Goal: Understand common idioms.
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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 keepNomin's expressions
Nomin speaks fast, and her sentences are full of little pictures. Anger "arrives", a generous person has an "open hand", and a kind one has a "white heart". For months I took these words literally and wondered what she meant.
Today I asked her to explain them one by one, and I filled two pages of my notebook.
The best part: some of them exist in English too, only with a different picture.
| Mongolian | English |
|---|---|
| уур хүрэх | to get angry (literally "anger arrives") |
| уурлах | to get angry |
| инээд хүрэх | to find something funny, to start laughing |
| нойр хүрэх | to get sleepy |
| цагаан сэтгэлтэй | kind-hearted (literally "with a white heart") |
| хар санаатай | malicious (literally "with black thoughts") |
| гар задгай | generous, free with money (literally "open-handed") |
| гар хоосон | empty-handed |
| нүүр улайх | to blush, to be ashamed (literally "the face turns red") |
| санаа зовох | to worry |
| санаа зоволтгүй | don't worry, no problem |
| тараах | to hand out, to give out |
| айл | household, family (as hosts) |
An idiom is a group of words whose meaning is more than the sum of its parts. Mongolian idioms are built with grammar you already know, a noun and a verb, or a noun with –тай, but they paint pictures with the body, with colours and with feelings that come and go. If a phrase makes no sense word for word, suspect an idiom.
Anger, laughter and sleep are things that come to you. The feeling is the subject, the verb is хүрэх ("to reach, to arrive"), and the person it reaches stands in the genitive.
| Idiom | Literally | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| цагаан сэтгэлтэй | with a white heart | kind, sincere |
| хар санаатай | with black thoughts | malicious |
White is the colour of purity and good fortune in Mongolia, the colour of milk and of the khadag; black is the colour of bad intentions. Both idioms are adjectives in –тай, so they go in front of a noun like any adjective: цагаан сэтгэлтэй хүн, a kind person.
| Idiom | Literally | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| гар задгай | open-handed | generous, free with money |
| гар хоосон | empty hand | without a gift |
| нүүр улайх | the face goes red | to blush, to be ashamed |
| санаа зовох | the mind suffers | to worry |
An idiom is not frozen: its verb takes every ending a verb can take. нүүр улайх gives нүүр нь улайв (his face went red) and нүүр чинь улайж байна (you're going red); санаа зовох gives Би санаа зовж байна (I'm worried). Only санаа зоволтгүй, "no need to worry", is a fixed form, and Mongolians say it all day long.
Go deeper in the grammar guide: The genitive case · Mongolian adjectives
Nomin's advice is real etiquette. Arriving at someone's home with empty hands is impolite in Mongolia. A bag of sweets, some fruit or biscuits is enough, and guests from town who visit herders often bring bread, sweets or something the family cannot easily buy in the countryside.
If you forget, do what Limba did: blush, laugh, and bring something twice as nice next time.
Choose the right answer, then press Check my answers. Score 70% or more and the lesson is ticked on your course map.
Well done! Lesson 183 is ticked on your course map.
Write your answer on paper or in your head first, then reveal the model answer.
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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