Goal: Name wild animals.
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Download the Mongolian audio course24 audio lessons · MP3 · yours to keepAn eagle hunter
Nomin's university friend Aigerim is a Kazakh from Bayan-Ölgii, in the far west of Mongolia. This week her uncle Yerbol is in Ulaanbaatar, and she invites us to meet him.
Yerbol is an eagle hunter. He shows us photos on his phone: snowy mountains, a horse, and on his arm a golden eagle almost as big as a child. I have a hundred questions, and Aigerim helps whenever a word is too hard for me.
| Mongolian | English |
|---|---|
| бүргэд | golden eagle |
| шонхор | falcon |
| ирвэс | snow leopard |
| чоно | wolf |
| үнэг | fox |
| хулан | khulan, Asiatic wild ass |
| зээр | gazelle (цагаан зээр, the Mongolian gazelle of the eastern steppe; хар сүүлт зээр, the black-tailed gazelle of the Gobi) |
| тахь | takhi, Przewalski's horse |
| зэрлэг амьтан | wild animal (plural зэрлэг амьтад) |
| ховор | rare |
| агнах | to hunt |
| хумс | claw, talon; nail |
| тэжээх | to keep, to feed (an animal) |
| байгальд нь тавих | to release (an animal) into the wild |
| Where | Animals |
|---|---|
| high mountains | ирвэс (snow leopard), янгир (ibex), аргаль (argali, wild sheep) |
| steppe and Gobi | зээр (gazelle: цагаан зээр on the eastern steppe, хар сүүлт зээр in the Gobi), хулан (wild ass), тахь (takhi), чоно (wolf), үнэг (fox) |
| the sky | бүргэд (golden eagle), шонхор (falcon) |
Remember the accusative of чоно: the short final vowel drops, чоныг (lesson 46). And тахь behaves like морь: тахийг.
To say "one of the rarest", put the group in the genitive plural and add нэг. The plural of амьтан is амьтад, and its genitive is амьтдын:
The tool or the helper of a hunt takes the instrumental, as in бүргэдээр ан хийх, "to hunt with an eagle":
A participle phrase in front of the noun tells you what the animal does, and the whole phrase can be the subject of a –х нь clause:
Байлгүй яах вэ ("how could there not be?") is a lively way of saying "of course there are".
Go deeper in the grammar guide: The instrumental · Adjectives and comparison · Participles
The Kazakhs of Bayan-Ölgii hunt foxes with female golden eagles in winter, on horseback, in the high Altai. An eagle is usually taken young, trained for years, and then released back into the mountains. Every autumn the town of Ölgii holds a Golden Eagle Festival. Two of the animals in this lesson are symbols of Mongolian conservation: the takhi, which died out in the wild and was brought back in the 1990s, and the snow leopard, which lives in the Altai and other high ranges and is strictly protected.
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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