Mongolian Numbers and How They Behave Before a Noun

Two shapes for one number

This is the first and largest surprise, and it is not difficult once you expect it. A Mongolian number has an independent form, used when the number stands alone — counting, answering how many, giving a result — and an attributive form, used when the number sits in front of a noun. The second is almost always the first plus –н, sometimes with a short vowel dropping on the way.

Two of these deserve a note. Three entries in the table show the same form twice — тэг, нэг and хоёр — and of the three it is хоёр (two) that matters, because you will use it constantly and so meet the exception before you have learned the rule. And дөрөв → дөрвөн loses the short ө of its second syllable, which is the ordinary behaviour of a weak short vowel when a suffix arrives — the same thing that turns өчигдөр into өчигдрөөс, described on the page on how a word is built.

Eleven to nineteen: stack them, and watch which form goes where

The teens are built by putting ten in front of the unit, with no word for and and no fusion. What is worth looking at closely is which shape each half takes.

Look at the left-hand column. Thirteen standing on its own is арван гурав, not арав гурав: the ten is in its attributive form even when the compound as a whole is independent. That is consistent rather than arbitrary — inside the compound, арван is modifying what follows it, so it takes the form a modifier takes. Only the final element answers to the position of the whole number. Once you see that, you stop having to memorise the teens as separate vocabulary and can build any of them.

Tens, hundreds, thousands

The tens are mostly not transparent — гуч is not гурав plus anything, and дөч is not дөрөв plus anything — so they are vocabulary, and the resemblance to the units is close enough to be a trap rather than a help. Two pairs are worth keeping apart deliberately: ес (nine) against ер (ninety), and тав (five) against тавь (fifty), where the soft sign is the only difference on the page and the pronunciation is correspondingly delicate.

Beyond that the system is additive and needs no new rules. Hundreds and thousands are the attributive form of the multiplier plus зуун or мянган, and the units follow.

The noun after a number does not become plural

This is the rule that an English speaker breaks on the first day. The number has done the counting; the noun stays as it is.

• таван дэвтэр (five notebooks)
• хоёр сүм (two temples)
• гурван тасалбар (three tickets)
• найман иргэн (eight citizens)
• зуун үг (a hundred words)

In a full sentence:

Би хоёр ном авсан.

I two book take-PAST

"I bought two books."

Би хоёр том хүүхэдтэй.

I two big child-COM

"I have two grown children."

Both nouns are bare, and both would be wrong with a plural suffix on them. In the second, notice that an adjective can come between the number and the noun without affecting anything, and that the ending which does appear — the comitative on хүүхэд — has nothing to do with number. When the plural is and is not marked in general — a broader question, since most Mongolian nouns go unmarked most of the time — is the subject of the page on the plural.

And the number also goes in front, as every modifier in Mongolian does. There is no construction corresponding to English three of the books with the number behind; the shape is always number, then noun.

Asking how many

хэдэн (how many) occupies the slot a number would occupy, and behaves exactly like one — in front of the noun, and the noun unmarked:

Та хэдэн морьтой вэ?

you how-many horse-COM Q

"How many horses do you have?"

Гэрт хэдэн хүн байна вэ?

ger-DAT how-many person be-PRES-FUT Q

"How many people are there in the ger?"

Its bare counterpart хэд is used where the answer is a number and no noun follows. The particle вэ that closes both questions is not optional, and the reason it is вэ rather than уу is explained on the question particles page; the other question words sit with it on the question words page.

Rounding a number off: –аад

English says about forty, forty or so, some hundred. Mongolian puts a suffix on the number itself, in four harmonic shapes: –аад, –оод, –ээд, –өөд.

• гуч → гучаад (about thirty)
• дөч → дөчөөд (about forty)
• зуу → зуугаад (about a hundred)

Тэнд зуугаад адуу байна (there are about a hundred horses over there); Би дөчөөд морьтой (I have about forty horses). The г in зуугаад is not part of the suffix: it is a linking letter, inserted because зуу ends in a long vowel. Which of the four vowels the suffix takes is decided by the stem, and the full set of ten four-form suffixes is tabulated once, on the four-form suffix table.

One warning for readers. This suffix is spelled identically to the perfective converb that links two verb clauses, the –аад of the converbs page. They are never confusable in practice, because one sits on a number and the other on a verb stem, but a dictionary will not help you and the shape alone will not tell you.

Ordinals

Two endings, and the first is the one you need.

–дугаар / –дүгээр makes the ordinary ordinal: нэгдүгээр (first), хоёрдугаар (second), тавдугаар (fifth), есдүгээр (ninth), and compounds like арван хоёрдугаар (twelfth). It goes in front of its noun like any other modifier: нэгдүгээр хичээл (lesson one).

дахь / дэх is the second set, and the clearest place to see it is the plain-language names of the weekdays: Нэгдэх өдөр (Monday, literally first day), Хоёрдахь өдөр (Tuesday), Гуравдахь өдөр (Wednesday), Дөрөвдэх өдөр (Thursday), Тавдахь өдөр (Friday). Saturday and Sunday step out of the series entirely and are Хагас сайн өдөр and Бүтэн сайн өдөр, which are not built on numbers at all. Alongside this series there is a second, older set of weekday names that are not numbers either, so the ordinal pattern is a convenience rather than the only option.

Where the numbers actually turn up

Three everyday jobs, each of which is a use of a number rather than a new piece of grammar.

The hour. цаг is both hour and time, минут is minute, and the question is Одоо хэдэн цаг болж байна? (what time is it now?). To say at a time, the dative-locative ending goes on the counted word: арван цагт (at ten o'clock). That ending, and the choice between –д and –т, belong to the dative-locative page; where a time phrase sits in the sentence is on the page on time expressions.

The months. There are no month names in the European sense. A month is an ordinal plus сар (month, moon): нэгдүгээр сар is January, хоёрдугаар сар February, тавдугаар сар May, есдүгээр сар September, арван хоёрдугаар сар December. In a date the month then goes into the genitive, сарын, because the day belongs to it.

Counting money. Nothing special happens here either: the attributive form of the number goes in front of the name of the unit, exactly as it goes in front of any other noun, and the unit stays singular. The vocabulary of money and of the calendar is not grammar and is not taught here.

Counting events rather than things

For how many times, Mongolian uses удаа (time, occasion) with a quantity word in front of it, the same way English uses times: олон удаа (many times), built on олон (many) — the same олон as in Би хөдөө олон тэмээ үзсэн (I saw many camels in the countryside), where it measures things rather than occasions. And дахин (again) can be doubled for emphasis: дахин дахин (again and again). Neither of those is a number, but both fill the slot a number fills, in front of the word they measure.