A company in northern China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region has overcome a long-time technology barrier and developed a unified input method in the Mongolian language.
Developed by Inner Mongolia Delehi Information Technology Co. Ltd., the input method contains 16 fonts. It enables people using the Mongolian language to communicate smoothly online, which was almost impossible before.
There are currently dozens of input methods in the Mongolian language, but each is coded differently and most are incompatible with one another. Previously, messages written in one input method may be have been unreadable when opened with another. The new input method has overcome that obstacle.
"Now we can communicate on WeChat and text each other freely. It is as easy as typing in Mandarin," said a Mongolian journalist.
Efforts to set up a coding standard for Mongolian began in 2012. The company has partnered with Microsoft to develop seven information technology products in Mongolian.
Born in the period of Genghis Khan, founder of the Mongol Empire, the Mongolian language has a history of over 700 years. The language is written vertically and has various dialects, making it hard to encode with a unified standard.
There are about 6.5 million Mongolians in China, mainly in Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, Gansu, Xinjiang and Qinghai.
