Richard Moore, Mongolian expert, answered me:
>Regarding your question about the spelling of the currency symbol, I
>sent your message off to Mongolia asking for their comments but
>haven't had a reply. My own view, for what it's worth, is that there
>is no single "correct" transliterated version of the word into the
>"English" character set: I have seen both tugrik and tughrik in
>English dictionaries, but neither could really be claimed to be a
>transliteration. In fact, in the Mongolian spelling both vowels are
>the variant letter O (written in Cyrillic as theta instead of plain O)
>which is pronounced sort of like the German O with the umlaut, and
>indeed O with umlaut for both vowels is probably the most common
>"transliterated" form I have seen recently. I have never seen
>tugrug, and both Mongolian nationals currently at UNU/IIST say this
>and togrog both seem wrong to them. In an email message they would
>write t'ogr'og, the apostrophe being used to distinguish the variant
>O from the standard, but that is perhaps not standard practice either
>and is also not really a transliteration. Basically, it's one of these
>cases where you're trying to use one language to represent a different
>language which has more characters in its alphabet where there is no
>standard transliteration scheme. All of which is not very helpful,
>sorry!
In 5 different sources (atlases, desk encyclopædia, and dictionaries) I
have to hand the term "tugrik" is given as the Mongolian currency. In view
of the fact that the UCS names in English are restricted to ASCII, I say:
TUGRIK SIGN it should stay.
-- Michael Everson, Everson Gunn Teoranta ** http://www.indigo.ie/egt 15 Port Chaeimhghein Íochtarach; Baile Átha Cliath 2; Éire/Ireland Guthán: +353 1 478-2597 ** Facsa: +353 1 478-2597 (by arrangement) 27 Páirc an Fhéithlinn; Baile an Bhóthair; Co. Átha Cliath; Éire
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