Goal: Discuss work and economy.
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Download the Mongolian audio course24 audio lessons · MP3 · yours to keepBat discusses mining
Bat's friend Tömör has just come back from three weeks at a copper mine in the South Gobi. He works there as an engineer: three weeks at the mine, then three weeks at home.
That evening the two men talk about the economy over dinner, and I try to follow. Mining, coal, China, jobs, prices: the words come fast, but I catch far more than I expected.
| Mongolian | English |
|---|---|
| эдийн засаг | economy |
| уул уурхай | mining (the industry); уурхай: a mine |
| мал аж ахуй | livestock farming, animal husbandry |
| зэс | copper |
| нүүрс | coal |
| олборлох | to extract, to mine |
| хамааралтай | dependent (on: with the ablative) |
| ажлын байр | job, position |
| ажилгүйдэл | unemployment |
| цалин | salary, pay |
| салбар | sector, branch |
| аялал жуулчлал | tourism |
| хор хөнөөлтэй | harmful |
| мөрдөх | to follow, to observe (rules) |
хамааралтай means "dependent". What something depends on goes in the ablative, the case of "from":
Be careful: with the comitative, X-тай хамааралтай means "related to X", not "dependent on X".
To say where a country ranks, put the field in the instrumental and the place in the dative-locative of an ordinal:
ажилтай (employed), ажилгүй (unemployed), and ажилгүйдэл (unemployment), a noun in –л (lesson 153) built on ажилгүй. The same family gives ажлын байр, literally "place of work": a job. Notice that ажил drops its second vowel before an ending: ажлын, ажлыг.
Go deeper in the grammar guide: The ablative · Postpositions · Building new words
Three names come up in every conversation about Mongolian mining. Оюу толгой, in the South Gobi, is one of the largest copper and gold mines in the world. Эрдэнэт, in the north, has been mining copper since the late 1970s. Тавантолгой, also in the South Gobi, is a huge coal deposit. Mining earns most of the country's export income, and most exports go to China, so world prices for coal and copper are followed in Mongolia as closely as the weather.
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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