Mongolian Personal Pronouns, Possessives and Their Cases

Why the pronouns need a page of their own

Everywhere else in Mongolian the endings behave. You look at the last letter of a noun, you look at its vowels, and you know what to attach; the whole procedure is set out on Choosing the Right Case Ending. The pronouns escape it. The word for I is би, but to me is надад and me as an object is намайг, and no amount of looking at би will produce either of them. English has the same disease on a smaller scale — I, me, my, mine — so the idea is not strange. There is simply more of it.

The practical consequence is that this is a page to memorise rather than a page to reason from. Twenty-odd forms, read aloud column by column, and you are done with the hardest irregularity in the language.

I, you and you: the singular

These three columns are the ones you will use in nearly every sentence you speak. чи is the familiar you, for a child or a close friend; та is the polite you, for everyone else.

Three things to notice, in order of usefulness.

• би has three stems. миний in the genitive, намайг in the accusative, and над– for the four remaining cases. Nothing links them.
• чи has two. чиний in the genitive, and чам– everywhere else.
• та is nearly regular: the stem stays and the ordinary endings go on. Its genitive, таны, is the word you already use for your.

The learning trick that works is to learn the column, not the row. Say би, миний, надад, намайг, надаас, надаар, надтай as one chant, then do the same for чи. Learning across the rows teaches you seven versions of one case and leaves you unable to produce a single pronoun in conversation.

He and she: what the method's table actually gives

This is the row where most descriptions quietly tidy things up, so here is the plain fact: the method's own table does not decline тэр. It declines two phrases instead, энэ хүн (this person) and тэр хүн (that person), and as always in a group of words, only the last word takes the ending.

That is a sensible thing for a beginner's course to do, because the two-word phrases are regular and the one-word pronoun is not. But the one-word forms turn up in the method's sentences all the same, built on a stem түүн– that has no visible connection to тэр:

• түүний (his, her) — Та түүний аав уу? (Are you his father?)
• түүнд (to him, to her) — the dative-locative, quoted in the note just below.
• түүнийг (him, her, as an object) — Тэд түүнийг өөрөө харсан. (They saw him themselves.)
• түүнээс (from him, from her) — the ablative, on the same stem.
• түүнтэй (with him, with her) — Тэд түүнтэй цуг хятад хэл сурсан. (They studied Chinese with her.)

We, you and they: the plural

бид runs two complete series side by side, бидний, бидэнд, биднийг and манай, манд, маныг. The method prints both and so does this table; the difference between the two in the genitive is a real difference in meaning, and it gets a section of its own below.

та нар is two words and behaves like any Mongolian group of words: та never changes and нар carries everything. So та нарт, та нараас, та нартай, and never anything attached to та itself.

эд and тэд are both glossed they. In the method's sentences it is тэд that you will meet, so learn that column first.

One pronoun for he, she and it

тэр covers he, she and that, and so does түүний for his and her. Mongolian has no grammatical gender, and nothing anywhere in the sentence will tell you whether the person is a man or a woman.

Тэр багш.

that teacher

"He is a teacher." / "She is a teacher."

Neither word in that sentence is marked for sex. English has no grammatical gender either, so there is nothing foreign about the idea — but English does force a choice between he and she, and this is the one place where an English speaker has to give something up. When you translate, keep the sentence open: he or she, and the Mongolian will not tell you which.

When it genuinely matters, the method puts эрэгтэй (man) or эмэгтэй (woman) straight after the pronoun:

• Тэр эмэгтэй таны эхнэр үү? (Is she your wife?)
• Тэр эрэгтэй миний оюутан уу? (Is he my student?)
• Тэр эрэгтэй танай малчин уу? (Is he your herder?)

The same device works on nouns. дүү means younger sibling and says nothing about sex, so the method's reading passage specifies: Би гурван ах, нэг эмэгтэй дүүтэй. (I have three older brothers and one younger sister.) Family words that carry the sex in their meaning — аав father, ээж mother, хүү son, охин daughter — need no help; occupation words such as багш, оюутан and малчин do.

The possessives

Six of the seven possessives are simply the genitive of the pronoun, which is why there is nothing new to learn once the table above is in place. They go in front of the noun, exactly as in English, and they never agree with it in any way.

Eight words for seven persons, and once you have them you can put them in front of any noun in your vocabulary. Nothing changes on either side.

таны or танай: how many people are you talking to?

English has one word, your, for one person and for a crowd. Mongolian splits them, and the split is not about politeness but about number.

• таны belongs to та, the polite singular. You are speaking to one adult: your host, a shopkeeper, a herder you have just met. The method glosses таны найз as your friend, speaking to one person.
• танай belongs to та нар, you in the plural. You are addressing a family or a group: танай эх орон, your country.

A derived word worth having ready is танайхан, your household, used in the greeting Танайхан сайн уу? (Is your family well?), to which the matching answer is Манайхан сайн! (My family is well!). Whether to use та or чи at all — a social decision with real consequences, and one English gives you no instinct for — belongs to Politeness and Address.

манай or бидний: who is included?

This one has no English counterpart at all, and the method draws attention to it as something particular to Mongolian. Both words mean our, and they differ over whether the person you are talking to is part of the our.

• манай ээж — our mother, and yours too. The hearer is inside the group.
• бидний оюутан — our student, not yours. The hearer is outside it.

So манай аав, said to a sibling, means the father we share. Said to a stranger it would be odd. Where the context settles nothing, the method's own answer key accepts either form, so this is a distinction to understand rather than to agonise over.

Standing alone: mine, yours, theirs

Add –х to a possessive and it stops modifying a noun and stands in the noun's place. The possessive goes in front of something; the pronoun replaces it.

These are the words for picking up a bag in a bus and asking whose it is. The frame is always the same: a pointer, the thing, the standalone pronoun, and a question particle at the end.

• Энэ ном таных уу? (Is this book yours?)
• Энэ цамц чинийх үү? (Is this sweater yours?)
• Энэ гэр танайх уу? (Is this ger yours?)
• Энэ ном минийх биш. (This book is not mine.)

Compare Энэ чиний ээж үү? (Is this your mother?) with Энэ цамц чинийх үү? (Is this sweater yours?) and you can see the whole difference in one pair: in the first the possessive leans on a following noun, in the second there is no noun left for it to lean on, so it takes –х.

The same –х goes on nouns, where it means the one belonging to: Канадынх, the one from Canada, and the indispensable question Энэ дэвтэр хэнийх вэ? (Whose is this notebook?). And the resulting word can itself take a case, which is how the method compares two things without repeating the noun: Хөдөөний амьдрал Улаанбаатарынхаас илүү тайван юм. (Country life is quieter than life in Ulaanbaatar.) Three pieces, read from the left: of Ulaanbaatar, the one, than.

Where this page stops

The social weight of та against чи, and the respectful word гуай, are on Politeness and Address; this page gives the forms, that page gives the usage. The enclitics минь, чинь, маань and тань, which also mean my and your but follow the noun, are on Mongolian Final Particles. The suffix that says the subject's own, and which makes a possessive unnecessary, is on The Reflexive Possessive. And энэ and тэр in their other life as pointers, together with энд, тэнд and the verb forms built on the same stem, are on Mongolian Demonstratives.