The Mongolian Dative-Locative: One Case for to and in

Two English prepositions, one Mongolian ending

English treats being somewhere and giving something to someone as unrelated ideas, and gives them different words: in, at, on for the first, to for the second. Mongolian treats them as one relation and marks them with one ending. That ending is –д or –т, and the case is called the dative-locative because it genuinely does both jobs. The name is clumsy and the economy is real.

Би Улаанбаатарт амьдардаг.

I Ulaanbaatar-DAT live-HAB

"I live in Ulaanbaatar."

Багш оюутанд ном өгсөн.

teacher student-DAT book give-PAST

"The teacher gave the student a book."

A single letter of ending, –т on the place and –д on the person, carries what English splits between in and to. Notice also what is not marked: in the second sentence ном, the book, stands bare. Mongolian marks the recipient and leaves the thing given alone, which is the reverse of what an English speaker expects to be the important word.

The place where nothing moves

This is the use you will meet first and most often. The place takes the ending and the verb says what happens there.

• Энэ бүсгүй хотод амьдардаг. (This young woman lives in the city.)
• Би оюутны байранд суудаг. (I live in a student flat.)
• Тэр хөөрхөн эмэгтэй шууданд ажиллаж байна. (That kind woman works at the post office.)
• Чиний ах цайны газарт хоол идэж байна. (Your brother is eating at the canteen.)
• Миний аав их сургуульд ажилладаг. (My father works at the university.)
• Монголд мал их байна. (There are a lot of animals in Mongolia.)
• Би Монгол улсад төрсөн. (I was born in Mongolia.)

English would need in, at, on and into across that list, and would also need to decide between them. Mongolian does not offer the distinction, which means you cannot get it wrong. хотод is in the city, at the city and to the city all at once, and only the verb and the situation narrow it down.

Country and city names behave like any other noun: Монголд, Канадад, Францад, Америкт, Улаанбаатарт. There is no separate preposition for countries, no capital-letter exception, nothing to learn beyond the ending itself.

Arriving somewhere

The boundary between standing still and moving is not quite where an English speaker draws it. With очих (to go, to visit) and явах (to go, to leave), the destination takes this case and not a direction ending.

• Хөгшин шууданд очсон. (The old person went to the post office.)
• Бид маргааш хотод очно. (We will go into town tomorrow.)
• Оюутан шууданд явсан. (The student went to the post office.)

The way to make sense of this is to read the case as marking the endpoint rather than the journey: the post office is where the person ended up. When the journey itself is the point, Mongolian reaches for руу and рүү instead, and the three-way split between those, this case and the ablative is the whole subject of the page Saying to a Place: руу, рүү and the Eighth Case Question.

The person who receives

The second half of the case is the dative proper: the one who is given something, told something, shown something.

• Багш оюутнуудад шинэ дасгал өгч байна. (The teacher is giving the students new exercises.)
• Хөтөч малчинд ярьж байна. (The guide is talking to a herder.)
• Тэр надад энэ юмыг өгсөн. (He gave me this thing.)

In the last sentence three different endings are at work at once, and it is worth separating them. Тэр is the subject and has nothing. надад is the recipient and has this case. юмыг is the direct object and takes the accusative. Mongolian keeps the roles apart by ending rather than by word order, so the three words could in principle be rearranged and the sentence would still mean the same thing.

Choosing between –д and –т

Four possibilities, decided by the last letter of the word. The ending itself is never chosen by vowel harmony — only the linking vowel in the third row below follows the vowels of the stem — which makes this one of the easier endings in the language.

Two remarks about the third row. The linking vowel is not a choice you make about this case; it is the same linking vowel that Mongolian inserts whenever a consonant cluster would become unpronounceable, and the page How a Mongolian Word Is Built: Stem Plus Suffixes shows where it comes from. And its quality follows the word: хот gives хотод with о, ах gives ахад with а. If you want the whole procedure written out as a decision tree that works for all seven cases at once, that is the page Choosing the Right Case Ending: A Decision Tree.

The words that insert н

The fourth row is the part that cannot be reasoned out. гэр ends in р and gives гэрт, exactly as the rule says; байр also ends in р and gives байранд. Америк ends in к and gives Америкт; банк also ends in к and gives банканд. There is no audible difference between the two words that would warn you.

Linguists describe these words as carrying a hidden н that surfaces whenever an ending is attached. That description is accurate and completely useless for prediction: you still have to know which words they are. Nor does membership carry over reliably from one case to the next: ном takes the н here and gives номонд, but its genitive is the plain номын, and сум gives суманд against a genitive сумын. Which words show the н in the genitive is set out on the page The Mongolian Genitive. The practical answer is to learn the inflected form and the dictionary form together — ном and номонд, хоол and хоолонд — rather than learning a stem and hoping the rule will apply.

The person who has something

Mongolian has no verb meaning to have. What it has instead is this case: the owner goes into the dative-locative, the thing owned stays in its plain form, and a word of existence closes the sentence.

Танд гал бий юу?

you-DAT fire exists Q

"Have you got a light?"

Read literally that is with you, is there fire. The same frame works for places as well as people: Манай суманд олон адуу бий. (In our district there are many horses.) and Танай сургуульд хэдэн сурагч бий вэ? (How many pupils are there in your school?). In each case the word that would be the subject in English carries the ending, and the word that would be the object carries nothing.

This is the single most useful thing on the page for a beginner, because having something is a daily need and the English pattern simply has no counterpart. The other ways Mongolian says there is and I have, including the verb байна and its relatives, belong to the page байна: To Be, There Is, and Having No Verb for To Have. Here the point is narrower: whatever existence word ends the sentence, the owner is in this case.

Needing: Надад ... хэрэгтэй

The same reversal governs needing. хэрэгтэй is not a verb meaning to need; it is closer to necessary. So the person does not need the thing — the thing is necessary to the person, and the person takes the ending.

Надад виз хэрэгтэй.

I-DAT visa necessary

"I need a visa."

Change only the first word and you change who needs: Танд ... хэрэгтэй, Чамд ... хэрэгтэй, Түүнд ... хэрэгтэй. The thing needed stays bare — халуун ус, их мөнгө, дугтуй — and nothing else in the sentence moves. What хэрэгтэй means next to a verb, how it differs from ёстой, and what хэрэггүй does, are on the page Can, Must, Want, Like: Mongolian Without Modal Verbs. The case is the part that belongs here.

Liking and loving

Two more everyday expressions put the thing in this case rather than the person, and again there is no English parallel to lean on. With дуртай and with хайртай alike, it is the one who is liked or loved that carries the ending, never the one doing the liking.

• Би Монгол улсад дуртай. (I like Mongolia.)
• Би буузанд дуртай. (I like buuz.)
• Би чамд хайртай. (I love you.)

That last sentence is worth memorising as a block, because the ending on чамд is the only thing that tells you who loves whom. Swap the ending onto би and you have said the opposite. The difference in meaning between дуртай and хайртай — and the mistake of using the second one on a bowl of dumplings — is the business of the modal page; the ending is the business of this one.

The pronoun forms you learn whole

Pronouns do not take the ending you would predict from their dictionary form, so they are learned as forms:

None of these is derivable: би does not contain the sounds of надад, and чи does not contain those of чамд. Treat them as five pieces of vocabulary. The full set of pronouns across all seven cases, and the choice between таны and танай, are on the page Mongolian Personal Pronouns and Possessives.

One possessive belongs beside them, because the invitations in the course are built on it. манай (our) takes the plain ending and gives манайд, at our place. It names the speaker's own household, so English renders it sometimes as our place and sometimes as my place, depending on who is talking.

Та манайд маргааш өглөө очоорой.

you our-DAT tomorrow morning visit-IMP

"Come to our place tomorrow morning."

The ending here is doing nothing unusual. What is worth noticing is that Mongolian puts a possessive, not a noun, into the case: there is no word for home in the sentence at all.

Asking where and to whom

Question words take this ending like anything else. хэнд asks to whom, and ямар (which, what kind of) leaves the ending on the noun that follows it.

• Чи ямар хороололд амьдардаг вэ? (Which district do you live in?)
• Тэд ямар аймагт төрсөн бэ? (Which province were they born in?)

English pulls the preposition to the end of the question and leaves it stranded there — live in, born in. Mongolian never does that: the ending stays on its noun and the question particle closes the sentence. Which particle, and why these two take вэ and бэ rather than уу, is covered on the page Mongolian Question Words.

Where this case stops

Three near neighbours are deliberately left to other pages, because confusing them with this one is the commonest error after the –д and –т choice itself. Coming from a place is the ablative, not this case. Movement towards a place, when the movement matters, is руу and рүү. And doing something with someone is the comitative –тай, which also looks like possession in English but is not this ending. One last form to recognise rather than build: when the owner of the thing is also the subject, the ending is followed by a reflexive syllable, as in ахдаа (to my own brother), and that extra layer is explained on the page The Reflexive Possessive.