The Digitisation Odyssey of the Mongolian Script in Unicode

Abstract

The Mongolian script, the world’s only surviving vertical alphabetic system, is written from left to right with letters joined vertically. Used in China’s Inner Mongolia, it became Mongolia’s co-official script alongside Cyrillic in 2025. Despite its official status, it remains one of the few living language scripts that is digitally unsearchable. No search engines or web browsers support its vertical orientation, and there is no universal standard to ensure accurate letter joining or consistent display of compatible digital content. This article explores the ethnographic dimensions of the Mongolian script’s digitisation within the Unicode standard, focusing on its social, historical and political implications for language use. Rather than engaging with the intricate technicalities of Unicode encoding, the analysis highlights three key factors: state involvement and support, methodological limitations or biases in Unicode-related research, and cross-national collaboration between Mongolia and China. Through this framework, the study traces the origins of the digitisation initiative in Inner Mongolia, the subsequent adoption of the current Unicode model for the Mongolian script, and the roles played by both the Mongolian and the Chinese governments. It further examines how the sociopolitical environments and language policies of each country have shaped the contemporary status and usage of the Mongolian script and language within their respective territories. The article concludes by offering recommendations to improve the visibility, accessibility and functional integration of the Mongolian script in digital spaces.