Quote:Intermediate between these is the Mongolian script proper, in 12-13 centuries derived from the Uighur alphabet , descendant of Sogdian alphabet which came from Syriac alphabet (Aramaic was for a long time (between the later Assyrian empire and the Abbasid Caliphate) a lingua franca in the Middle East; its alphabet, though itself derived from the Phoenician alphabet, therefore superseded the Old Hebrew alphabet that had been independently descended from the Phoenician alphabet. It is no longer the case that Aramaic has a single alphabet; rather, just as Aramaic).

Perhaps its two most notable features are that it is a vertical script, and that it is the only such script that is written from left to right. (All other vertical writing systems are written right to left.) In fact, the Uighurs changed the orientation of their script from horizontal to vertical to emulate the Chinese writing system. The visual effect is that of Syriac rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise. This alphabet is reasonably accurate with respect to the representation of consonants, but fails to distinguish several vowels. The situation is somewhat comparable to the various dialects of English, which must represent 10 or more vowels with only 5 letters.