Mongolian languages, group of languages forming a subdivision of
the Altaic subfamily of the Ural-Altaic family of languages (see
Uralic and Altaic languages). The Mongolian languages are spoken
by about 6 million people, mainly in the Republic of Mongolia,
in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region of China, and in the
region of Lake Baykal in Siberia. There are also some speakers
of Mongolian tongues in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and
in Manchuria, both in China. The Mongolian languages fall into
two principal divisions: Western Mongolian, to which Kalmyck
belongs, and Eastern Mongolian, which includes Buryat, Khalkha,
and others. Khalkha, or Mongol proper, is the most important
Mongolian language. The official tongue of the Republic of
Mongolia, it is native to more than 2 million people. Like the
other Uralic and Altaic languages, the Mongolian tongues exhibit
vowel harmony and are agglutinative. They lack grammatical
gender and use postpositions instead of prepositions. For many
centuries the Mong