Goal: Talk about music.
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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 keepA concert of throat singing
Tonight Nomin took me to a concert of traditional music. First came the morin khuur, the horse-head fiddle; then a woman sang a long song that seemed to have no end; and then a man with a calm face opened his mouth, and two voices came out at once.
I had read about khöömii, but hearing it was something else: a deep drone and, above it, a thin whistle like wind over the steppe.
On the way home I could not stop trying it, and Nomin could not stop laughing.
| Mongolian | English |
|---|---|
| морин хуур | morin khuur, the horse-head fiddle |
| хөөмий | khöömii, throat singing |
| хөөмийч | throat singer |
| уртын дуу | long song |
| чавхдас | string (of an instrument) |
| нум | bow (of a fiddle; also of an archer) |
| бүдүүн | thick; deep (of a voice) |
| нарийхан | thin; high (of a sound) |
| исгэрэх | to whistle |
| нэг зэрэг | at the same time |
| сонсогдох | to sound, to be heard |
| бэлгэдэл | symbol |
| сунгах | to stretch, to draw out |
| хэлбэртэй | shaped (like) |
| Mongolian | What it is |
|---|---|
| морин хуур | the horse-head fiddle: two strings, played with a bow |
| хөөмий | throat singing: one singer, two sounds at once |
| уртын дуу | the long song: slow, each syllable drawn out |
| богино дуу | the short song: quicker, with a regular beat |
Two small grammar facts hide in these names. морин is the form of морь (horse) used in front of a noun, as in морин толгой, a horse's head. And уртын дуу is a genitive phrase, "song of length", just like оройн хоол, "meal of the evening".
сонсогдох is the passive of сонсох (to hear): "to be heard, to sound". Put an adjective in front of it, or a comparison with шиг ("like").
The suffix –ч or –чин makes "a person who does it": хөөмий → хөөмийч (throat singer), дуу → дуучин (singer), хөгжим → хөгжимчин (musician). Learn each one as a word; the choice between the two forms is not predictable.
An instrument is "played" with тоглох, a song is sung with дуулах, and throat singing has its own verb, хөөмийлөх.
The material takes the instrumental, and the verb is the passive of хийх: хийгдэх, "to be made".
Go deeper in the grammar guide: Mongolian verb voices: passive and causative · How Mongolian builds new words
All three, the music of the morin khuur, the long song and the art of khöömii, are on UNESCO's list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity.
An old legend explains the horse's head. A herder named Хөхөө Намжил had a beloved horse; when it died, he made a fiddle from it, carved its head at the top of the neck, and played it to hear his horse again. That is why a Mongolian will tell you that the morin khuur does not play music: it neighs, gallops and sighs.
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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