# Influence of Mongolian



## Roel~

Mongolia was once the biggest empire of the world. I tried to find sites with the influence of Mongolian on other languages, mostly European ones, but it's very hard to find. They have been in Poland and Hungary and I wonder if there are Hungarian or Polish words which resemble Mongolian. I could just find a list with Russian words being influenced by Mongolian:



*Language *
 While the linguistic effects may seem at  first trivial, such impacts on language help us to determine and  understand to what extent one empire had on another people or group of  people – in terms of administration, military, trade – as well as to  what geographical extentthe impact included. Indeed, the  linguistic and even socio-linguistic impacts were great, as the Russians  borrowed thousands of words, phrases, other significant linguistic  features from the Mongol and the Turkic languages that were united under  the Mongol Empire (Dmytryshyn, 123). Listed below are a few examples of  some that are still in use. All came from various parts of the Horde.  

 амбар                          _ambar_                                  barn

 базар                          _bazar_                                     bazaar

 деньги                        _den’gi                                     _money

 лошадь                       _loshad‘_                                    horse

 сундук                        _sunduk_                                   truck, chest

 таможня                      _tamozhnya                              _customs
 One highly important colloquial feature  of the Russian language of Turkic origin is the use of the word давай  which expresses the idea of ‘Let’s…’ or ‘Come on, let’s...’ (Figes,  370-1). Listed below are a few common examples still found commonly in  Russian. 

 Давай чай попьем.              _Davai chai popem.             _‘Let’s drink some tea.’

 Давай выпьем!                    _Davai vypem!                   _‘Come on, let’s get drunk!’

 Давай пойдём!                    _Davai poidyom!                 _‘Come on, let’s go!’
 In addition, there are dozens of place  names of Tatar/Turkic origin in southern Russia and the lands of the  Volga River that stand out on maps of these areas. City names such as  Penza, Alatyr, and Kazan’ and names of regions such as Chuvashia and  Bashkortostan are examples.  

Source: http://www.sras.org/the_effects_of_the_mongol_empire_on_russia


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## LilianaB

Hi, Roel. Mongolian is not a Turkic language. Did you mean Mongolian, or Tatar which is a Turkic language?


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## Roel~

LilianaB said:


> Hi, Roel. Mongolian is not a Turkic language. Did you mean Mongolian, or Tatar which is a Turkic language?



The part from 'language' is cited from the website 'sras', if it says that Mongolian is a Turkic language than the website seems to be wrong. I 'm actually talking about Mongolian which is an Altaic language, but as Mongolian and the Turkic languages are family and certain words are similar I can see why this website talks about Turkic words too.


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## LilianaB

They are definitely wrong. I don't really know how close Mongolian and Tatar are, but Mongolian is definitely a Mongolic language, and it does not even sound anything like Tatar. Maybe someone else knows better how different these two languages are, but I think the difference might be significant. Korean and Japanese are also Altaic languages.


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## Roel~

LilianaB said:


> They are definitely wrong. I don't really know how close Mongolian and Tatar are, but Mongolian is definitely a Mongolic language, and it does not even sound anything like Tatar. Maybe someone else knows better how different these two languages are, but I think the difference might be significant. Korean and Japanese are also Altaic languages.



Some linguists say that Korean and Japanese are Altaic languages, but I believe that it isn't a broadly accepted theory.

I don't know anything about Tatar and other Turkic languages and in how far they are familiar so I can't say anything about in how far they are right.


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## Roy776

LilianaB said:


> They are definitely wrong. I don't really know how close Mongolian and Tatar are, but Mongolian is definitely a Mongolic language, and it does not even sound anything like Tatar. Maybe someone else knows better how different these two languages are, but I think the difference might be significant. Korean and Japanese are also Altaic languages.



Korean and Japanese are *NOT* proven to be Altaic languages. Japanese is a language isolate and so is Korean.


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## marrish

I believe the word you have used, Roel~, Horde, which has made its way upto English is an example for itself. The name of my language, Urdu, is also derived from this word, however it (the name, not the language) mostly spoken of as a Turkic loan.


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## LilianaB

Roy776 said:


> Korean and Japanese are *NOT* proven to be Altaic languages. Japanese is a language isolate and so is Korean.


 I know they are traditionally considered languages isolate, but my feeling is that they will be soon classified as Altaic -- some sources already classify them as Altaic. Anyhow Mongolian is not a Turkic language, so it might be better to specify whether we are looking for Mongolian or Turkic influences in Slavic languages.


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## marrish

LilianaB said:


> I know they are traditionally considered languages isolate, but my feeling is that they will be soon classified as Altaic -- some sources already classify them as Altaic. Anyhow Mongolian is not a Turkic language, so it might be better to specify whether we are looking for Mongolian or Turkic influences in Slavic languages.


It is very interesting what you say, Liliana. I believe I have also come across theories of big langauge groups. Is it possible that you provide any Internet links to any sources that might be available so that we all here can get more information?


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## Roel~

Although the discussion about the language group of Mongolian is very interesting I actually made this topic to know if any words in languages where the Mongolians have been in medieval times, in the 13th and 14th sanctuary, are possibly influenced by the Mongolian language.

Maybe it's better to explain the language qualification of Mongolian and other supposed Altaic languages in another topic?


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## LilianaB

Did they speak Mongolian at the time they invaded Europe in the 13th, or Bolgar, another Turkic language form which Khazan Tatar originates, or yet another Turkic language?


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## Roel~

LilianaB said:


> Did they speak Mongolian at the time they invaded Europe in the 13th, or Bolgar, another Turkic language form which Khazan Tatar originates, or yet another Turkic language?



This is what Wikipedia says

*Middle Mongol* or *Middle Mongolian* was a Mongolic koiné language language spoken in the Mongol Empire. Originating from Genghis Khan's home region of northeastern Mongolia, it diversified into several Mongolic languages after the collapse of the empire.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Mongol_language


This is during the empire of Genghis Khan, so it's around the 13th   centuary, the question remains though if they used this language in   Europe too and if it influenced European languages.

I can't actually find anything about what they spoke when they came here.


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## LilianaB

Apparently the aristocracy spoke Mongolian,and the rest of the people spoke a Turkic language.This is at least what some sources say. I have the feeling that the remainders of the Golden Horde culture in Europe -- linguistically, are more of Turkic origin.


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## Wolverine9

Roel~ said:


> базар                          _bazar_                                     bazaar



Are you sure bazaar is of Mongolian origin rather than Persian?



Roel~ said:


> I 'm actually talking about Mongolian which is an  Altaic language, but as Mongolian and the Turkic languages are family



The theory about an Altaic language family is very much disputed.  There is no conclusive evidence at the moment about a "genetic link" between the two language groups.


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## Treaty

The Mongol empire was a confederation of both so-called Altaic people (Turkic and Mongolian) and others, although the chief tribes were Mongolians. Besides, they easily adopted language, religion and culture of occupied nation as soon as they settled. I'm not sure of Horde in Russia, but in China and Iran they soon embraced both the religion and culture (of course gave a few words to their hosts). From your own examples, three of them are Persian (bazar, sanduq and ambar). Is there any clear time when they entered Russian (like after Mongolian invasion)?


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## fdb

Russian has borrowed lots of words from a variety of Turkic languages, including words which Turkic has from Persian (bāzār etc.) or Arabic (ṣundūq etc.). These were borrowed at different times and from different dialects. You can look them up in Vasmer’s etymological dictionary. There is no ground for attributing them all to the Mongol empire.


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## Roel~

Wolverine9 said:


> Are you sure bazaar is of Mongolian origin rather than Persian?
> 
> 
> 
> The theory about an Altaic language family is very much disputed.  There is no conclusive evidence at the moment about a "genetic link" between the two language groups.



But I thought I read this at Wikipedia, why would Wikipedia claim that if it's disputed?


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## fdb

Wikipedia is a random collection of entries by anonymous authors, many of them ignorant cranks.


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## marrish

^


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## illidan1371

hi.
it`s my first post here. i only registered here to answer some of your questions.
as a person who knows both Persian and Azeri(and thus Turkish) as mother tongue i must say that the Mongolian language had very little influence on European languages because:
1)The majority of the people within the horde were Turkic and Mongolians only made up the elite aristocracy.
2)Kipchak language , a form of Turkic spoken by Cumans was used as the lingua franca between the tribes specially in Europe which was a part of the Altin Arda or the golden horde.
also bazaar is a Persian word. But bashmak , Anbar are both Turkic and not mongolian and we still use them in Azeri language.
also about the relation between Mongolian and Turkic languages. I must say the the old words and religious words and the numbers used as millitary units are the same. so we can talk about old things(like tribal life herds millitary units and tengri religion based words we can understand each other.) so those who say that these two languages have nothing to do with each other are wrong!


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## Awwal12

Roel~ said:


> Although the discussion about the language group of Mongolian is very interesting I actually made this topic to know if any words in languages where the Mongolians have been in medieval times, in the 13th and 14th century


In Europe, the Mongol language was actually spoken for a very brief period of time. Batu, the first khan of the Golden Horde, got only a fraction of Mongol warriors that his father Juchi had (and even those were just 4 thousand Mongols). In the same time, the local nomadic population numbered in several millions. Quite obviously, those Mongols were linguistically assimilated very, very quickly, since the absolute majority of Batu's warriors were from Turkic-speaking Kypchak tribes. When Batu died and his son Sartaq was poisoned, the situation became even more complicated, since khan Berke was a Muslim, - and the most of local Muslims were Turkic-speaking again. There was no much place for the Mongol language since then.

Russian has a considerable set of Turkic loanwords loaned in different periods from different sources, but only several words loaned from Mongolic languages, and none of those is loaned during the Mongol Horde period. That, of course, doesn't include several Turkic words of supposedly Mongol origin, but those words existed in Turkic languages long before the Mongol horde anyway. As for the mentioned Mongolic loanwords, they come from dialects of those Russian regions that bordered Kalmyk (West Oirat) nomads in XVII-XVIII centuries and later on. That is either cultural vocabulary (like доха 'dokha' - some kind of a fur coat) or words describing realities of the local nature (like сапсан 'sapsan' - peregrine falcon).


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