Mongolian Apps

If you have a smart phone here are some recommendations to help you in your Mongolian study.

Chimee

Practice your reading and writing by sending messages to your Mongolian friends. The messages are sent as images so that the vertical script will display correctly.

Todo

This is a keyboard for the Todo (clear) script of Mongolian, mainly only used in Western China and Russia.

This is a full fledged chat app. The setup is a little complicated so you might need a Mongolian friend to help you. Once you are registered, though, you can search for people near you. There is potential for endless language practice for the brave. Both audio and written formats are supported.

BolorToli Dictionary

This is made by a company in Mongolia, but it supports traditional script.

Ehshig

This app allows you to listen to a wide variety of Mongolian music.

Ariun Nom

Read familiar Bible stories.

Comments

Popolon on October 11, 2014 at 8:23 am

I seen there are some efforts from inner mongolia university (内蒙古大学) to put Android to traditionnal mongolian version. But for the moment, your tool is really welcome to try to type mongolian on Android.

The document is entitled : 基于Android平台的蒙古文输入法研究与实现

Nationsoft.org (民族语言软件创新平台) also created a traditionnal mongol keyboard for android (基于Android系统的蒙古文输入法), but registration is needed to download it.

I also see you started to work on an ibus version of an input method ? This will probably be very interesting, because I didn’t see any project in this direction.

Thanks for all.

Suragch on October 11, 2014 at 9:56 am

Thanks for the recommendation of the NationSoft website! There are a lot of Mongolian apps there that I didn’t know about. As I have time I will try them out and eventually try to put up some recommendations here for the good ones.

I had seen the Inner Mongolia University article when I was making the Chimee app and it was useful in thinking about what was involved in developing an input editor. I would like to see a lot more information be put online about Mongolian software development. There is very little (that I could find) in Chinese and even less in English. Trying to figure out how to write vertically without any guides was like pulling teeth. Eventually I will get the source code for the Chimee app online and write up some of the things I learned. I’d also like to meet with some Mongolian Android and iOS developers to learn how to do things in a more standard way. (If you are one, please contact me.)

There are already a fair number of Mongolian input methods out there. Most of them are better than the Chimee keyboard. (I especially like the MenkSoft one for Android, which is also available on the NationSoft site you mentioned). The problem for most people it seems, though, is that they either need to install a system font that supports Mongolian (for which they would need to root their phone), or the receiver of any Mongolian message needs to have the same messaging software as the sender. Because of these problems, most Mongolians in Inner Mongolia use Chinese to communicate when writing on a cell phone. By making an app that can send Mongolian messages in image format and be sent to anyone using WeChat (most Inner Mongolians?), I was hoping to make it easier for the common person to be able to communicate in written Mongolian (and consequently easier for me and others to learn Mongolian). I expect in the future there will be better and more popular methods for communicating in written Mongolian and I look forward to that day.

Lina Borjigin on April 1, 2024 at 4:58 pm

Hi there. First, I wanted to thank you for all your hard work for creating this website to study traditional Mongolian language. Second, I was somewhat shocked to find this website while searching the correct spelling for a particular name in Mongolian. At the same time, I am so happy to find it. No, I am thrilled in fact! I was born in Inner Mongolia and grew up speaking this beautiful language all my childhood. However, once I moved abroad, I am losing my mother tongue unintentionally. To start, I have no Mongolian friend to talk to where I live. Other than my family, I have no chance to speak Mongolian anymore and I started to forgot some vocabulary. It is sad!

Please keep up the good work! I am more than happy to help if I could in any way!

Lina Borjigin

Surina on March 6, 2024 at 11:24 pm

Hi, thank you so much for creating and maintaining this website. It’s great to see a website dedicated for Mogolian students. I’m a Mongolian but have been received education from the Han schools. All my family but me can speak Mongolian. It is a shame for me. Hope one day I can make some contribution to the Mongolian society as well. I have a question though. What app can I use to type Mongolian in iOS system? It would be interesting if I could send my family the words I have learned in Mongolian.

Suragch on March 4, 2025 at 11:03 am

There are a few keyboards that you can use with iOS. Chimee is an app I made that you can use to write Mongolian and send it as an image. There are other better apps though now too.