Mongolian

Mongolian is the official language of Mongolia and is also spoken in Inner Mongolia (China) and parts of Afghanistan and Russia, giving a total of around 5 million speakers. There are very few native speakers of Mongolian in Australia, however in recent years the number of Mongolian students seeking to complete secondary and tertiary education in Australia has seen an increase. A large, but sparsely populated country, Mongolia has been ruled by a number of nomadic empires, and this has influenced the development of the language. It predominantly uses the Cyrillic alphabet, though has historically also been written using the traditional Mongolian script. While it is linguistically and culturally very distant from English, acquiring competency in Mongolian opens up for Australian learners opportunities for travel in a vast and varied country, and the opportunity to contribute to growing fields of industry and research.

Number of people in Australia who speak this language at home: 634 (ABS Census Data, 2011)

Language Category: Asian Languages

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