Apatóczky Ákos Bertalan. Dialectal traces in Beilu Yiyu

Indiana University Uralic and Altaic series, 2009, 173, pp. 9–20.The Sino-Mongol glossary Beilu yiyu (北虜譯語)1 contains a significant body of Middle Mongol lexicon providing us with many interesting linguistic and philological problems to deal with. Its taxonomic status fundamentally classifies it as an (Eastern) Middle Mongol source along with many other Sino-Mongolian works left to us in Chinese script such as the Secret History of Mongols and the bilingual glossaries of the Yuan and Ming dynasties. Although there seems to exist a generally accepted view in academic circles concerning the essentially homogenous dialectal nature of Middle Mongol with marked but sometimes controversial differences between its Western and Eastern manifestations, however, in particular cases one finds extraordinary occurrences of forms or even regularities uncommon in other sources or being divergent from Middle Mongol «proper». Problems start right with the reconstruction of the original Middle Mongol data encrypted in Chinese script. It is a difficult task to distinguish dialectal or substandard forms from those improperly transcribed or not following the well established transcription practice of the more consistent and precise Sino-Mongol sources.