The Mongolian Ablative: Saying from, and Saying than

From goes behind the word

English puts from in front of the noun and leaves the noun alone. Mongolian does the opposite: nothing stands in front, and an ending is welded to the back.

Би Францаас ирсэн.

I France-ABL come-PAST

"I come from France."

There is no separate word to learn, and no word order to get right — the ending travels with the noun and the noun can sit wherever the sentence needs it, as long as the verb still closes the sentence. What you do have to get right is the vowel of the ending, which changes according to the word it is attached to.

The four forms

This case has four forms, one for each vowel class, and they are picked by the vowels already in the word:

• –аас on a word in а or у: Канад → Канадаас, Франц → Францаас, Улаанбаатар → Улаанбаатараас
• –оос on a word in о: хот → хотоос, Монгол → Монголоос
• –ээс on a word in э or ү: гэр → гэрээс, хүн → хүнээс
• –өөс on a word in ө: хөдөө → хөдөөнөөс

Nine other suffixes vary in the same four ways, and the single table that holds them all is the page The Four-Form Suffix Table. What matters here is that this case is one of the easy ones to select: the last letter of the word is irrelevant, so you only need to find the controlling vowel and take the matching form. The ending is also unmistakable in speech — a long vowel followed by с is always this case.

Three things that happen to the word itself

The ending is regular; the words in front of it are not always. Three adjustments turn up in the forms on this page, and all three are the property of How a Mongolian Word Is Built. They are listed here, not accounted for, so that the examples below can be read.

An н can appear between word and ending: хөдөө (countryside) gives хөдөөнөөс, өглөө (morning) gives өглөөнөөс, хэзээ (when) gives хэзээнээс, маргааш (tomorrow) gives маргаашнаас — while хаана (where) gives plain хаанаас. A short vowel in the last syllable can fall out: өчигдөр (yesterday) gives өчигдрөөс, газар (place) газраас, буудал (station, hotel) буудлаас, аймаг (province) аймгаас. And the soft sign ь is replaced: сургууль (school) gives сургуулиас.

The one point in all that which is this page's own is a reassuring one: none of it disturbs the ending. Whatever happens to the end of the word, the vowel of the ending is still the vowel the word had before anything happened to it — өчигдөр loses a vowel and still takes –өөс.

Where you come from

The plain use, and the one a beginner needs on the first day:

• Өчигдөр ах хөдөөнөөс ирсэн. (My elder brother came from the countryside yesterday.)
• Оюутан өчигдөр Монголоос ирэв. (The student arrived from Mongolia yesterday.)
• Энэ нүүдэлчин Төв аймгаас ирсэн. (This nomad comes from Töv province.)
• Тэр саяхан хөдөөнөөс ирсэн. (He came back from the countryside recently.)

The question is one word, хаанаас, which is simply хаана (where) with the ending on it. Та хаанаас ирсэн бэ? means "Where do you come from?" — and the thing to notice is that English marks the difference between "where are you going" and "where are you from" by changing the preposition at the front, while Mongolian changes the ending at the back: хаана, хаанаас. The full set of question words and their case forms is on the page Mongolian Question Words.

Where a thing was got

Here the case starts doing work English does not ask for. Anything you take, buy, obtain or get out of something is treated as coming from it. The verb авах (to take, to get, to buy) demands this case, and the pairing is fixed: learn the verb and the case together.

Би энэ номыг гэрээс авсан.

I this book-ACC home-ABL take-PAST

"I got this book at home."

• Би нэг номыг дэлгүүрээс авсан. (I bought a book at the shop.)
• Би энэ морийг нэг малчнаас худалдан авсан. (I bought this horse from a herder.)
• Хаанаас талх авч болох вэ? (Where can one buy bread?)
• Би энэ юмыг ааваас авмаар байна. (I want to get this thing from my father.)

Two of those four match English and two do not. "I bought this horse from a herder" has its own from; "I bought a book at the shop" has at, and "where can one buy bread" has nothing at all, yet Mongolian uses the same ending in all four, because all four are the same relation: the thing came out of somewhere. Translating the English preposition word for word is exactly what gives a beginner away, and the audio course makes the point at length rather than in passing.

The same logic reaches two further verbs. гарах (to come out, to be produced) takes the source in this case: Та малаас юу гарах вэ? (What do you get from your livestock?), answered with Бид малаас сүү, арьс, ноос, ноолуур, махыг нь хэрэглэдэг. (We use the milk, hides, wool, cashmere and meat of the livestock.) And асуух (to ask) puts the person asked here, where English has an object with no preposition: Энэ цагдаа таны тухай биднээс асуусан. means "This police officer asked us about you", but says, word for word, asked from us.

From when

A starting point in time is a source too, so the same ending covers it:

• өчигдрөөс (since yesterday)
• маргаашнаас (from tomorrow)
• Тэр судлаач өглөөнөөс хойш хүлээсэн. (That researcher waited from the morning onwards.)
• Та хэзээнээс Улаанбаатарт суусан бэ? (Since when have you been living in Ulaanbaatar?)
• Чи хэдэн наснаасаа хуучин монгол бичиг уншиж эхэлсэн бэ? (From what age did you start reading the old Mongolian script?)

Three details are worth taking from that list. The first two are the pair the course itself uses to introduce suffixes at all, өчигдрөөс and маргаашнаас: the ending looks forward from the moment of speaking exactly as readily as it looks back, and English has to change its preposition between the two — since yesterday, from tomorrow — where Mongolian does not. Then хойш (after, onwards) often follows the ending and sharpens it, without replacing it; the case is still doing the work. And "since when?" is a single word, Хэзээнээс?, which is a useful thing to be able to say early. How time expressions are built and where they sit in the sentence belongs to the page Saying When: Mongolian Time Expressions and Their Cases.

Bigger from Ulaanbaatar

This is the use no English speaker predicts. Mongolian has no word for than. To compare two things, you put the thing you are comparing against into this case and leave the adjective completely alone:

Парис Улаанбаатараас том.

Paris Ulaanbaatar-ABL big

"Paris is bigger than Ulaanbaatar."

Оюутан багшаас залуу.

student teacher-ABL young

"The student is younger than the teacher."

Read literally: "Paris is big from Ulaanbaatar", "the student is young from the teacher". Two things are happening at once, and both are departures from English. There is no equivalent of than: the ending on the standard of comparison does that word's entire job, and nothing else in the sentence is called on to help. And the order is reversed — the standard comes first, carrying the ending, and the adjective comes last. English puts the adjective first and the standard after it: bigger than Ulaanbaatar. Mongolian: Ulaanbaatar-from big.

Notice also what does not happen: том and залуу come through the comparison untouched, exactly as they stand in the dictionary. Why a Mongolian adjective never changes shape, and how the superlative is made, is the page Mongolian Adjectives. Here the point is only which of the two terms takes this ending — the one you are measuring against — and that the ending is enough on its own.

The pronouns

These do not follow the rule, because the pronouns have their own stems:

The ending itself is recognisable throughout — a long vowel plus с — so even an unfamiliar pronoun form announces its case. What changes is the stem: би goes to над–, чи to чам–, тэр to түүн–. In та нараас only the second word takes the ending, because та нар is a two-word group. The complete seven-case table, and the two parallel series that бид keeps, are on the page Mongolian Personal Pronouns and Possessives.

One ending for the whole phrase

When several words form a single unit, only the last one is inflected, and the others stand in their plain form:

Each of the last three also shows the short vowel dropping out of the inflected word: газар to газраас, буудал to буудлаас, аймаг to аймгаас. There is no agreement of any kind between the two words of the phrase, which is why the first one never looks any different from its dictionary form.

The borders of this case

Three neighbours are easy to confuse with it, and each has its own page. Movement towards a place is руу or рүү, not this ending; a place where nothing moves is the dative-locative. English covers those two and this one with just to and from, which is why the three-way sort has a page of its own.

The fourth confusion is the one that catches most learners, and it runs between this case and the comitative. Both answer to English sentences that contain no preposition at all:

The middle column is the thing to memorise, because it is the Mongolian way of putting it that decides the case, not the English sentence you started from. авах wants a source; уулзах wants a companion. Learn each verb with the case it governs, the way you would learn a noun with its gender in a language that has gender, and the problem stops being a problem. The comitative endings themselves, and the fact that there are three of them rather than four, are on the page The Mongolian Comitative.