Goal: Point at things and people.
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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 keepTemuulen shows Limba his toys
Temuulen knocks on my door with a big box in his arms: his toys. He wants to show me everything, and he has decided to be my Mongolian teacher.
He holds up each toy and names it. The best thing in the box is a little cloth bag full of sheep's ankle bones, the shagai. Each side of a bone has a name: horse, camel, sheep or goat.
By the end of the afternoon I can say "this" and "that" without thinking, and Temuulen has won every single game.
| Mongolian | Letters | English |
|---|---|---|
| энэ | ene | this, these |
| машин | mashin | car |
| бөмбөг | bömbög | ball |
| шагай | shagai | shagai, sheep's ankle bones used for games |
| тоглоом | togloom | toy; game |
| хайрцаг | khairtsag | box |
| жижиг | jijig | small |
| ширээ | shiree | table |
The “Letters” column is a letter-by-letter guide to the Cyrillic, not exact pronunciation. It disappears after level A1: by then you read Cyrillic directly.
| Word | Meaning | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| энэ | this, these | what is near you |
| тэр | that, those | what is further away |
You already know тэр as "he, she" (lesson 15); it is the same word. Neither энэ nor тэр changes its form: the same энэ says "this" and "these", and the same тэр says "that" and "those".
Used alone, энэ and тэр are the subject of the sentence. As in lesson 15, there is no verb:
In Энэ юу вэ?, юу is the word "what", and вэ is the particle, because юу ends in a vowel. Do not confuse it with the yes/no particle юу of lesson 14.
Like every word that describes a noun, энэ and тэр go in front of it:
Add an adjective at the end, and you have a sentence about "this car" or "that box":
For a yes/no question, add уу or үү after the last word, as in lesson 14:
бөмбөг is an ө word ending in a consonant, so the particle is үү. ямаа ends in a long vowel of the а о у family, so it takes юу.
Go deeper in the grammar guide: энэ and тэр: the demonstratives · The question particles
Шагай are sheep's ankle bones, kept in many Mongolian homes. Each of their four sides has a name: морь (horse), тэмээ (camel), хонь (sheep) and ямаа (goat). Children play dozens of games with them, and grown-ups compete in shagai flicking, a sport of the Naadam festival that UNESCO lists as part of the world's living heritage.
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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