Geographic Distribution
Mongolian is the national language of the country of Mongolia, where it is spoken by about 2.7 million people, and an official language of China's Inner Mongolia region, where it is spoken by 2.7 million or more people. The exact number of Mongolian speakers in China is hard to determine, as there is no data available on Chinese citizens' language proficiency. There are roughly five million ethnic Mongolians in China, but the use of Mongolian is in decline among them, especially among younger speakers in urban areas, due to the dominance of Mandarin Chinese. The great majority of speakers of Mongolian proper in China live in Inner Mongolia; in addition, some speakers of the Kharchin and Khorchin dialects live in areas of Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang that border Inner Mongolia. According to Uradyn E. Bulag, anthropologist at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, USA, Mongols are displaying significant linguistic anxiety about losing their language and linguistic identity to powerful Chinese nationalistic and cultural forces.
Read more about this topic: Mongolian Language
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