Politeness and Address in Mongolian: та, чи and гуай

English has no reflex for this, and that is the difficulty

Most European languages keep a familiar second person and a polite one, and their speakers acquire the distinction as children. English used to have it — "thou" against "you" — and lost it, so that the modern English speaker arrives in Mongolian with no instinct at all. This matters more than it sounds. If you choose wrongly in Mongolian, nothing in the sentence will tell you. There is no agreement error, no ungrammatical form, no raised eyebrow built into the syntax. The sentence is perfectly correct; it is simply addressed to an elder as though he were a child.

The pronouns are чи and та. та is the polite form, used for one person; чи is the familiar one. The paradigm of both, with all seven cases, belongs to the page on pronouns, and what follows here is the question that page does not answer: which one to use, and what the choice commits you to.

What the choice commits

та is the form for anyone older than you, anyone you have just met, anyone in a position of responsibility, and anyone whose name you do not yet know. чи is for children, for close friends, and for people of your own age with whom the familiarity is already established. For a learner the asymmetry of risk settles the matter: using та where чи would have done is at worst slightly formal and will be read as courtesy, while using чи where та was owed is a real discourtesy to an older person. Default to та and let your hosts move you down.

Several people are addressed as та нар, which behaves as a noun phrase: only нар carries the case endings.

The choice propagates through the whole sentence

This is the part an English speaker underestimates. The register is not a single word you pick at the start; it is carried by every form in the sentence that refers to the person you are talking to. The two columns below are the same meanings in the two registers:

Notice that чи changes shape radically — чамд, чамайг, чамаас all come off a stem чам– that does not look like чи — whereas та keeps its shape across the cases. That is a mercy for the learner, because the form you should be using most is also the regular one. Compare the two versions of one question:

Таны нэр хэн бэ?

you-GEN name who Q

"What is your name?"

Replace таны with чиний and the sentence is still grammatical, still means the same thing, and is now something you would say to a child. The particle бэ and the word order are unaffected: politeness does not live in the syntax, it lives in the choice of forms.

таны against танай

Both are possessives built on та, and they are not interchangeable. таны is "your" when you are addressing one person politely: таны найз (your friend), таны нэр (your name). танай is "your" for more than one person, and above all for a household, a family or an institution: танай эх орон (your country), танай сургууль (your school).

This distinction carries a social habit an English speaker will not expect. Mongolian conversation asks about a person through their household, and the household form is used where English would use the singular. Танайхан сайн уу? — "are your people well?" — is an ordinary thing to ask someone you have just met, and the ordinary reply is Манайхан сайн! ("my people are well"). The forms танайхан and манайхан are built from these possessives by a derivational suffix, and the page on how words are built covers that machinery. The related choice between манай and бидний for "our" — whether the person you are speaking to is included or not — sits with the pronouns.

гуай

гуай is the respectful term of address, roughly Mr, Mrs, sir or madam. Three facts about it are worth fixing, because each of them is the opposite of the English habit:

• It follows the name: Баатар гуай, never the reverse.
• It is a separate word, not a suffix glued to the name — and when the phrase needs a case ending, it is гуай that carries it rather than the name: Би Оюунбаатар гуайтай ярих гэсэн юм. ("I should like to speak to Mr Oyunbaatar.")
• It attaches to the given name, which is the name Mongolians actually use, so there is no equivalent of being addressed by your surname.

In a sentence: Та Баатар гуай биз? ("You are Mr Baatar, I take it?"). It is used for elders and for people of standing, and it is a reliable way for a foreigner to be courteous when the та or чи decision has already been settled. The structure of Mongolian names — the given name formed of two words, and the father's name in the genitive in front of it — is the subject of its own page, and only its consequence for address belongs here: there is no inherited family name to put a title in front of.

Asking for something without sounding peremptory

English has exactly one imperative. Mongolian has a graded series, and the whole ladder from the bare stem to the solemn form is the business of the imperatives page. Only two consequences of it reach the grammar of address, and they are all that belongs here.

The first is a warning. The bare stem is the shortest thing in the dictionary and therefore the form a beginner reaches for, and it is a blunt, immediate order. The second is the one courtesy a visitor needs on the first day, which is worth taking apart because its shape is reusable:

Уучлаарай

forgive-IMP

"Excuse me."

It is the verb уучлах ("to forgive") carrying the ending –аарай, the imperative that invites rather than orders — the form, its four harmonic shapes and the rest of the ladder are set out on the imperatives page. Said word for word it is "do forgive", which is why the same word serves both for stopping a stranger in the street and for excusing yourself from a room.

One further courtesy will look to an English speaker like the opposite of one: a question put in the negative, Та цай уухгүй юу? ("won't you have tea?"), is more polite in Mongolian rather than less, and carries no reproach whatever. How that negative is built, and why it lands as politeness, belongs to the page on negation; it is named here only because hearing a complaint in it is a mistake of manners rather than of grammar.

зүгээр, the all-purpose politeness token

зүгээр means that things are all right. It is not a particle; it is the noun зүг ("direction") in the instrumental case, –ээр, so it says something like "in a good direction" — a reminder that the instrumental does far more than carry means and instruments.

Its range is wide. It reassures: Тийшээ битгий яваарай! Зүгээр. ("Don't go there." — "Fine.") It answers an offer, and here is the trap: it can mean either acceptance or polite refusal, and only the context and the speaker's manner tell you which. Та нар ядарсан уу? Зүгээр, бид нар ядраагүй. ("Are you tired?" — "We're fine, we're not tired.") is a declining use; Чи морь унамаар байна уу? Зүгээр, танд их баярлалаа! is an accepting one. It also works as an adjective meaning "fine, good": Мөрөнгийн зам зүгээр үү? ("Is the road to Mörön all right?"), Энэ чинь их зүгээр санаа байна. ("That is a very good idea.")

For a learner the lesson is to not treat зүгээр as "yes". When you offer something and receive зүгээр, look at what follows it.

За, За тэгье, and thanking

за on its own is the agreement token, "all right, well then". It combines with the тэг– series — the verb that means "to do thus" — to give За тэгье!, "all right, let's do that", which is the natural answer to a proposal. The proposal itself is often made with тэгэх үү?, "shall we?", as in Хоёулаа цуг тоглоё, тэгэх үү? ("Let's play together, shall we?"). Two mechanical points: үү rather than уу because тэгэх has front vowels, and the ending –ье on тэгье is the first-person imperative. The тэг– series as a whole belongs to the demonstratives page, and the first-person imperative to the imperatives page.

One last item, because it is the word visitors reach for first and its grammar is invisible: баярлалаа is not a noun meaning "thanks". It is a finite verb — the stem баярла– ("be glad") with the immediate past ending –лаа — so it says "I have been made glad". Thanking in Mongolian is a statement about what has just happened to you, which is why it is said after the fact and not as a formula handed over with a request.

Politeness in Mongolian is a system of forms, not a list of phrases, and this page deliberately stops short of being such a list. The greeting cycle itself, with each formula taken apart, has its own page.