Goal: Ask who and what.
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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 asks about photos on the wall
The living-room wall is covered with photos in wooden frames: old black-and-white pictures, a wedding, babies, horses. I want to know who everyone is.
So I point and ask, again and again: who is this? who is that? what is that? Nomin answers with endless patience. In one photo, a young woman in a deel stands in front of a white ger: Nomin's grandmother, Dulmaa, in the countryside.
Nomin says I will meet her later this autumn. I like her already.
| Mongolian | Letters | English |
|---|---|---|
| зураг | zurag | picture, photo |
| эрэгтэй | eregtei | man |
| авга ах | avga akh | uncle (father's brother) |
| хурим | khurim | wedding |
| морин хуур | morin khuur | morin khuur, the horse-head fiddle |
| хөгжим | khögjim | music |
| нялх хүүхэд | nyalkh khüükhed | baby |
| залуу | zaluu | young |
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 | Ask about |
|---|---|---|
| хэн | who | a person |
| юу | what | a thing |
Mongolian does not move anything to make a question with "who" or "what". The question word sits exactly where the answer will be, and the answer just replaces it:
You met this rule in lesson 12. A question with хэн or юу ends in бэ or вэ, never in уу, and the choice depends on the last letter of the word in front:
| Last letter of the word before | Particle | Example |
|---|---|---|
| в, л, м or н | бэ | хэн бэ? |
| any other letter, including a vowel | вэ | юу вэ? |
Here is the difference from уу and үү. Those two follow vowel harmony, but бэ and вэ always keep their э, whatever the vowels of the word before: юу вэ, with an у in front, is still вэ. For бэ and вэ, only the last letter matters, never the vowels.
Compare a yes/no question about the same photo. With no question word, you are back to уу and үү, chosen by harmony:
Go deeper in the grammar guide: Question words: хэн, юу, хаана · The question particles
In speech, the н of хэн sounds like an m before бэ, just as the н of сайн does before байна. And when someone knocks at the door, the natural question is simply Хэн бэ?, "Who is it?". Many families also keep a морин хуур in a place of honour at home, even when nobody plays it.
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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