Mongolian Grammar for English Speakers

This guide teaches the Mongolian of Mongolia — монгол хэл (the Mongolian language), in its Khalkha standard — to people whose first language is English. Every page explains one piece of the system, says which English habit has to be put down to make room for it, and then asks you to use it: at least twenty corrected questions on every page, twenty-six on average, and fifty or more on the case-ending pages. The grammar is drawn from a 348-page Mongolian method written by our own author, and it is the written companion to the LIMBA audio course, 24 lessons taught in English.

Six facts that account for most of the distance

Almost everything that surprises an English speaker about Mongolian comes from one of these six. None of them is explained here — each has its own page, and this list only tells you which one.

• There is no "a" and no "the." The information English carries in those two words is still there; it is carried by the ending on the object instead. Би ном уншсан (I read a book) against Би энэ номыг уншсан (I read this book) — see what does the work instead of "a" and "the".
• There is no grammatical gender. тэр is he, she and that, all three. English has no gender either, so this is one fewer thing to learn, not one more — see the personal pronouns.
• The verb does not agree with its subject. би ажилладаг (I work) and тэд ажилладаг (they work) use the identical verb form. One tense, one form, every person — see how a Mongolian verb is built.
• Words are built by stacking. найз (friend), найз нар (friends), найз нартай (with friends), найз нартайгаа (with my friends). The order of the pieces is fixed and the last one tells you the word's job in the sentence — see how a word is built and in what order the suffixes stack.
• The predicate closes the sentence, and the modifier precedes its noun. шинэ ном (a new book), таны бичсэн ном (the book you wrote). The second rule has no exceptions at all; the first has one literary licence — see Mongolian word order.
• The stem chooses the vowel in the suffix. The same past-tense suffix appears as авсан, очсон, ирсэн, өгсөн depending on the stem it lands on. This governs most suffixes, including the ten that have four forms each — see vowel harmony, the rule.

The words this guide uses

Grammatical vocabulary is fixed here once and never redefined on another page. Seven terms do nearly all the work.

• Stem. What is left of a verb when you take the dictionary ending –х off it: авах (to take) gives the stem ав–. Every verb form in this guide is the stem plus something.
• Suffix. Anything that attaches to the end of a word. Mongolian has no prepositions, so where English has a separate little word in front, Mongolian usually has a suffix behind.
• Case. One of seven endings a noun can take to show its job in the sentence. The seven cases are nominative, genitive, dative-locative, accusative, ablative, instrumental and comitative, and those names are used in that order throughout.
• Participle. One of the five forms –сан, –х, –даг, –гч, –аа, which behave as verbs and as modifiers of a noun at the same time. This is how Mongolian says "the book you wrote" — see the participles.
• Converb. A form of the first verb that joins it to the next one, where English would use "and", "if" or "after". The French-language method behind this guide calls these forms gérondifs; "converb" is the term used in English-language descriptions of the Mongolic languages, and it is the term used here — see the converbs.
• Particle. A short invariable word that sits at the end of a clause and does what English does with intonation: уу, бэ, нь, шүү. See the final particles.
• Postposition. A word that works like an English preposition but stands after its noun, and that usually demands the genitive on the word in front of it. Nothing in Mongolian is ever called a preposition in this guide — see the postpositions.

Mongolian is cited here in Cyrillic, with the English meaning in brackets after it. Latin spellings appear on five pages only, where the point is the letters and the endings themselves; everywhere else you read the Cyrillic, because that is how you learn to read it.

Where to start

If you are new to the language, work down this short path first and leave the rest for later.

1. The Cyrillic alphabet, all 35 letters. A week at most, and nothing else opens until it is done.
2. The vowels, then why spoken Mongolian does not sound like the spelling. Do these two with the audio in front of you.
3. Vowel harmony and the four-form suffix table. This is the single highest-value hour in the guide: after it, every suffix you meet later costs you half as much.
4. How a word is built, then the seven cases and how to choose the right ending.
5. The verb and word order. At that point you can read a simple sentence and build one.

The eight families, from the most fundamental to the finest

Start here

Three questions people ask before they commit, answered with figures rather than adjectives, plus the question of which Mongolian you are learning.

• Is Mongolian hard to learn? The obstacles ranked by what they actually cost.
• Is it related to Russian or Chinese? No, and the Cyrillic letters are a 20th-century decision.
• How long does it take? The published hour figures, and where the hours go.
• Khalkha and the other varieties, and which one this guide teaches.

Script and sound

The letters, the sounds they stand for, and the gap between the written word and the word you hear — the family to do with your ears, not your eyes.

• The Cyrillic alphabet, letter by letter, with the two that Russian does not have.
• The vowels, short, long, and the pairs an English ear merges.
• The consonants, and the letters that change value by position.
• Why speech does not match the spelling, the page to read beside the audio.
• Stress and rhythm, and why vowel length matters more than loudness.
• The vertical script, what it is and when a beginner needs it.

The suffix machine

One rule and one table that between them govern the shape of nearly every ending in the language. Learn this family early and out of order if you must.

• Vowel harmony: the rule, and how to classify a word in three seconds.
• The four-form suffix table, the ten suffixes, in one place only.
• The suffixes that disobey, five of them, named and bounded.
• How a word is built, and how to take a long one apart.
• The order the suffixes stack in, which is fixed and not negotiable.

The seven cases

The largest family, because this is where Mongolian puts the work English gives to prepositions. Most pages here carry fifty questions on their own selection problem.

• The seven cases: overview, with гэр and ном declined side by side.
• Choosing the right ending, a decision tree that crosses two criteria.
• The nominative, the case with no ending at all.
• The genitive, six forms, and "of" placed in front of the noun.
• The dative-locative, one ending for English "to" and "in".
• The accusative, and the times the mark is simply absent.
• The ablative, "from" — and also "than" in a comparison.
• The instrumental, by, with, and the language you speak in.
• The comitative, the other "with", with only three forms.
• Saying "to" a place, and whether руу is an eighth case.
• The reflexive possessive, obligatory, and with no English equivalent.
• All seven on one page, the table to consult without reading.

The noun phrase

Everything that happens around a noun: what replaces the articles, how the plural behaves, what an adjective does and does not do.

• No "a" and no "the", and the five things that carry the information instead.
• The pronouns, declined in full, because they are the irregular ones.
• This and that, plus the whole regular т– series.
• The plural, rarely marked, sometimes forbidden.
• The numbers, each with two forms, and the noun that stays singular after them.
• The adjectives, never agreeing, and how comparison is expressed.
• The postpositions, each with the case it demands.
• Building new words, the derivational suffixes that multiply your vocabulary.
• Mongolian names, and how to address the person in front of you.

The verb

Three layers, always named in this order: finite indicatives, participles, converbs. Mongolian does not do without tenses; it adds two layers on top of them.

• Mongolian verbs: stem, suffix, and no person agreement. Start here.
• Verbal forms in Mongolian, the complete reference table for one stem.
• Present and future, where English "I drink tea" forces a choice.
• The past, four of them, and the criterion that picks one.
• The participles, and the relative clause that goes in front of the noun.
• The converbs, linking clauses without "and", "if" or "after".
• The conditional, how to say "if" with an ending.
• Causative, passive, cooperative, the suffixes that sit in the middle of the stack.
• The collective suffix, for "all of us, together".
• The imperatives, six degrees of asking, where English has one.
• Can, must, want, like, redistributed over separate constructions.
• Wanting and needing, which are two different machines.
• There is no verb "to like", and what is used instead.
• Sentences with two verbs, where only the last one is inflected.
• "To be", and having no verb for "to have", the two absences together.

The sentence

How the pieces are arranged, how a question is asked, how something is denied, and how two clauses become one sentence.

• Word order, in three blocks, with a long sentence taken apart.
• Saying no, a decision table according to what you are denying.
• The question particles, chosen by two different logics.
• The question words, who, what, where, when, and their cases.
• Yes and no, which are not single words in Mongolian.
• Complex sentences, built without any word for "that".
• Saying when, and the case each time expression takes.

Particles and register

What English does with the voice, Mongolian writes down. This family is also where politeness lives, and politeness in Mongolian is grammar.

• The final particles, insistence, warning, reminder, appeal.
• The grammar of address, and the distinction English lost.
• Greetings, taken apart morpheme by morpheme rather than memorised.
• Forty everyday phrases, each one explained by a rule you already know.
• Non-verbal communication, the gestures and the etiquette, to close the guide.

Mongolia and the language

монгол хэл (the Mongolian language) is spoken by about five million people, mainly in Mongolia, in China and in Siberia, where Buryat is its close relative. In Mongolia it is written with the Cyrillic alphabet; the older vertical script is still taught, and is the official script of Inner Mongolia. This guide teaches the standard spoken and written language of Mongolia.

Mongolia is known for its blue sky, its theatrical spaces and its wild horses. Whether through the epic of Genghis Khan or the mystical landscapes of the steppe, travellers in search of adventure tend to arrive with a fixed set of images of this corner of Central Asia. Those immense views are real, but daily life in the capital, Ulaanbaatar, is a long way from the legend. The country still lives to the rhythm of a sometimes hostile nature: hard winters, a dry climate with little rain, a short hot summer, sudden storms that take out a herd overnight. Those realities are part of a herder's year today, not only of the history.

The Mongolian people, through a long history and great conquests, have fascinated outsiders for centuries. The practical difficulty for a visitor is simpler than any of that: this is a country where one language does nearly all the talking, and outside Ulaanbaatar English will not carry you far. Many travellers come home a little frustrated at having had no direct contact with the people they came to meet, and keep the intention of fixing it before the next trip without quite knowing where to begin. The grammar on these pages and the audio course that accompanies it are built for exactly that intention: the pages teach you to read and understand the system, the recordings teach you to say it out loud.