Goal: Say people do something together.
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Now hear it and say it
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 keepEveryone helps push the car
Bold was right about the dirt road, but not about the sand. In the afternoon the wheels began to spin and the car sank up to its axles. We all got out: the four tourists, Tuyaa, Nomin and me. Bold stayed at the wheel, and we pushed together, laughing and shouting in three languages.
After twenty minutes the car was free. That evening Tuyaa taught me the word for what we had done: туслалцах, "to help one another".
| Mongolian | English |
|---|---|
| туслалцах | to help one another |
| туслалцаа | help, assistance |
| түлхэх | to push |
| элсэнд суух | to get stuck in the sand (of a car) |
| бүгдээрээ | all together, everyone |
| ар тал | the back, the rear |
| бие биедээ | (to) one another |
| танилцах | to get to know each other |
| ярилцах | to talk together, to discuss |
| хуваах | to divide |
| хуваалцах | to share |
| гар барилцах | to shake hands |
| тохиролцох | to agree on something |
| оролцох | to take part |
The suffix –лц– goes between the stem and the ending, like the causative and the passive. It says that the action is shared: each side does it with, or to, the other. This is the cooperative.
| Plain verb | With –лц– | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| туслах (to help) | туслалцах | to help one another |
| ярих (to speak) | ярилцах | to talk together, to discuss |
| таних (to know, to recognise) | танилцах | to get to know each other |
| хуваах (to divide) | хуваалцах | to share |
| барих (to hold) | барилцах | to hold each other: гар барилцах, to shake hands |
| тохирох (to suit) | тохиролцох | to agree on something |
| орох (to go in) | оролцох | to take part |
Read the table downwards: speaking becomes a conversation, dividing becomes sharing, holding becomes a handshake, going in becomes joining in.
When an action is shared, you usually say with whom, and that person takes –тай / –той / –тэй from lesson 72.
For "one another", Mongolian says бие биедээ, literally "body to its own body", very often together with –лц–.
–лц– is not an ending. The verb after it takes any ending you know, chosen by vowel harmony as usual: туслалцъя (let's help one another), ярилцлаа (we have talked it over), танилцдаг (they get acquainted), хуваалцсан (shared), тохиролцсон (agreed).
–лц– lives on a limited set of verbs. Learn the ones in the table; a guess may give a word that does not exist, or one with an unexpected meaning. Some useful nouns come from these verbs: ярилцлага (interview, lesson 127) and туслалцаа (help, assistance).
Go deeper in the grammar guide: Causative, passive and cooperative verbs · The comitative case
On the roads of the Gobi and the steppe, a driver rarely passes a car that is stuck or broken down without stopping. Helping each other on the road is an unwritten rule: today you push someone's car out of the sand, tomorrow someone pushes yours. Herders share water, fuel and a cup of tea with travellers in the same spirit.
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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