Since ancient times, the many tribes of the Mongol people have used correspondingly numerous written systems, reflecting the peculiarities of the development of the Mongolian language or dialects of that time. Historical data provide evidence of the fact that the primitive ancestors of the nomadic Mongols had their own script. The most antique of these indications pertain to the Xiongnu (200 BC).

The Mongolian script is originated from the Sogdian letters and was adopted in the 12th century, although it has undergone transformations and occasionally been supplanted by other scripts. The Mongol alphabet has 23 basic characters (7 vowels and 16 consonants) plus some other letters to stand for foreign words, which are written vertically but in different ways according to their position in a word.The Mongolian alphabet was used in Mongolia until 1943, when it was replaced under communism by the Cyrillic alphabet similar to the Russian one, and Cyrillic is still the most common script found in Mongolia, while the traditional alphabet is being slowly reintroduced in the public school system.

In 1686, when the freedom of the Mongolian people was threatened by the Manchu, the first Bogdo Zanabazar invented the Soyombo and the Horizontal-square script on the basis of Devanagari, ancient Indian writing of Brahman origin. From the materials written in these scripts it is clear that the letters were created for recording the words of the three 'holy' written languages of that period: Mongolian, Tibetan and Sanskrit, each of which at some time served as a literary language for the scholars of Mongolia. The Soyombo symbol, the national symbol of Mongolia, is widely used on flags, banknotes, stamps, etc.

Mongolians educated under the Communists speak Russian, and many Russian words have been incorporated into the Mongolian language. The use of English is spreading rapidly, and many official signs are written only in the traditional script and English.