Why is Mongolian currency printed with portraits of Genghis Khan, Mongolian numerals, and traditional Mongolian Uighur characters?

The reason why Mongolia’s currency has undergone such a change is due to a variety of factors. The main reason is that in the post-Soviet era, when Russia’s influence declined, countries within the former Soviet Union’s sphere of influence needed to reconstruct nationalism. . Texts, portraits of historical figures of the nation, currency, etc. are all carriers. Of course, since Cyrillic Mongolian script has been dominant in Mongolia for decades and generations of people have been affected by it, there is still a long way to go before a complete transformation.

First of all, we need to clarify why traditional Mongolian characters are Cyrillic.

First: Traditional Mongolian is not compatible with modern technology.

Traditional Mongolian is written in the same way as ancient Chinese, which is vertical writing. It actually has many disadvantages, such as writing formulas, which contain brackets, letters and many other symbols. You can't write them vertically, right? This is prone to errors. And there is a big problem. Chinese characters, Japanese, etc. can be written both vertically and horizontally, but traditional Mongolian can only be written vertically.

In addition, learning traditional Mongolian is very difficult. Except for the upper-class nobles, many lower-class Mongolian people can only speak but not write. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, there was a wave of character simplification movements in order to reduce the difficulty of writing characters and improve the cultural level of the people. Cyrillic is developed on the basis of ancient Greek letters and Latin. It is easier to write and learn, and is conducive to the popularization of culture.

Because Mongolia and Mongolian culture have relatively little influence in the world, traditional Mongolian writing cannot adapt well to the development of the Internet society. I saw a joke on the Internet before. Many foreigners don't know how Chinese people type Chinese characters on computers, so they imagine that Chinese people use a very large keyboard, and each key is a Chinese character!

Look, the Chinese characters used by more than a billion people have to face the problem of compatibility with modern Internet technology, let alone traditional Mongolian.

Second: In order to increase the influence of the Soviet Union on domestic alliance countries and countries within its sphere of influence

Text is not only a carrier of culture, but also has national imagery. Everyone has studied "The Last Lesson" and is aware of the cultural hegemony of the United States and the Japanese language education implemented after Japan occupied Taiwan. Why do some countries do this? It is to cultivate the cultural identity of people from other countries.

As a buffer country between China and the Soviet Union, Mongolia will definitely deepen its influence in it. Moreover, Mongolia was weak and the Soviet Union was strong at the time, and relying on the Soviet Union would also help the country's economic development. Therefore, whether actively or passively, Mongolia had to Cyrillicize its own characters.

But why does Mongolia now print portraits of Genghis Khan, Mongolian numerals and traditional Mongolian Uighur characters on its currency?

The main purpose is to reduce the influence of the Soviet Union. Genghis Khan is the greatest figure in Mongolian history, a witness to Mongolia's glory, and a representative of the Mongolian nation. Having his face printed on currency accessible to all Mongolians can awaken the national pride of all Mongolian compatriots.

Everyone who has been to Mongolia knows that as soon as you get out of the airport, you can see the huge statue of Genghis Khan, which has the same purpose. Using the language and characters of the nation and promoting the historical figures of the nation can help promote national unity by relying on the "Communist Community".

Now that the Soviet Union has perished, and Russia is gradually declining, its sphere of influence continues to shrink under the squeeze of European and American countries. In fact, except for Mongolia, even the former Soviet Union countries are converting Cyrillic to restoring their own national languages. The three Baltic countries, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan all have this choice, but now it is Mongolia's turn.

During the epidemic, Mongolia donated 30,000 sheep to China. If you pay attention, you will find that the relevant documents are written in traditional Mongolian characters vertically. It can be seen that Mongolia is still very determined in de-Cyrillicization, and has abandoned the use of Cyrillic Mongolian in foreign exchanges.

Russia has no way to deal with this phenomenon of de-Cyrillization. On the one hand, its national strength has declined and it is unable to intervene. On the other hand, everyone else is a sovereign country and it has no right to interfere. Only when one's own country becomes stronger can it attract other countries to take the initiative to learn. Nowadays, many foreigners take the initiative to learn Chinese. This is the situation.

How to preserve the traditional culture of our nation? It is not written in books or recorded in history, but actually used by people in reality. This will help promote culture.

A leaf knows the autumn, which shows that Mongolia intends to break away from the influence of the Soviet Union culturally and regain its own national things. It is definitely beneficial to Mongolia, but for the Mongolian people in China and the regional situation, the impact is still very subtle.

Mongolia’s monetary actions have strong symbolic meaning. But for Mongolia itself, there is a long way to go. For example, the issues mentioned above about the compatibility between traditional vertically written Mongolian and modernization, the cost of ordinary people re-learning traditional Mongolian, and the issue of education popularization; and with the emergence of new things and the continuous expansion of vocabulary, traditional Mongolian Whether its own evolution and renewal are in line with the development of the times.