Oriental Studies (May 2018)
The Khalkha Mongolian, Buryat and Kalmyk Languages: Common Mongolian Lexis Denoting the Traditional Home
Abstract
The article examines - from the comparative and historical perspectives - names of traditional homes in Khalkha Mongolian, Buryat, Kalmyk, and Old Written Mongolian with a view to identify the common Mongolian terms as well as regional and specific ones typical for one of the mentioned languages. In Mongolic languages there is no unity in terms of naming different types of dwellings. Only few of such words can be viewed as common Mongolian, namely: ger ‘house/yurt’, esgiy ger ‘felt yurt’, names of frame elements, felt coverings and binding straps, baishing ‘building’, ӧrgӧӧ ‘yurt of a khan, prince, high-ranked official’, ord, kharsh ‘palace’. Other terms are either territory-specific, such as Kalmyk-Mongolian jolom ‘yurt of rafters only’, chachir ‘tent’, Buryat-Mongolian tur ‘fortress; town’ (Western Bur. tura ‘house, izba’), maikhan ‘tent’, urts ‘chum’, or typical for a certain Mongolic languages: Western Buryat dialects - sool ‘house, izba’, bulgaaγan ‘wooden yurt’, otog ‘bivouac with a bonfire’, Khalkha Mongolian - altsag ‘summer remote shepherd dwelling’. It is noteworthy that almost all territory- and culture-specific terms have Turkic parallels, their etymology being traced to Turkic languages just like the case of the common Mongolic term denoting a palace. This signifies that every Mongolic people kept communicating with neighboring Turkic populations, thus borrowing different elements of material culture, including those related to dwellings.
