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Example
Traditional Mongolian script aligned with English
A traditional Mongolian phrase in vertical script with a transliteration tier and an English translation, showing a script whose columns run left to right.
Example layout based on an example in the Wikipedia article Mongolian script (Wikipedia) (illustrative; Leipzig-style conventions).
What this example shows
The Mongolian column carries the masthead of Buriyad Mongɣol-un ünen, a newspaper published from 1925. Beside it sits a Latin transliteration, and beside that an English translation. Reading across the columns takes you from script to sound to meaning.
Mongolian columns progress left to right, so the script line comes first and the translation follows to its right. Japanese and Chinese run the other way. The tool has no separate direction setting for this: the order of your lines decides which column lands on which side.
Word by word
Each Mongolian word, its transliteration, and its English:
- ᠪᠤᠷᠢᠶᠠᠳ Buriyad / Buryat
- The Buryat people, one of the Mongolic groups.
- ᠮᠣᠩᠭᠣᠯ Mongɣol / Mongol
- Mongol. Together with the previous word it forms the compound name Buryat-Mongol.
- ᠤᠨ un / (genitive)
- The genitive particle, written as a separate unit. English shows possession by word order here, so this box links to the transliteration but has no English match.
- ᠦᠨᠡᠨ ünen / truth
- Truth. The head of the phrase, and the word the genitive attaches to.
Rotated, not stacked
Mongolian letters join into a running vertical stem, so they cannot be set as separate stacked characters the way Japanese kanji and kana are. Fonts for the script store the glyphs rotated a quarter turn, and vertical layout rotates the whole line back. In the tool this is the sideways setting on the line, chosen instead of stacking.
The same setting suits a Latin line that you want to read like the spine of a book, inside an otherwise vertical diagram.
Set it up yourself
Open the example, then switch Direction to Columns in the Style tab. Open the Mongolian line's own settings and set its Text setting to sideways. The transliteration and translation lines stay upright. Adding a transliteration tier is worth it for any script your readers cannot sound out.
Related:
- aligning vertical writing systems covers both stacked and rotated scripts.
- Japanese tategaki alignment is the stacked case.
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