Goal: Understand news headlines.
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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 keepLimba reads the morning paper
September in Ulaanbaatar: the city is back at work, the students are back at university, and every morning Bat reads the paper over his tea. Today he hands me the front page.
At first the headlines look like riddles: no subjects, strange verb endings, words packed together. Bat explains them one after another, and by the end of breakfast I can read four of them on my own.
| Mongolian | English |
|---|---|
| гарчиг | headline, title (plural гарчгууд) |
| халаалт | heating |
| мэдээ | news item, information |
| сэтгүүлч | journalist |
| нэрлэх | to name, to call |
| нэрээр нэрлэх | to name after (with a genitive) |
| нэрт | famous, renowned |
| тамирчин | athlete, sportsperson |
| медаль хүртэх | to win a medal |
| жишээ нь | for example |
| ирээдүй | the future |
| бэлдэх | to prepare, to get ready |
A Mongolian headline is a short sentence with the verb at the end. Pronouns are left out, and so is байна. Read the last word first: its ending tells you what kind of news it is.
| Headline | Ending | What it says |
|---|---|---|
| Халаалтын улирал эхэллээ. | –лээ | it has just happened |
| Нийслэлд анхны цас оров. | –в | it happened (plain report) |
| Хөвсгөлд жуулчдын тоо нэмэгджээ. | –жээ | it happened, as reported or found out |
| Маргааш цас орно. | –на | it will happen |
The –жээ form goes on the stem. When the stem ends in a consonant group, a short vowel that you see in the converb disappears: нэмэгдэж → нэмэгджээ, хүртэж → хүртжээ.
Three patterns come back in every newspaper: - X-ыг Y гэж нэрлэх — to name X Y, to call X Y - X-ыг Z-ын нэрээр нэрлэх — to name X after Z - Y гэж нэрлэсэн X — the X (that was) named Y: a participle in front of the noun
English uses a passive ("was named"), but the Mongolian verb is active: the people who did the naming are simply not mentioned.
нийслэл (the capital, meaning Ulaanbaatar), анхны (first), шинэ (new), тоо (number), нэмэгдэх / буурах (to rise / to fall). A short reading routine: find the verb at the end, find its subject, then fill in the middle.
Go deeper in the grammar guide: The four pasts · Participles · гэж and naming
Улаанбаатар means "Red Hero". The name was given in 1924, when the Mongolian People's Republic was proclaimed; before that the capital was Нийслэл хүрээ, "the capital monastery-camp", and earlier still Ikh Khüree. In the news you will also meet abbreviations written in capitals: УИХ is the State Great Khural (Улсын Их Хурал), and ЗГ the government (Засгийн газар). They are read letter by letter, or replaced by the full words.
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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