Á. Birtalan (ed.).: Bálint of Szentkatolna, Gábor: A Romanized Grammar of the East- and West-Mongolian Languages (Budapest Oriental Reprints, Ser. B 3.)

Introduction - The Grammar

branch. But always valuable is the small comparative vocabulary of the Magyar and Mongolian languages (pp. 1-62), though in this there are many forced and impossible etymologies." 9 THE DETAILED CONTENT OF THE DESCRIPTIVE PART OF THE GRAMMAR The transcription of the oral records of both Khalkha and Kalmyk (Oirat

8

0 - as Bálint mentions the Kalmyk) texts is not as careful and meticulous as in his two text collections;

8' it seems to be adapted to the readers with a command of English. Below a comparative chart of the transcriptions is given to guide the reader - familiar with the regularly used academic transcription - in Bálint's texts. Bálint's Generally used Bálint's Generally used transcription academic transcription academic system transcription

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2 system transcription ä a dsh j ä a dz j ä a gh y/g ? 0 r y 1 Ö j y é e k' k'/k e e kh x i I n 5 ö ö sh s ö Ö ts c ü ü tsh c ü Ü V w zh z Henceforth I will give a brief summary of the grammar, following Bálint's system. Here I wish to emphasise that in the introduction it is possible to review only the main phenomena of the Grammar, highlighting only some points of this rich and compound material. To elaborate the particular grammatical phenomena, to compare them with the ones of other grammars by contemporaries and followers and to explicate the Grammar s values and mistakes will be the task of further studies. 7

9 Jiilg: Op. cit. pp. 55-56. 8

0 Oirat (in Oirat: Őrd) is the collective name of numerous Western-Mongolian ethnic groups and their dialects (in detail cf. Birtalan - Rákos: Op. cit. passim), for written and spoken Oirat cf. Birtalan, Agnes: Oirat. In: The Mongolic Languages. (Routledge Language Family Series) Ed. Juha Janhunen. London - New York, Routledge 2003. pp 210-228. The Kalmyk language originates from the Oirat dialects of the ethnic groups that migrated in waves from their homeland in Turkistan to the Volga during the 17

1'

1 century, so Bálint correctly named the linguistic phenomena recorded among the Kalmyks as [a kind of] Oirat. 8

1 Kara emphasised this fact as well, cf. Kara: O neizdannyh tekstah G. Balinta. p. 162. 8

7 This system is used in the present introduction to refer to Mongolian terms and names. XXI