“Samples of the Selenginsk dialect of Mongolian language” preserved in the collection of F. Р. Adelung at the National Library of Russia

Abstract

The article is devoted to one of the numerous Mongolian translations of individual words and phrases made in response to the appeal of the Russian and German bibliographer and linguist L. I. Bakmeister to travelers and researchers of various parts of the world. The small brochure he compiled and published in St. Petersburg in 1777, known in scholarly literature under its Latin title “Idea et desideria de colligendis linguarum speciminibus”, marked the beginning of a systematic collection of linguistic material for the preparation of the famous thesaurus “Comparative Dictionaries of All Languages and Dialects, Collected by the Hand of the Most August Personage”, the first volume of which was published ten years later — in 1787 — under the editorship of P. S. Pallas. The document entitled “Samples of the Selenginsk dialect of Mongolian language in two copies, received on August 18, 1779, and March 30, 1780” was prepared for P. S. Pallas, who in turn passed it on to L. I. Bakmeister. Subsequently, the mentioned material came into the possession of the well-known linguist and archaeographer F. Adelung, who collected various manuscript and printed sources while working on his “Survey of All Known Languages and Dialects”, published in 1820. The present article introduces into scholarly circulation the original Mongolian translation of 1779 of the words and phrases according to Bakmeister, as well as the accompanying notes by an unknown author, preserved in the collection of F. Adelung (Coll. 7) at the National Library of Russia. The text is supplied with comments and a brief analysis of its linguistic features and historical-cultural context.