There Is No Verb "To Like": дуртай and хайртай

An adjective where English has a verb

In I like buuz, like is a transitive verb and buuz is its direct object. The whole sentence is built on that: you can make it passive, you can put the object into a pronoun, you can ask what do you like. English speakers therefore arrive expecting a Mongolian verb and an accusative object.

Neither exists. Дуртай is not a verb. It belongs to the same family as завтай (having free time), ажилтай (having work) and зоригтой (brave, having courage): a noun plus the ending –тай / –той / –тэй, which attaches to a noun and makes a word meaning with that thing. Reference dictionaries give the noun inside it, дур, as liking or inclination; the method does not teach that noun separately and you do not need it, but knowing it is there explains the grammar. Хайртай is the same shape built on хайр (love).

So a Mongolian sentence about liking is a sentence with no verb in it at all. Би буузанд дуртай is a subject, a word in the dative-locative, and an adjective closing the sentence as its predicate. That kind of verbless sentence is normal in Mongolian and is treated on the page about байна and the predicate without a copula; what concerns us here is everything that follows from it.

The thing you like goes into the dative-locative

Since the sentence has no verb, there is no object, so there is no accusative. The thing liked takes the case of a point you are oriented towards — the dative-locative, in –д or –т:

• Би буузанд дуртай.
• I buuz-DAT fond
• "I like buuz."

And so throughout: Би Монгол улсад дуртай. (I like Mongolia.), Би сүүтэй цайнд дуртай. (I like tea with milk.), Хүүхдүүд чихэрт дуртай. (Children like sweets.), Би монгол үхрийн маханд их дуртай. (I like Mongolian beef very much.), Та энэ хоолонд дуртай юу? (Do you like this dish?), Та манай оронд дуртай юу? (Do you like our country?), Та ажилдаа дуртай юу? (Do you like your job?)

The method's own list of things one can be дуртай to shows how varied the ending looks: маханд, хоолонд, буузанд, цайнд, чихэрт, шар айрагт, цасанд, моринд, музейд, монгол хөгжимд. The variation is not the liking construction doing anything: it is the ordinary business of choosing a dative-locative ending, and the decision tree for it is on its own page. Here, simply notice that the ending is the same one you would use to say in the food or to the horse.

The mistake to expect from yourself is the accusative. I like buuz has buuz as its object, so an English speaker reaches for буузыг — and буузыг is a perfectly real form, so nothing about it looks wrong on the page. It is simply ungrammatical here, because the sentence it would belong to has no verb for an object to depend on. The same reflex produces Монгол улсыг, хоолыг, махыг in the same slot, and all of them are wrong for the same reason. If you catch yourself about to put an accusative in front of дуртай, stop and put the dative-locative there instead.

Liking to do something: the –х form, and no dative at all

When what you like is an activity rather than a thing, the verb goes into the plain –х form and takes no case ending whatever:

• Та монгол хоол идэх дуртай юу?
• you Mongolian food eat-PART fond Q
• "Do you like eating Mongolian food?"

Also Манай хөтөч унах дуртай. (Our guide likes riding.), Би монгол хэл ярих маш их дуртай. (I very much like speaking Mongolian.), Тэр энэ ажлыг хийх дуртай юу? (Does she like doing this work?)

Set the two patterns against each other, because this is the single most testable thing on the page:

And note what happens inside the activity. In Тэр энэ ажлыг хийх дуртай юу? the word ажлыг carries an accusative, because it is the object of хийх (to do) — not of the liking. The –х clause keeps its own internal grammar untouched. So there can be an accusative in a sentence about liking; it just never belongs to дуртай.

хайртай: love, and only of people

The second word of the pair is built identically and used in the same frame, with the person in the dative-locative:

• Би чамд хайртай.
• I you-DAT loving
• "I love you."

Also Би охиндоо маш их хайртай. (I love my daughter very much.), Би ахдаа хайртай. (I love my brother.)

The division of labour is firm: дуртай for things and activities, хайртай for people. English will not help you here, because English love and like do not split that way. I love this soup has to become дуртай — using хайртай of a soup is not warm, it is wrong. And I like my sister, said affectionately, is more naturally хайртай than дуртай, because what you have towards a sister is not an appetite. Map the Mongolian pair onto the English pair in either direction and you will get it wrong in both.

Two further points. Охиндоо and ахдаа are not plain dative forms — they carry a second suffix after the case, the reflexive possessive, which is why they mean my daughter and my brother with no word for my in the sentence; that suffix has its own page and is explained there. Second, the method gives дургүй as the negative of дуртай but gives no negative of хайртай, so do not construct one by analogy — say what you mean with дургүй, or say nothing.

Degree: их and маш их

There is no comparative or superlative ending on дуртай. Intensity comes from a word placed in front of it: их (much) or маш их (very much).

Би танай оронд маш их дуртай. (I like your country very much.), Би монгол үхрийн маханд их дуртай. (I like Mongolian beef a lot.), Би монгол хэл ярих маш их дуртай. (I really like speaking Mongolian.), Би охиндоо маш их хайртай. (I love my daughter dearly.)

So the order of the sentence is: subject, then the thing liked with its ending, then the intensifier, then дуртай, then any final particle. The intensifier never moves to the other side. How Mongolian builds comparatives and superlatives in general — with the ablative and with хамгийн — is the business of the adjectives page.

Not liking: дургүй

The negative is not made with a separate word. The ending –тай is replaced by –гүй and the rest of the sentence stays exactly as it was:

• Тэр мууранд дургүй.
• he cat-DAT not.fond
• "He doesn't like cats."

And with an activity, the –х form and no case, as before: Тэр ажиллах дургүй. (She doesn't like working.)

Three things not to do. Do not put биш after дуртай: a word in –тай makes its own negative by replacing that ending with –гүй, so the negative here is дургүй and nothing is added after it. Do not use байхгүй, which denies existence. Do not change the vowels of –гүй to match the word — it is invariable, and that invariability is one of the standard exceptions to vowel harmony. The full map of Mongolian negation, with үгүй, биш, байхгүй, –гүй and битгий each in its slot, is on the negation page.

Asking, and answering

A yes-or-no question adds юу at the end, after дуртай: Та ажилдаа дуртай юу? The answer is the word itself, repeated: Дуртай. There is no auxiliary to echo, as English does with yes I do, and no need for a word for yes.

With a question word in the question itself, the final particle is not юу but вэ: Чи ямар хоолонд дуртай вэ? (What food do you like?), Та юу идэх дуртай вэ? (What do you like to eat?) That pairing — a question word in the clause the particle closes always calls for бэ or вэ, never уу or юу — is a rule of the question pages, and the second example shows why it is easy to get wrong: the sentence contains юу already, in its real job as the word what, and the particle at the end is still вэ.

In summary, as a procedure

1. Decide whether you like a thing or like doing something.
2. A thing: put it in the dative-locative. An activity: put the verb in –х and add nothing.
3. Decide whether it is a person. A person, and real affection: хайртай. Anything else: дуртай.
4. For intensity, put их or маш их immediately in front.
5. To deny it, change дуртай to дургүй and touch nothing else.
6. Close with юу for a yes-or-no question, or with вэ if the question itself contains a question word.

Nothing in that procedure involves a verb, and that is the point to carry away. The English sentence has a verb at its centre; the Mongolian one has an adjective at its end, and everything else in the sentence is arranged around that difference.