Short cartoons produced by a Buryat family from Ulan-Ude have become a sensation in Mongolia after being released on the internet. The cartoon about two Buryat children named Badam and Chagdar has been produced by Erdeni Jaltsanov and directed by his wife. The cartoon characters are voiced by their youngest child – a nine-year-old girl named Yanjim. She studies at the 29th Buryat language school in Ulan-Ude. Yanjim voiced the two characters using two different Buryat dialects; one speaks Sartuul and another Khori Buryat. Mongolians can easily understand the Sartuul dialect.

According to her father, Yanjim has had to remember the words by heart since she does not speak Buryat fluently. Originally, Yanjim’s parents made the cartoon to help her learn the Buryat language. The Republic of Buryatia is part of the Russian Federation; sadly, many Buryats do not know their language well. Erdeni‘s children speak Russian at school and also at home. He works as artistic director at a folk theatre in Ulan-Ude and his wife is a journalist and art researcher. They travelled around Mongolia last year. Yanjim said that she liked the Mongolian steppe and cusine.

Two episodes of the Tale of Badam and Chagdarhave already been released and two more episodes have been completed.

The Buryats, a Mongolic people numbering approximately 500,000, comprise the largest indigenous group in Siberia. Majority of the Buryat population lives in their titular homeland, the Republic of Buryatia, a federal subject of Russia near Lake Baikal.