Goal: Tell a long story of your year.
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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 remembers the arrival
Tonight I read my diary from the very first page: the plane, the airport signs I could not read, Saraa's smile at the door, the first night in a ger, the buuz of Tsagaan Sar, the horses at Naadam, the camel in the Gobi.
A year ago I could say three words. Tonight I told Temuulen the whole story in Mongolian, and he only corrected me twice. Then he said something that made me very proud.
| Mongolian | English |
|---|---|
| анх | first, for the first time |
| буух | to get off, to land, to come down |
| айх | to be afraid |
| онгойлгох | to open |
| инээмсэглэх | to smile |
| танилцах | to get to know, to meet |
| эмчлэх | to treat (a patient) |
| өөрчлөгдөх | to change, to be changed |
| өнгөрөх | to pass, to go by (of time) |
| өдрийн тэмдэглэл | diary |
A long story about yourself needs all the past forms of the course, each doing its own job. Here they are in the order you will need them.
| Form | Its job in a life story | Example |
|---|---|---|
| –сан | the events, one after another | Би Говьд тэмээ унасан. |
| –аад, –ж | events chained together | Хаалгаа онгойлгоод инээмсэглэсэн. |
| –хад, –хдаа | "when …" | Онгоцноос буухад… ; анх ирэхдээ… |
| –ж байсан | how things were at that moment | Би их айж байсан. |
| –даг байсан | what you used to do | Өдөр бүр бууз иддэг байсан. |
| –даг болсон | a new habit, the change | Одоо хурдан ярьдаг болсон. |
| –лаа | the story reaches the present | Нэг жил өнгөрлөө. |
| –в, –жээ | the written voice of a diary or a narrator | Би Улаанбаатарт ирэв. |
The events of your story are in –сан, linked by –аад when one follows another. Every so often, stop the film and describe the moment with –ж байсан, or a habit of that time with –даг байсан.
–лаа brings the story to the present moment, and –даг болсон says what is different now.
In a diary written for others, or a story told to an audience, Mongolian slips into –в for events and –жээ for things you only realise now:
That last sentence is the whole point of looking back: –жээ is the past you discover.
Go deeper in the grammar guide: The four Mongolian pasts · Mongolian converbs
Keeping a diary, өдрийн тэмдэглэл, is one of the best ways to practise the past forms. Write five sentences every evening: two events in –сан, one moment in –ж байсан, one habit in –даг байсан, and one sentence about how you feel now. After a month, read the first page again: like Limba, you will find that та өөрчлөгдсөн байжээ.
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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