Goal: Describe habits as qualities.
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Download the Mongolian audio course24 audio lessons · MP3 · yours to keepThe child jockeys
Temuulen drags me through the crowd to meet his friend Temuujin, the boy who will ride the brown horse. He is nine, very small, and very serious.
All around us, the jockeys are children, boys and girls, some even younger than Temuulen. They sit on their horses as if they were born there. Their fathers and uncles, the trainers, check every strap twice.
I ask the question every foreigner asks: why children? Bold answers in two words, and it makes perfect sense.
| Mongolian | English |
|---|---|
| уралдаан | race, competition |
| унаач | jockey, a child who rides in a race (from унах, to ride) |
| бага нас | childhood (бага наснаасаа, since one was small) |
| том хүн | adult (literally "big person") |
| хөнгөн | light (not heavy) |
| давхих | to gallop |
| бэлтгэх | to prepare, to train |
| уяач | trainer of racehorses |
| уях | to train a racehorse (literally "to tie up") |
| айх | to be afraid |
| зоригтой | brave |
–даг (lesson 44) says what someone does regularly: Тэр морь унадаг. "He rides horses." Put the same form in front of a noun and the habit becomes a description of that noun:
As with the participles of lessons 102 and 103, there is no word for "who": the –даг form does the job alone, and everything that belongs to it, here the object морь, comes before it.
Compare the three participles you now know, all with the same verb:
| Phrase | Meaning |
|---|---|
| морь унасан хүүхэд | the child who rode a horse (one occasion, finished) |
| морь унах хүүхэд | the child who will ride a horse (still ahead) |
| морь унадаг хүүхэд | a child who rides horses (as a habit: it is what the child does) |
–даг before a noun describes what someone or something is like, because it is what they always do. That is why it is the form for jobs, skills and ways of life:
The vowel follows harmony, exactly as when –даг ends a sentence: унадаг (а, у), болдог (о), ирдэг (э, и), өгдөг (ө).
Add –гүй and you describe what someone never does:
The whole description and its noun can be the subject of a sentence, or carry a case ending on its last word:
Go deeper in the grammar guide: Mongolian participles · Present and future: –на, –ж байна and –даг
The jockeys, унаач хүүхдүүд, are boys and girls who have grown up in the saddle. On the slow ride to the start they sing a long, high song to their horses, the гийнгоо, to give them courage. When a horse wins, the glory goes to the horse, its owner and its trainer, the уяач, but the child who rode it is cheered by the whole crowd too.
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Lesson done? Train your ear
This written course teaches you to read and write. The LIMBA audio course makes you speak: 24 lessons of 12 to 15 minutes, recorded with a native speaker. You listen, you repeat, you answer — the perfect partner for these pages.
Download the Mongolian audio course24 audio lessons · MP3 · yours to keep