LITER A TURE. 67 



unintelligible to the Khalkas, and the pronunciation 

 of the former is softer ; thus, k, ts, ck, become 

 respectively kh, ck; and g, e.g. Tsagan (white), be- 

 comes C/iagan, Kuku-hoto becomes khuhu-khoto, 

 and so on. 



Even the construction of the sentence changes, 

 and our interpreter sometimes could not understand 

 expressions used by the Mongols of the South, 

 although he could not explain why they were unin- 

 telligible. All he would say was, ' They talk non- 

 sense.' 



It appears to me that very few Chinese words 

 have been introduced into the Mongol language, but 

 that in the neighbourhood of Koko-nor a great deal 

 is derived from the Tangutan. In South-Eastern 

 and Southern Mongolia, Chinese influence prevails, 

 and is evidenced in the character of the people as 

 well as in their language, not so much from the 

 number of foreign words introduced into it as by a 

 general change, and a more monotonous and phleg- 

 matic pronunciation than that of the true Khalka 

 Mongols, who talk in loud, energetic accents. 



The written characters, like the Chinese, are 

 arranged in vertical columns, but are read from left 

 to right. ^ There are a good many printed books, 

 the Chinese Government having appointed a special 

 commission, at the end of the last century, to trans- 



' The present Mongol letters were acquired in the thirteenth cen- 

 tury of our era, in the reign of Kublai-Khan. [See Supplementary- 

 Note.] 



F 2 



