Mongolian Consonants and the Letters That Change Sound

Start with the good news

An English speaker arrives at Mongolian with an unusually good consonant inventory. Four letters that give French-speaking learners real trouble cost you nothing at all:

• ж is the j of "jam": жил [jil] (year), жижиг [jijig] (small), ээж [eej] (mother), гудамж [gudamj] (street).
• ч is the ch of "church": чулуу [chuluu] (stone), чанар [chanar] (quality), малчин [malchin] (herder).
• ш is the sh of "ship": багш [bagsh] (teacher), шашин [shashin] (religion), маргааш [margaash] (tomorrow).
• ц is the ts of "cats", and it is one sound, not two: цай [tsai] (tea), цэцэг [tsetseg] (flower).

ц deserves a line of its own. English has the sound, but only at the end of a word or inside one. Mongolian puts it at the beginning, which English never does, and the usual beginner's error is to break it in two and produce "te-sai" for цай. The fix is to take the ts of "cats", keep it whole and move it to the front: say "cats-eye", then drop the "ca".

Add м, с, в, ф and й to the easy list as well: m, s, v, f and the y of "yes", with nothing to adjust. б, д, т, п and н look just as easy and are not quite, for reasons the next two sections give. The rest of this page is the short list of things that are not like English at all.

The contrast English does not use: aspiration, not voicing

This is the deepest difference, and almost no beginner is told about it.

English describes "bin" against "pin", "do" against "to", "jeer" against "cheer" as voiced against voiceless: the vocal folds are said to vibrate during the first sound of each pair and not during the second. Mongolian has no voicing contrast of that kind at all. What separates its pairs is aspiration: the puff of air that follows the release.

The consequences are concrete. Mongolian б is not the b of "bat"; it is a p made without the puff of air, which to an English ear sits somewhere between b and p. The same holds for д, which is a t without the puff. And з, which this guide writes z, is not the z of "zoo" at all: it is a single affricate, the plain partner of ц, closer to the ds of "beds" than to anything in "zoo". зам [zam] (road), за [za] (all right), зах [zakh] (market) all begin with that affricate.

Two practical effects. First, a Mongolian hearing your English b, d or z will usually file it correctly, so your speech is intelligible from the start. Second, when you are the one listening, the pairs sound far more alike to you than they do to a native speaker, and that is the source of a whole family of listening errors described below.

х: the one genuinely new sound

х is the consonant an English speaker has to build from nothing. It is not h. It is a fricative made with the back of the tongue raised towards the soft palate, with audible friction: the ch of the German "Bach", or the sound at the end of the Scottish "loch".

хол [khol] (far), хурал [khural] (meeting), хаашаа [khaashaa] (where to), их [ikh] (big), ах [akh] (elder brother), зах [zakh] (market), Халх [Khalkh] (Khalkha).

To find it: say the k of "cook", stop just before the tongue leaves the palate, and let the air keep going. If you produce an h instead, you will be understood but you will also be unable to hear the difference between х and г at the end of a word, which matters more than it sounds.

The two г

г is the letter that catches everyone, because it has two values and the spelling does not mark which one you are looking at. The following vowel decides.

Before а, о, у and ы: a throat г. It is made far back, at the uvula, and resembles the French r more than any English g.

• арга [arga] (method)
• ботго [botgo] (young camel)
• гудамж [gudamj] (street)
• малгай [malgai] (hat)
• аргын [argyn] (of the method)

Before any other vowel, and at the end of a word: a tongue г. This one is the ordinary g of "guest", made with the back of the tongue against the soft palate.

• гэр [ger] (ger, home)
• гүйцэтгэх [güitsetgekh] (to carry out)
• цэнгэл [tsengel] (joy)
• нутаг [nutag] (homeland)
• цэцэг [tsetseg] (flower)

Note what the last two have in common. A word-final г is a tongue г, and it also loses most of what makes it sound like a g: нутаг ends much closer to a k, and so does цэцэг. Write г, expect something like k.

The three н

н also has more than one value, and here there are three, decided by what comes after.

1. Before a vowel, or before the soft sign: the n of English "no". The tip of the tongue touches the upper teeth.

ном [nom] (book), чанар [chanar] (quality), үнэг [üneg] (fox), чоно [chono] (wolf).

2. At the end of a word, or with no vowel after it: the ng of English "song". The closure moves back to the soft palate.

байшин [baishin] (house), онгоц [ongots] (aeroplane), Монгол [Mongol] (Mongolian), сан [san] (fund, treasury), цэнгэл [tsengel] (joy).

This one costs you nothing. English already has the sound, in "sing", "long" and "bank", and English speakers already produce it automatically before k and g — which is exactly the position it occupies in Монгол, where н stands in front of г. All you have to do is accept that the letter н is sometimes that sound.

3. Before б: an m. The lips close early, in preparation for the b, and the n never reaches the teeth.

You will meet this on your first day, in the commonest sentence in the language:

• Сайн байна уу (hello) — the н of сайн is heard as m.
• Энэ хэн бэ (who is this?) — the н of хэн is heard as m.

Do not correct it, and do not conclude that you misheard. Say it with the m and you sound like a speaker; say it with a careful n and you sound like someone reading.

р and л

These two are ordinary letters with unordinary values for an English ear.

р is tapped or rolled, made with the tip of the tongue against the ridge behind the teeth — the r of Spanish or Italian, not the English r, in which the tongue tip touches nothing. English speakers who substitute their own r are immediately audible as foreign, and in words where an r sits next to another consonant the substitution can make the word hard to parse: бар [bar] (tiger), гэр [ger] (ger), орон [oron] (country), архи [arkhi] (spirits), дэргэд [derged] (beside). A single tap is enough; a long trill is not required.

A second point about р: no native Mongolian word begins with it. If you find a word starting with р, it came from somewhere else.

л is the one easy-looking letter that is genuinely not English. The Mongolian lateral is made with the sides of the tongue, like an l, but with enough constriction that you can hear friction in it — closer to the Welsh ll than to the l of "little", though not as strongly. лам [lam] (lama), улс [uls] (state), жил [jil] (year), дэлхий [delkhii] (world). An English l will be understood everywhere; the Mongolian one is worth imitating because it is one of the clearest markers of a native accent.

д and т, г and х: clear at the start, close together elsewhere

Here is the listening problem that follows from the aspiration contrast, and it is the most useful thing on this page.

At the beginning of a word, each letter keeps its own sound and the distinction is clear. The first two rows below are true minimal pairs, identical but for that first letter; the others differ elsewhere as well, and are set side by side because they are the words the method uses to drill the contrast. All of them are reliably told apart:

Inside a word and at the end of one, the two members of each pair come very close to the ear. The aspiration that separates д from т is largely lost in those positions, and г in final position weakens towards х. So:

• дэргэд (beside) ends on something between a d and a t.
• бид (we) likewise.
• нутаг (homeland), цэцэг (flower), жижиг (small) all end on something near k.
• өчигдөр (yesterday) has both effects at once in its middle.

What follows for you as a learner is a rule of thumb worth more than any amount of transcription: trust the spelling, not your ear, for the letters inside and at the end of a word; trust your ear for the letter at the start. When you hear a final k, write г unless you have reason to think otherwise, because final х after a vowel is far less common than final г.

One more word worth saying aloud: даарах (to be cold). It packs a long аа, a tapped р and a final х into two syllables, and if you can say it cleanly you have most of this page in your mouth already.

What this page does not cover

Three neighbouring subjects belong elsewhere, and keeping them apart will save you confusion.

• Which consonant letters are only used in borrowed words. Three of them are, and one is merely rare; that belongs with the inventory, on the Cyrillic alphabet page.
• What happens to consonants at conversational speed. The rules above describe careful speech. At speed, whole clusters simplify and some syllables disappear; that is the subject of why spoken Mongolian does not sound like the spelling.
• The н or г that appears in front of an ending, as in хөдөөнөөс and хөдөөгөөр. Those consonants are not pronunciation at all; they are part of how a word is assembled, and they live on how a Mongolian word is built.

A short practice routine

Four things, in order of how much they repay the effort. Build х first, because you cannot approximate it. Then fix the two values of г by reading арга and гэр alternately until your mouth stops hesitating. Then let н go velar in front of nothing and labial in front of б, which costs you no new sound, only permission. Last, work on р and л, which are matters of accent rather than of intelligibility.

And when you listen to the lessons, listen for the pairs rather than the individual sounds: дах against тах, гол against хол. The sounds of a language are learned as contrasts, never one at a time, and the contrasts are what a page of description cannot give you.