Movement Towards a Place in Mongolian: An Eighth Case?

Two English words, three Mongolian forms

An English speaker handles the whole business of places with two prepositions. You go to the market, you live in the city, you come from the airport, and the only real decision is between to and from. Mongolian cuts the same ground into three, and the cut falls in a place English has no word for: the journey towards somewhere is marked differently from simply being somewhere.

The two endings each have a page of their own in this guide, The Mongolian Dative-Locative and The Mongolian Ablative, and this page does not repeat how either of them is built. What it does is the sorting, because the sorting is the part English speakers get wrong, and getting it wrong is audible: it produces sentences that are understood but sound as though you had said you live towards the city.

The form itself

It is a short word placed after the noun, not a prefix and not a preposition. Where English says towards the river, Mongolian says river towards.

Үнэг гол руу явсан.

fox river towards go-PAST

"The fox went to the river."

Тэр цонх руу чулуу шидсэн.

he window towards stone throw-PAST

"He threw a stone at the window."

Би үүл рүү харж байна.

I cloud towards look-CONV be-PRES-FUT

"I am looking at the clouds."

Notice the third example. The method's own sentences put this form with verbs of real movement, явах (to go, to leave) and гүйх (to run), but also with actions that are merely aimed somewhere: throwing a stone, looking at a cloud. That is worth holding on to, because it tells you what the form really encodes. It is not motion as such. It is a direction, a line pointing away from the speaker towards a target, and the English translation of it slides around — to, towards, at, or nothing at all.

Two forms, and a variant in л-

There are two harmonic forms. руу goes after a word whose vowels belong to the а, о, у class; рүү goes after a word whose vowels belong to the э, ө, ү class. That is the whole of the harmony here, and the general rule behind it is on the page Mongolian Vowel Harmony: The Rule.

The last row is the exception, and it is the one place where published descriptions tend to mislead. Each of the two forms has a variant beginning with л- instead of р-, and the method's single example of it is a noun that already ends in р: гэр gives гэр лүүгээ. Two r-sounds in a row are awkward to say, which is the likely reason for the л-, but the method does not state it as a rule and neither will this page.

Is it a case, or a postposition?

The method raises the question itself and declines to answer it, which is the honest thing to do. For some linguists this is an eighth case, standing alongside the seven that nouns decline for. For others it is a postposition: an invariable little word placed behind the noun, in the same family as тухай (about) and дараа (after), which have their own page here, Mongolian Postpositions.

The hesitation shows up in the spelling. The method most often writes it separated from the noun by a space, as all the examples above do, but it warns you not to be surprised to find it written joined on, exactly like a case suffix. Both spellings are in circulation.

There is a second argument on the suffix side, and it is a strong one: this word can itself take a suffix. ээж рүүгээ and гэр лүүгээ both end in a syllable that adds the sense of one's own — his own mother, my own home. Only something suffix-like attracts further suffixes.

Тэр ээж рүүгээ гүйж явсан.

he mother towards-REFL run-CONV go-PAST

"He ran to his mother."

Гэр лүүгээ явъя.

home towards-REFL go-IMP

"Let's go home."

That final syllable is the reflexive possessive, and it is a mechanism in its own right, used far beyond this form; the page The Reflexive Possessive is where it is explained. For the question at hand, the practical answer is that nothing depends on the label. Whether you file it as a case or as a postposition, you use it the same way, and nobody will stop you in the street to ask.

Where it stands in the sentence

The group goes in front of the verb, and the verb closes the sentence. These are the method's own sentences, and between them they cover most of what a traveller needs to say about going somewhere.

Бид маргааш өглөө зах руу явна.

we tomorrow morning market towards go-PRES-FUT

"We will go to the market tomorrow morning."

• Бид онгоцоор Монгол руу явна. (We will fly to Mongolia — literally, go to Mongolia by plane.)
• Би түүнтэй хөдөө рүү явж байна. (I am going to the countryside with him.)
• Би Монголын дараа Орос руу явмаар байна. (After Mongolia I want to go to Russia.)
• Хот руу явах автобусанд суух цаг боллоо. (It is time to get on the bus that goes into town.)

The last one repays a second look. Хот руу явах is not the main clause at all: it is a whole little phrase, the bus that goes into town, sitting in front of автобус and describing it. Mongolian puts that kind of description before the noun rather than after it, which is the subject of the page Mongolian Participles. The direction group is perfectly at home inside it.

The form also sits happily with a collective invitation, where the verb carries a suffix meaning all of us together: Гол руу хамт явцгаая! (Let's all go to the river together!) and Нэг цагийн дараа зах руу хамт явцгаая! (Let's go to the market together in an hour!). That verb suffix is explained on the page about the collective, not here.

The sort that costs the most

Here is the real difficulty, and it is not the harmony. Two very common verbs of going, очих (to go, to visit) and явах (to go, to leave), usually take their destination in the dative-locative, not in the direction form.

• Бид нар музейд очсон. (We visited the museum.)

Compare that with Бид маргааш өглөө зах руу явна. and you can see that Mongolian is not choosing between right and wrong. It is choosing between two things to say. The dative-locative treats the place as the endpoint: the museum is where we ended up, and what matters is that we were there. The direction form treats the place as the heading: the market is which way we are pointed, and what matters is the going. English flattens both into to and gives you no way to tell them apart, which is why this has to be learned as a decision rather than as a translation.

A rough working rule, good enough to speak with: if you could replace to with into or as far as, reach for the direction form; if you could replace it with at or in, reach for the dative-locative. And if the verb is очих, follow the method and use the dative-locative.

A whole journey in one sentence

Put the ablative and the direction form in the same sentence and you have drawn a line from one point to another. This is the question to have ready when you walk out of an airport:

Ямар автобус онгоцны буудлаас хот руу явдгийг хэлж өгнө үү?

which bus airport-ABL city towards go-HAB-ACC say-CONV give-PRES-FUT Q

"Could you tell me which bus goes from the airport into town?"

онгоцны буудлаас is the starting point, in the ablative; хот руу is the destination. The two never compete, because they answer different questions, and a sentence can carry both at once without any sense of crowding. The ablative's own page covers what else that ending does, including the Mongolian way of saying bigger than.

Note the үү at the end of that question, next to the ямар at its beginning. The үү belongs to the polite request хэлж өгнө үү, not to ямар, which is shut inside the clause in –ийг: the rule that a question word calls for бэ or вэ holds of the clause the question word stands in, and it is set out on the page on question particles.

Asking which way

To ask about a direction, the direction word follows the question word just as it follows any noun: Тэр юу руу чулуу шидсэн бэ? (What did he throw a stone at?). For plain where are you going, though, Mongolian has a dedicated word and does not use this form at all: Чи хаашаа явах вэ? The matching word for over there in that direction is тийшээ, as in Ямар автомашинаар тийшээ явж болохыг зааж өгнө үү? (Could you show me what vehicle one can get there with?). Those two words belong to the page Mongolian Question Words along with the rest of the family, and they are mentioned here only so that you do not try to build them out of this form. Notice in passing that шидсэн бэ and зааж өгнө үү close their sentences differently although a question word stands in both. In the second, ямар is shut inside the clause in –ыг and the үү closes the polite request, which is answered yes or no: the rule that a question word calls for бэ or вэ holds of the clause the question word stands in.

Where this page stops

Three boundaries, and all three matter. How the dative-locative is formed, and everything else it does — recipients, needing, liking — is on The Mongolian Dative-Locative. How the ablative is formed, and its use for comparison, is on The Mongolian Ablative. And the syllable that turns гэр лүү into гэр лүүгээ is on The Reflexive Possessive. What this page owns is the choice between the three, and the plain fact that English gave you only two words to make it with.