The Buryat Alphabet

Buryat ^[1] (бурят хэлэн, ISO 639-3: bua) is a Mongolic language of the Buryat people, the largest indigenous ethnic group of Siberia. Buryats live primarily in the Republic of Buryatia, Zabaykalsky Krai and Irkutsk Oblast in Russia, with additional communities in Inner Mongolia, China. The Institute of Mongolian, Buddhist and Tibetan Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IMBT RAS) in Ulan-Ude is the principal centre for Buryat language research.

Buryat ^[1] uses a Cyrillic alphabet of 36 letters that was standardised in 1939. The Buryat Cyrillic alphabet is based on Russian Cyrillic but adds the letters Ё, Ө and Ү to accommodate Mongolic sounds absent from Russian. Ө represents a front rounded mid vowel and Ү represents a front rounded high vowel — both hallmarks of the Mongolic language family. Before 1939, Buryat used a Latin-based alphabet; before that, a version of the traditional Mongolian script.

Yes — Buryat ^[2] and Mongolian share a common Mongolic ancestor and belong to the Northern Mongolic subgroup. WALS Online documents both as typologically similar Mongolic languages with vowel harmony and agglutinative morphology. However, Buryat and Mongolian are distinct languages: Buryat speakers in Russia and Mongolian speakers in Mongolia would not readily understand each other without exposure. The IMBT RAS ^[1] documents Buryat as a separate language with its own grammar, vocabulary and literary tradition.

Buryat ^[3] faces significant pressure from Russian, particularly among younger generations. The Endangered Languages Project documents weakening intergenerational transmission in the Republic of Buryatia, where Russian dominates education, government and media. While the overall speaker number remains substantial (estimated around 300,000), the proportion of fluent speakers among young Buryats is declining, placing the language in a vulnerable category despite active cultural preservation efforts.

The Geser epic ^[1] is one of the greatest works of Buryat oral literature — a vast cycle of heroic poetry about the warrior king Geser, who protects the world against evil. The IMBT RAS has documented, transcribed and published Buryat versions of the Geser epic, preserving one of the longest oral epics in world literature. The epic is shared across Mongolic and Tibetan cultures in different versions, making it a defining piece of Buryat cultural heritage.

Both Buryat and Kalmyk ^[2] are Mongolic languages of Russia with Cyrillic alphabets, but they belong to different Mongolic subgroups. Buryat is in the Northern Mongolic subgroup (close to Mongolian), spoken in Buryatia in eastern Siberia. Kalmyk is a Western Mongolic language (related to Oirat) spoken in the Republic of Kalmykia in southern European Russia — making Kalmyk the westernmost Mongolic language in Europe. The two languages have distinct phonological systems and are not mutually intelligible.

The Buryat people ^[3] live primarily in three regions of Russia: the Republic of Buryatia (centred on Ulan-Ude), Zabaykalsky Krai, and Irkutsk Oblast. These regions lie around Lake Baikal in eastern Siberia, historically the heartland of Buryat culture. There are also Buryat communities in Inner Mongolia, China. The Endangered Languages Project documents the Buryat homeland as the area surrounding Lake Baikal — one of the deepest lakes in the world — in the southern part of eastern Siberia.

Buryat ^[1] is written today using the Buryat Cyrillic alphabet standardised in 1939. The IMBT RAS publishes academic grammars, dictionaries and research papers in Buryat using this Cyrillic script. Buryat has a published literary tradition including poetry, prose and translations. In the 1990s there were efforts to revive the traditional Mongolian script among Buryats, but Cyrillic remains the primary writing system used in education and publication. Buryat is taught in schools in the Republic of Buryatia alongside Russian.