#mongolian

[whywishesarehorses]

Mongolian horse archer; pulled from Instagram from a repost account that did not include the og source

[not-your-asian-fantasy]

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

OP stands tall, demonstrating mongolian archery skills while mounted on a horseback on xiaohongshu (cr Nomin Borjigin)

[griefsinternalflower]

Kyrgyz girl in traditional jewelry

[songs-of-the-east]

Kalmyk dancers from the Soviet-era ensemble Tulpan in the city of Elista, Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR

The state folk ensemble Tulpan was formed in 1937 in order to promote traditional Kalmyk music during the Soviet Unions - Korenizatsiia ("Indigenization") policy time period. During this point of Soviet history, the state sought to eliminate Russian political and cultural domination in regions where ethnic Russians were not a majority, in order to promote representation of Indigenous groups, and counter what they deemed as ethnic-Russian chauvinism and counter-revolutionary ("bourgeoise") nationalism among ethnic minorities. This policy was enacted in Ukraine, Central Asia, Moldova, the Baltics, southern Caucasus, and within Russia itself; including Kalmykia.

Korenizatsiia led to the establishment of the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic within Russia for the Kalmyk people, who are a Mongolic ethnic group from the steppes of European Russia.

During the interwar period, when Stalin was the leader of the USSR, Korenizatsiia was mostly abandoned. When the Nazis invaded Russia, including Kalmykia, around 5000 Kalmyks ended up collaborating with them in the Nazi-affiliated Kalmykian Cavalry Corps. This led to Kalmyks being deemed as enemies of the people, and to their collective deportation to Siberia and abolishment of the Kalmyk ASSR, despite the fact that 23k Kalmyks fought for the Red Army against the Nazis. In the 1950's Kalmyks were allowed to return to Kalmykia and the Kalmyk ASSR was reestablished.

[niurd]

instagram.com/p/DGuGcZ1BEb7/?igsh=Z2J1ZDNjcTU2MTZi

[slavic-roots-western-mind]

Mogolian Language Resources

I finally got around to combining and sorting through the various material, so here are the materials that I currently use!

Memrises Mongolian 1/Mongolian 2 Great courses for learning the alphabet (the non-traditional Cyrillic script) and some basics e.g. introduction, some basic verbs.

CJV Langs Traditional Mongolian Script. A solid intro to the traditional writing script. I'm sticking to the cyrillic script for now, but this may come in useful in the future.

Open163 Mongolian Basics (Chinese). Another great video course from Inner Mongolia University for learning mongolian basics and pronunciation. The only possible issue is that it's entirely in Chinese and the traditional script is used.

MGL Radio. My level isn't high enough to understand it, but for now it's good to understand how spoken mongolian sounds and later for listening practise.

Radio Garden. This site allows you to listen to various radio programs from pretty much any country in the world, so it's great not just for mongolian.

MNB. This newsite may be currently a tad too advanced, but it's still good reading practice nonetheless.

This site. I love this site, this is a free collection of works in and translated into Mongolian. Reading Dostoevsky in Mongolian is a challenge that I one day will attempt.

Apps

Gertrainer. This is a relatively new app (6 months old?), which had a pretty good collection of vocabulary. The only downside is that the pronunciation recordings are available only in the paid version which comes at around 5 euros per month or 30 per year. Something to consider if I choose to study Mongolian more intensively, but for now I'm quite content with my current pace.

Ling. This seems to be also ok, but it charges a subscription fee and I am not ready for this commitment yet.

Simply. This is quite basic but it covers some vocab in the free version, with the rest of the vocab charging a fee.

Learn Mongolian. This is also has quite a solid vocabulary set, with pronunciations included.

There appear to be quite a few language schools offering lessons over zoom and classes in person (in Mongolia) but I have no idea if they're legitimate or not.

[saja-star]

i am having fun with google translate's attempts at translating mongolian linguistics jargon

*loud incorrect buzzer* the correct answer was... vowel hiatus!

let's try another one, shall we?

BZZZT another incorrect guess, that one was anticipatory assimilation!

okay, let's go for a bonus round here.

oops, so close! the correct answer was signer, as in a user of a sign language!

[barbucomedie]

Khalkha Headdress from Outer Mongolia dated to the 19th Century on display at the McManuc Art Gallery and Museum in Dundee, Scotland

This headdress would have been commissioned from a silversmith for a Khalkha woman when she was to be married. It was presented to her on her wedding day and she was expected to wear it throughout her married life.

The Khalkha people were a diaspora group in Mongolia and in the early 20th century became one of the leading groups of the Mongolian Independence Movement. They campaigned for independence from the People's Republic of China. The Khalkha also found their lands taken by Imperial Russia and later the Soviet Union. Khalkha author Byambyn Rinchen translated and published Khalkha legal codes and folklore during the 1940's. He was a direct descendent of Genghis Khan through his mothers family.

Headpieces such as this from Mongolia were collected by European travellers and ambassadors and then donated to museums. Such fashion would go onto to inspire costume designers on Star Wars for Queen Amidala.

Photographs taken by myself 2024

[ill-kidnap-all-the-stars]

La Promenade

[ image description: a digital drawing of Yue from Avatar: the Last Airbender. She is a brown-skinned woman looking down and walking towards the viewer. She has white hair tied in plaits, with turquoise stone ornaments in her hair. She is wearing a light purple deel with white facings at the closure and cuffs that have turquoise and coral embellishments, and a matching belt. She has a dark purple coat lined with cream fur and matching shoes and hat. She is wearing many strings of turquoise beads around her neck, and has a turquoise and coral medallion representing Twi and La. There is a block of blue in the top left, with pale cloud and moon outlines. There is a similar block of purple in the bottom right with intertwining koi fish outlines ]

prints ✨ commissions

I've been doing a lot of research into Mongolian clothing recently, and I also read that the water tribes' interior design is Mongolian inspired, so I thought it might be fun to put a little Mongolian spin on my latest Yue drawing. Her deel is based on the ones this Üzemchin couple are wearing, and I noticed the prevalence of turquoise, coral and filigree silverwork in Mongolian jewellery so I tried to reflect that too :)

I've also been kinda obsessing over water tribe blue. In my last rewatch I noticed that the SWT clothes are slightly more purple than the NWT, with the exception of Yue, who's also purple. Now, idk if this is a worldbuilding thing — maybe it's a representation of how the war affected the water tribes differently; the clothing in the SWT is older and more faded perhaps, since the Fire Nation raids disrupted trade so much, while NWT life (and trade) wasn't as affected. It could also be a design choice to visually distinguish Katara and Sokka (and Yue) from the NWT.

But @atlaculture made a really interesting post a month (?) or so ago about the water tribes and blue dye and I'd sort of like to add my own two cents (although, admittedly, my knowledge of historical clothing and dyeing comes from historical European/British clothes). I'm not a concise person, so I'll put it under the cut for the sake of everyone's dash:

In the British Isles, we traditionally used woad leaves (isatis tinctoria) for blue dye and it produces the same indigo compound as true indigo (indigofera tinctoria) only less concentrated. Woad is found across Europe, the Caucasus regions, western and central Asia, and as far as eastern Siberia (it was also brought to North America). Woad was also relatively cheap compared to indigo, since woad grows better in the colder climates while indigo is native to subtropical areas (west Africa, Tanzania down to South Africa, and India to mainland southeast Asia). There are lots of other plants that produce blue dyes, especially in the indigofera genus (the name literally means “bringing indigo”), but the point here is that the price of the dye is affected by where and what climates the plants naturally flourish in. I think it makes sense that the SWT would be importing woad dyes, which could come from the cooler south Earth Kingdom, rather than true indigo which would probably have to grow in the central Earth Kingdom. And, like I said, woad produces a lower concentration of indigo compared to true indigo, which could account for the faded colour — it would also make sense for the SWT to dilute their dyes to make them last further. On the other hand, the NWT retained a lot of their money and power throughout the war, meaning that they could likely afford to import indigo in spite of the higher costs.

The other thing I want to bring up is orchella weeds. These are lichens we used historically in the British Isles (and the rest of Europe) and they produce a whole range of colours between red, purple and blue depending on the species and the exact process. In fact, they're used to make litmus (and litmus tests), which pretty well shows the colour capacity of these dyes. These lichens have been grown from Cape Verde to Norway and Sweden. Given that lichens are remarkably hardy things and can grow from sea level to alpine elevations, and from tropical rainforests to frozen tundra, I think it's a safe bet that everyone and their mum knows about lichens in ATLA, especially as other lichens have also been a good source of purple dyes around the world. But I'm pretty sure that orchella lichens specifically do very well in costal areas, meaning again, they'd be very easy for the water tribes to get in trade (and maybe even find at the very subarctic fringes of the poles). Point being that it actually makes sense to me that the tribes have this purple colour, and particularly that the SWT has a more purple tinge to their clothing if they're having to substitute some of that woad or indigo due to trade disruptions or even just the war driving the prices up. I have no idea if purple has the same connotations of richness, luxury and royalty in Asia as it does in Europe, but if it does I could also see the shift towards purple being pedalled as a good thing from that perspective.

On the subject of purple and luxury, let's talk about Yue and purple. So, the European perception of purple as a regal colour comes from murex dyes. See, purple from lichen dyes fades in the sunlight, whereas murex dyes are fast (they don't fade). They were used as far back as the Ancient Phoenicians to produce vibrant and long-lasting purples (Tyrian purple, primarily) used largely, if not exclusively, on the clothing of the highest ranking, because it's also an extremely costly and labour-intensive dye to produce, requiring tens of thousands of snails. These snails are also tropical (so, coming from the central Earth Kingdom), further driving up the price should either water tribe want to trade for them. But it makes sense to me that royalty would import the most expensive dyes; it's a display of wealth and it's a display of power. Yue's clothing has a lot of those other subtle indicators of wealth too, from the big sleeves to the train on her skirt and the jewellery in her hair. However, I think as the war dragged on, murex dyes would become harder and harder to get — like I said, were they to exist in the ATLA world, they'd have to come from the central Earth Kingdom and travel for weeks to get to the NWT. This might be why Yue's outer clothing is that vibrant, murex purple but the inner isn't. Fun fact, there is a cousin of the murex snails (purpura) that was used in central America by the Aztecs and Mayans to make a dye also associated with royalty.

The other thing to note is that there is also a very similar dye that was made in western Polynesia from sea urchins. I haven't been able to find much on it, but given that the water tribes do have Polynesian influences (and sea urchins), it makes sense that this dye would be available as a sort of “home grown” version of murex. I'm not sure how fast a dye it is — like I said, I haven't been able to find much on it, so I think the research may not be out there, at least in a language I understand. I did find this Japanese source but I'm not sure how similar the method is to the Polynesian way. It does suggest that sea urchin dye is very potent, describes the colours obtained as “stable” and instructs on the different shades of purple obtained by mixing other chemicals such as calcium hydroxide (“calm purple”) and baked alum (“bright purple”), so I do believe it could be cheaper alternative to murex that the royal family might start to use as the war dragged on. The reason why I suggest that, certainly prior to the war, the NWT might prefer to use murex dyes, is as a display of wealth and power. We certainly see them fixed on tradition and social hierarchy, and there are opulent displays of wealth in their architecture, the feasts they throw, and the big jewellery that Yue and her father Arnook wear.

In conclusion, the water tribes could absolutely get their blue dye from plants. Woad and indigo are sources they could trade for, but the original post also highlighted some subarctic plants that produce blue dyes. The purple clothing could interestingly be both a display of wealth when coming from expensive murex dye, but also the disruption of trade and scarcity of blue dyes caused by the war.

[samsantala]

One Step Back to Take Two Steps Forward

Sometimes, if you have a sketch you just don't think is working, it's good to just scrap it, start again, and come back refreshed.

I really wasn't liking the sketch on the left, whilst I was trying to add more shape shapes to give her some aggression it felt akward and stiff.

Came back several months later and just started all over again with some better ref, and came up with the sketch on the right. I love her.

[ripstefano]

Armies of Medieval Russia 750–1250

Between 750 and 1250 AD, the Eastern Slavic region was shaped by the rise of the Kievan Rus', a powerful federation of Slavic tribes. In the 9th century, Viking traders, known as the Varangians, played a key role in the establishment of the state, with the legendary Rurik dynasty founding the principality. The Kievan Rus' flourished in the 10th and early 11th centuries, reaching its peak under Grand Prince Yaroslav the Wise. However, by the mid-12th century, internal conflicts, external invasions, and Mongol pressure began to fragment the region, leading to the decline of Kievan Rus' and the eventual rise of separate Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian identities.

From "Armies of Medieval Russia 750–1250"

[majestativa]

Pierce this old heart with a sword, but I shall never bend my knees before you.

— Tsend-Ochir, History of Modern Mongolian Literature, transl by the Mongolia Society, compiled by Ludmilla K. Gerasimovich, (1964)

[nkhluu]

Зэвүүн хог шүү