to recite the alphabet in order: “Aay, Bee, See, Dee, Eii, Eff, Ghee, Aaych, …, Why and Zee”. There is nothing natural about this particular ordering: it is strictly a matter of convention. (When and where it was settled upon I haven’t the remotest notion.) Then, having mastered the ordering, we were taught to apply that knowledge to alphabetize lists of words. The procedure is surprisingly complex, and its mastery by mere (...) eight-year olds attests to the elevated intellectual capacities of human beings. One merely has to try to write down the procedure in a flow chart to see how complex it truly is. In any event, most of us probably emerged from the exercise of learning to use a dictionary believing that we knew all there is to know about alphabetizing. If only that were all there is to it. The trouble is that our third-grade teachers had not reckoned on our having to program computers to alphabetize.. (shrink)

In the middle of the eighteenth century, Carl von Linné, Johann Christoph Gatterer, and Christian Wilhelm Büttner attempted to realize the old idea of deciphering the alphabet of the world, which Francis Bacon had raised as a general postulate of science. This article describes these attempts and their interrelations. Linné used the model of the alphabet to classify plants according to the characters of this fruiting body. Gatterer, one of the leading German historians during the Enlightenment, adopted the (...) botanical method of classification by genus and species to classify the history of scripts. He used the forms of the alphabetic characters to measure the age of manuscripts and to map the process of history as a genealogy of culture. Gatterer collaborated closely with Büttner, the first Göttingen professor of natural history. Büttner constructed a general alphabet of languages which connected the phonetics of language with the historically known alphabets. Early on, diplomatics and ethnography combined the natural order of natural history and the cultural order of the alphabet with the attempt to register development and to document development by the evolution of forms. Based on the shared model of the alphabet and on the common necessity to classify their empirical material, natural history and the description of culture were related attempts in the middle of the eighteenth century to comprehend the alphabetically organized nature and a naturally ordered culture. (shrink)

All students of Greek epigraphy are familiar with the abecedarium discovered in 1805, ‘prope Bastam ruri quodam dicto Melliche,’ by Luigi Cepolla, amongst whose papers Mommsen found and published it in his Unteritalische Dialekte . Cepolla's copy, though inaccurate, is not so bad, as I hope to show, as has usually been supposed. To be sure, he proposed to interpret an alphabet as a complete inscription, and actually ‘translated’ it! Nor, I think, could it be properly deciphered until more (...) Messapic inscriptions than were known to Mommsen had been collected and their alphabet more closely studied. It has, however, long been recognized that the Vaste alphabet should be rightly regarded as essentially a Messapic alphabet, although, as is well known, the alphabet of the Messapic inscriptions agrees in the main with the Tarentine-Ionic variety of the Western Greek alphabet; but the proposed explanations of Cepolla's transcript of the Vaste alphabet have been most diverse, not to say perverse—certainly they have been largely arbitrary. They may be sought in the places cited in the footnote below. (shrink)

Lettered selves and beyond -- The alphabetic body -- Gesture and non-alphabetic writing -- Technologized mathematics -- Parallel selves -- Ghost effects.

In today’s world, there are more than 5000 languages and dialects in use, of which only 100 may be considered of major importance. As Dreyfuss (1972) states, inter-communication amongst them has proved not just difficult but impossible. Because a universal language would be the solution to this problem, over 800 attempts have in fact been made in the last 1000 years to develop an official second language that in time could be adopted by all major countries. Some of the most (...) recognized examples are Esperanto, Interlingua, Ido and Volapuk. However, all of them combine elements of existing languages and rely on the Roman alphabet, which reduces their applicability to certain regions of the world. The aim of this project is to explore the world of pictographic communication and develop an effective system for conveying information/knowledge on a universal scale. This would potentially bridge linguistic and cultural gaps, transcending boundaries, and thereby creating a broader vision of multiculturalism. In this sense, we find useful the notion of ‘semantography’, from the Greek word semanticos, significant meaning, and graphin, to write. The term was coined by Charles K. Bliss in 1947 to define his development of a non-alphabetical symbol writing system, based on the principles of ideographic writing and chemical symbolism. Semantography was the name of Charles K. Bliss’ proposed book for the Blissymbolic communication system. (shrink)

This chapter considers the possible origins of the associations reported by synaesthetes, especially coloured graphemes. There are two well-documented cases where the origins of coloured letters or numbers are known; one from coloured fridge magnets, one from a jigsaw puzzle. While some synaesthetes report beliefs about the origin of their colours, most would say they have been the same as long as they can remember. Statistical analysis of large groups of synaesthetes indicates more consistency of colours than would be expected (...) by chance: 'A' is often red, 'D' is often brown, while 'I' and 'O' are typically white or black. A systematic study could find no evidence for a common origin, such as alphabet teaching books, for these colours. However, when required to suggest a colour for 'A', non-synaesthetes also tend to choose red. Overall, common synaesthetic colours and those chosen by non-synaesthetes agree more than would be expected by chance. This agreement might be mediated by a relationship between the frequency of occurrence of letters and the frequency of colour names; there is also a relationship between numbers and luminance, such that lower numbers tend to be brighter than later ones. Studies of pre-lingual toddlers have shown they tend to associate angular shapes, such as 'X' and 'Z', with black, and non-angular ones, such as 'I' and 'O', with white. There is also evidence that letters that are learned early are associated with simpler colour concepts. (shrink)

Mongolian is one of the languages, which Turkish has been in intensive mutual contact throughout the historical course. The interactive relation between Turkish and Mongolian has continued todate despite it has occasionally decreased and increased due to the migrations and cultural changes experienced by the speakers of these languages. Some areas in present-day People’s Republic of China are regions, where this interaction still remains intact. Turkish and Mongolian have lost ground or even are facing extinction in some (...) of these regions, which historically had been the living space of Turkish and Mongolian-speaking populations. However, Mongolian is still represented with at least ten varieties within the borders of People’s Republic of China. Some of these varieties are at the edge of extinction whereas others like Southern Mongol are enduring the pressure of the Chinese language as well as posing a threat to other Mongolian varieties together with Chinese and Tibetan. The Chinese language endangers the existence of Mongolian varieties like all other minority languages as a result of being the official language of the People’s Republic of China and the language of the vast majority. On the other hand Tibetan pressurizes Mongolian varieties mainly with religious reasons besides demographic ones. In spite of the pressure felt from Chinese, Tibetan and Southern Mongol, some minor Mongolian varieties are pressurizing some Turkic and Tungusic varieties. (shrink)

Of the hundreds of Greek common nouns and adjectives preserved in our MSS of Cicero, about three dozen are found written in the Latin alphabet as well as in the Greek. So we find, alongside συμπάθεια, alsosympathia, and ἱστορικός as well ashistoricus.This sort of variation has been termed alphabet-switching; it has received little attention in connection with Cicero, even though it is relevant to subjects of current interest such as his bilingualism and the role of code-switching and loanwords (...) in his works. Rather than addressing these issues directly, this discussion sets out information about the way in which the words are written in our surviving MSS of Cicero and takes further some recent work on the presentation of Greek words in Latin texts. It argues that, for the most part, coherent patterns and explanations can be found in the alphabetic choices exhibited by them, or at least by the earliest of them when there is conflict in the paradosis, and that this coherence is evidence for a generally reliable transmission of Cicero's original choices. While a lack of coherence might indicate unreliable transmission, or even an indifference on Cicero's part, a consistent pattern can only really be explained as an accurate record of coherent alphabet choice made by Cicero when writing Greek words. (shrink)

Un seul coup de crayon sur une feuille de papier, et tout l'espace s'ébranle : c'est la force du premier trait sur la toile vierge, c'est l'alif à l'origine de l'alphabet, c'est l'écriture se déployant dans les méandres de l'encre. Projection en même temps qu'inscription de la lumière sur une surface, de préférence plane et claire, l'ombre est la trace du vivant sur terre. A peine l'a-t-on cernée d'un contour que l'absent qui s'y est réfugié reprend forme, retrouve son (...) identité, et que la mémoire se met à agir. Dessins, estampes, photographies sont des moyens de retenir - chacun à leur manière, et chacun à leur rythme - ces brèves manifestations de l'existant. Florian Rodari s'interroge dans ces pages sur la volontaire et contraignante limitation au couple noir/blanc, dualité splendide de l'encre et du papier en vue d'obtenir - hors tout recours à la couleur - des images capables de satisfaire pleinement le regard. Sont réunis dans cet ouvrage un certain nombre de ses essais consacrés à des artistes aussi divers que Rembrandt, Victor Hugo, Henri Michaux, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Balthasar Burkhard ou Georg Baselitz. (shrink)

Water is the chemical matrix required for life, the molecular chain that connects all organisms on the planet. But in the twenty-first century, water may replace oil as the most prized of resources. Just as gas-guzzling SUVs use more than their share of fuel, water-guzzling regions threaten the water supply for the rest of the world. In Water, writers, scientists, architects, and artists consider the many aspects of water, at levels from the microscopic to the global, touching on subjects that (...) range from new water infrastructures to ancient bathing rituals. Water includes a chemist's accounting of the true cost of water; photographs taken inside a city's secret waterways; an urban planner's description of how Toronto, New York, Hamburg, and Seoul have redesigned and rethought their waterfront areas; a conceptual artist's series of water bottles "branded" with various modern credos; photographs of a water-damaged ledger from the 1905 Yukon gold rush; two architects' rethinking of how to collect, divert, and transport water from water-rich to water-poor regions; a philosopher's invocation of the spiritual lessons of water; and photographs of a disturbingly beautiful flooded landscape. (shrink)

There are two contending models regarding the processing of negation: the fusion model and the schema-plus-tag model. Most previous studies have centered on negation in languages such as English and Mandarin, where negators are positioned before predicates. Mongolian, quite uniquely, is a language whose negators are post-verbal, making them natural replicas of the schema-plus-tag model. The present study aims to investigate the representation process of Mongolian contradictory negative sentences to shed light on the debate between the models, meanwhile (...) verifying the post-verbal effect of negators. A series of experiments using the sentence–picture verification paradigm supports the fusion model: Mongolian contradictory negative sentences were processed by representing the actual conditions rather than the negated state of affairs at 250 ISI, and despite the fact that a post-verbal effect of negators was measured at 250 ISI when Mongolian and Mandarin negative sentences were compared, Mongolian–Mandarin bilinguals adopted the same representational strategy for contradictory negation in both languages. (shrink)