Why Spoken Mongolian Does Not Sound Like the Spelling

The gap, stated plainly

Mongolian Cyrillic is a good alphabet. Compared with English, where though, through and tough share four letters and no sounds, Mongolian spelling is close to an honest record of the word. But it is a record of the word said slowly and completely, the way you would say it to a child learning to read. At ordinary speed, speakers drop some of it. They drop the same things every time, which means the difference between the page and the ear is a short list rather than a mystery, and this page is that list.

This matters more here than in most languages, because the course this grammar accompanies is audio. You will hear a word before you see it. If you expect the spelling you will mishear it, and if you expect too little of the spelling you will write it wrong. Both halves have to be held at once: write the full form, expect the short one.

Short vowels after the first syllable

The first syllable of a Mongolian word carries the weight and is slightly longer. After it, a single written vowel is said briefly — so briefly that the method behind this course calls it the indistinct vowel. The letter is there, the colour of the vowel is there, but the duration is almost nothing.

Hear it in words you will meet in the first hour: хавар [khavar] (spring), хэлэх [khelekh] (to say), ажил [ajil] (work), өдөр [ödör] (day), чанар [chanar] (quality), хэдэн [kheden] (how many), зориг [zorig] (courage), цэцэг [tsetseg] (flower), жижиг [jijig] (small), нутаг [nutag] (homeland), малчин [malchin] (herder), шашин [shashin] (religion), эцэг [etseg] (father), ямар [yamar] (which, what kind of). In every one of them the two written vowels have different durations: the first is held, the second is flicked.

Some words carry two of these short vowels in a row after the stressed syllable, and then the shape of the word is almost unrecognisable from the spelling at speed. өчигдөр [öchigdör] (yesterday) has a full ө at the front and two brief vowels behind it.

An English speaker has an advantage and a trap here. The advantage: English does the same thing, which is why banana has three written a's and one clear one. The trap: English reduces its unstressed vowels to a single neutral sound, so that the second and third vowels of banana are not really a's at all. Mongolian does not do that. It keeps the colour of the vowel and takes away only the length, which is why өдөр is not heard as "ödur" but as an ө said twice, once long and once in a hurry. Pronouncing these vowels as an English neutral vowel is the single commonest English accent in Mongolian.

What never reduces: the doubled vowel

The mirror image of the rule above, and more important than it. A doubled vowel keeps its full length wherever it stands in the word, including at the very end.

• маргааш [margaash] (tomorrow) — the long аа is in the second syllable and is held in full.
• харандаа [kharandaa] (pencil) — the long аа is the last thing in the word and is held in full.
• улаан [ulaan] (red), гадаад [gadaad] (foreign), хөдөө [khödöö] (the countryside), одоо [odoo] (now).

So the length written in the spelling is real and the brevity is real, and they are independent of each other. If you shorten харандаа because its last syllable feels unstressed to an English ear, you have not spoken casually; you have removed part of the word. Where the beat of the word falls, and why length and stress are two different things in Mongolian, is the subject of the page on stress and rhythm.

The final vowel that is written and barely said

Here the gap is at its widest. When a word ends in a single vowel and the consonant in front of that vowel is one of б, г, л, ч, н, м or в, the final vowel becomes indistinct — written, but very nearly inaudible.

There is one firm exception, and it is firm: у and ү at the end of a word are always fully pronounced and never become indistinct. муу [muu] (bad), сүү [süü] (milk), чулуу [chuluu] (stone), дуу [duu] (song), юу [yuu] (what) all end audibly.

Now put this rule next to the previous one and you have the most useful consequence on the page. үнэ [üne] (price) ends in a short vowel that fades; үнээ [ünee] (cow) ends in a long one that does not. The audible difference between those two words is not the presence of a final vowel but its length. The same holds for ачаа [achaa] (load, baggage), which keeps its final аа in full. If you treat final long vowels as optional, you lose the distinction between pairs of real words — which is why they are drilled by ear rather than by eye.

The letters that change value at the end of a word

Three letters are heard differently in final position than they look.

• г is heard as a k. жижиг [jijig] (small), зориг [zorig] (courage), нутаг [nutag] (homeland), цэцэг [tsetseg] (flower), эцэг [etseg] (father), жүжиг [jüjig] (a show). The final г of зориг and the first г of гэр [ger] (ger, home) are not the same sound. What г does inside a word, where it has two quite different values, belongs to the page on the consonants.
• в is heard between a w and a v. тав [tav] (five), аав [aav] (father), гурав [gurav] (three). At the beginning of a word it is a plain v, as in ваар [vaar] (vase), ван [van] (prince), вандан [vandan] (bench) — so the letter has two values and the position tells you which.
• н at the end is made at the back of the tongue, close to the English -ng of song rather than the n of son. сан [san] (fund, store), байшин [baishin] (house). The same back sound appears inside a word wherever н has no vowel after it, as in онгоц [ongots] (aeroplane) and Монгол [Mongol], where the next letter is a consonant.

A fourth letter does something similar and is mentioned here only so that you do not take it for a mistake: a final д is heard closer to a t, as in дэргэд [derged] (beside, next to). That belongs with the other consonant pairs that trade places according to where they stand, which are set out on the consonants page.

Two further letters are worth knowing about in passing. The soft sign ь has no sound of its own but changes the consonant in front of it, as in сургууль [surguul'] (school); the signs are set out on the alphabet page. And a written diphthong in final position is heard closer to a single vowel than to two: малгай [malgai] (hat) and баяртай [bayartai] (goodbye) do not end the way their spelling suggests to an English eye. The diphthongs themselves, and what they do at the end of a word, belong to the page on the vowels.

Where one word ends and the next begins

At speed, Mongolian words do not stand apart. A word's final consonant reacts to the word after it, exactly as it would react inside a word. The clearest case is н before б, which is heard as an m.

• Сайн байна уу? [sain baina uu] (hello, how are you) — the н of сайн is heard as m because байна begins with б, and the final а of байна is indistinct. Three written words arrive as one block, close to *сайм байн уу.
• Энэ хэн бэ? [ene khen be] (who is this) — the н of хэн is heard as m in front of бэ.
• Хэн ирсэн бэ? [khen irsen be] (who came) — the same, on the н of ирсэн.

This is why the question particle feels welded to the verb in front of it, and why beginners often cannot find the particle in what they have heard. It is there; it has simply reshaped the end of the word before it. The rule about н and б itself is on the consonants page, and the choice between уу, үү, бэ and вэ is on the page on the question particles.

байна and the forms built on it

байна is the single most frequent word in spoken Mongolian and the one that surprises readers most, because its final vowel is indistinct and its й is a consonant, so what you hear is one tight syllable and a bit. Expect *байн and you will find it everywhere; expect two full syllables and you will miss it.

The same applies to the whole family of progressive forms, where байна follows a verb in –ж or –ч:

• Би өлсөж байна. (I am hungry.)
• Би цангаж байна. (I am thirsty.)
• Би ядарч байна. (I am tired.)
• Би яарч байна. (I am in a hurry.)
• Автобус одоо ирж байна. (The bus is arriving now.)
• Би ойлгохгүй байна. (I do not understand.)

Written, each of these is two words. Heard, the ж or ч runs straight into the б and the auxiliary loses its final vowel, so the whole predicate arrives as one rhythmic unit ending in an n. Listen for that ending: it is how you know, before you have parsed anything, that you are hearing an action in progress. What the form means and when to use it is on the page on the present forms.

Reading a long word by units

Mongolian words get long, and the method's instruction for them is worth copying exactly: read the word syllable by syllable, then again in one breath. The second pass is the one that teaches your mouth the rhythm; the first pass is only to find the pieces.

Many long words are long because they are two words joined. Split them and they stop being frightening: Улаанбаатар [Ulaanbaatar] is Улаан plus баатар [baatar] (hero), Сүхбаатар is Сүх plus баатар, Өвөрхангай is Өвөр plus хангай, Алтанцэцэг is Алтан plus цэцэг. Each unit keeps its own vowels, which is why such a word can contain vowels from both sets without breaking vowel harmony. Others are two words that stay two words in writing: номын сан [nomyn san] (library), хүн ам [khün am] (population).

Others again are long because of what has been attached to the end of them, and those are read the other way round: find the stem at the front, then peel the endings off from the back. That procedure has its own page, how a Mongolian word is built.

How to work with the recording

The reading exercises of the first lesson exist for exactly this gap, and they are built to be used in two passes. First, listen and repeat: say the word after the recording and copy what you hear, including the parts that are not in the spelling. Then reverse it: read the word aloud from the page first, and only then play the recording and check yourself. The second pass is where the learning happens, because it forces you to predict, and a wrong prediction is the only thing that tells you which rule you have not absorbed yet.

Words worth running that drill on, because each one contains a different item from the list above: маргааш, өнөөдөр [önöödör] (today), өчигдөр, цай [tsai] (tea), малгай, баяртай, жижиг, цэцэг, онгоц, байшин, ажил, дэлхий [delkhii] (world), хүү [khüü] (boy, son), Энэтхэг [Enetkheg] (India).

The five things to expect

1. A single vowel after the first syllable will be very short, but it will keep its colour.
2. A doubled vowel will be fully long, wherever it stands, including word-finally.
3. A final single vowel after б, г, л, ч, н, м or в will be almost inaudible — unless it is у or ү, which are always said.
4. A final г will sound like k, a final в between w and v, a final н at the back of the tongue, a final д close to t.
5. Words will run into each other, and н before б will be heard as m.

None of these changes what you write. The spelling stays as it is, and that is a mercy: it means one written form per word, and all the variation lives in your ear instead of in your spelling.