What Language Did Genghis Khan Speak? (Answered!)

Genghis Khan spoke Mongolian, specifically the Middle Mongol form of the language which was spoken during the time he was alive. There is very little surviving written evidence of this language and a lot of what we know comes from Chinese sources. However, Middle Mongol was the language of the Mongol Empire.

Genghis Khan is in many ways one of the single most influential historical figures of the last millennium.

This isn’t to say his brutal military campaigns and the death and destruction his roving caused was a good thing; but again it’s impossible to deny its impact.

Yet, despite this, we still know very little about the man’s early life.

Let’s find out more.

What was Genghis Khan’s native language?

Genghis Khan’s native language was Mongolian, or Mongol.

There is of course a modern Mongolian language today, and this is very different from the language that Khan would have spoken.

Middle Mongol is the name of the language which would have been spoken at the time that Khan was born and throughout his lifetime, and indeed one that he himself would spread far and wide with his Empire.

Details of his early life are sparse and difficult to pin down, but it’s generally agreed that he was born into the Borjigin tribe in either 1155, 1162 or 1167.

This tribe still exists today and inhabit most parts of Mongolia, and this clan formed the ruling class.

The language used at this time and place would have been Middle Mongol, so we can safely assume that this would have been the native language of Genghis Khan from his birth.

There has, though, been some debate about the precise nomenclature involved with Mongolian language.

Some suggest that the term “Middle Mongol” is misleading as in the broader context of the language naming rules, Middle Mongolian would instead be Old Mongolian.

What is called Old Mongolian would be Proto-Mongolic.

Either way, Khan spoke an early form of Mongol; this would have been the language he was born into and the language he used throughout his life.

Compared with today’s Mongolian, Middle Mongol would have had no long vowels, as well as different systems of verbs and cases.

The two languages would not be mutually intelligible to a very large extent.

So, the simplest way of thinking about it is just that Khan would have spoken an earlier form of Mongolian.

His reach was enormous over the course of his life and so he would have come into contact with many other languages and dialects.

Was Genghis Khan Chinese?

Genghis Khan was not Chinese, he was Mongol.

Much of what would become his empire stretched into modern China, indeed by 1259 most of China was under the rule of the Mongol Empire.

But the man himself was thoroughly Mongolian, as we’ve seen.

He was born into a Mongol tribe and lived all his life among other Mongols speaking Middle Mongol.

With that said, China does consider him to be a national hero, and indeed there are more ethnic Mongols living in modern China today than anywhere else.

Khan was not ethnically Chinese in any sense, but both he and his successors saw themselves as legitimate emperors of China.

It’s a somewhat complex question, then, in that sense, since the Khans themselves were quite keen to establish themselves as the rightful rulers of China.

In no real, useful sense, though, were any of them Chinese.

The question is one of ethnicity at this time in history.

There was no such thing as the modern nation state, and thus no such thing as nationality.

You were associated with the people you were born to as much as the place you were born, and by every definition Khan was ethnically Mongol.

Did Genghis Khan speak other languages?

This, again, is a tough question to answer, but many historical sources do claim he spoke directly with other tribal leaders who would not have shared his native language.

With that said, it’s worth noting that we cannot say with any certainty whether Khan spoke other languages, or if he did which ones.

According to one source, he spoke directly with leaders of the Naiman tribe; these would have been Turkic speaking people.

However, he could and probably did have interpreters. He likely knew something of the language, but we cannot say more than this with any certainty.

Did Genghis Khan create a written language?

The Mongolian script was indeed created indirectly by Khan’s campaigns, according to the sources.

When Khan defeated the Naimans around 1204, it is said that he captured a Uyghur scribe called Tata-tonga.

This scribe adapted the Uyghur alphabet, which was a descendant of the Syriac alphabet, in order to write Mongolian down.

To this day this is the script that is still used in the Mongolian language, with some modifications.

So, though he did not create the script itself, we can again see how Khan’s expanding influence not only brought the Mongol language to more and more people, it even caused the written script to come into being.

So, not only did Genghis Khan speak Mongol, he practically immortalized it during his lifetime.

Without him, the language may never have been recorded in surviving texts and may simply have been forgotten in the modern world.

He is in many ways a mysterious figure, yet at the same time his influence in modern Central Asia and the wide world is impossible to miss.