Goal: Say what you have.
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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 keepTalking about brothers and sisters
Tonight Nomin asks me about my family in Canada. I have one older sister and one younger brother, and I want to say it in Mongolian.
First surprise: Mongolian has no verb "to have". Nomin laughs and explains that I am "with a sister". The little ending is the one I already know from настай, "with age".
Temuulen listens, and of course he wants to tell me everything he has.
| Mongolian | Letters | English |
|---|---|---|
| ахтай | akhtai | having an older brother (ах + –тай) |
| эгчтэй | egchtei | having an older sister (эгч + –тэй) |
| дүүтэй | düütei | having a younger brother or sister |
| ахгүй | akhgüi | without an older brother (ах + –гүй) |
| надад | nadad | to me; Надад … байна = I have … |
| чамд | chamd | to you (familiar) |
| танд | tand | to you (polite) |
| бас | bas | also, too |
| олон | olon | many, a lot of |
| зураг | zurag | picture, photo |
| тоглоом | togloom | toy, game |
| хүүхэд | khüükhed | child |
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.
English says "I have a sister". Mongolian has no verb for "have". Instead it takes the ending you met in настай (lesson 23) and puts it on the thing you have: –тай, –той or –тэй, which means "with". Би эгчтэй says, word for word, "I (am) with an older sister". There is no verb in the sentence at all.
This ending has three forms, not four. The vowels of the word decide, as always in Mongolian.
| Ending | after a word with | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| –тай | а, у | ахтай, настай |
| –той | о | тоглоомтой, номтой |
| –тэй | э, ө, ү (or only и) | эгчтэй, дүүтэй, өрөөтэй |
There is no form with ө: өрөө (room) gives өрөөтэй. And because the ending starts with a consonant, it simply joins the word as it is: nothing is added and nothing drops.
For a yes/no question, the particle after –тай and –той is юу; after –тэй it is юү. To ask "how many", put хэдэн before the noun and end with вэ.
To say you do not have something, replace the ending with –гүй, "without". This ending never changes: it is –гүй after every word.
You can also say "to me there is": надад ("to me"), then the thing, then байна. "To you" is танд (polite) or чамд (familiar). You will learn this ending properly in lesson 35.
Use –тай for family, age and the things that describe you; use Надад … байна for something you have with you right now.
Go deeper in the grammar guide: The comitative case · To be, there is, and to have
Mongolian sorts brothers and sisters by age first. Ах is an older brother, эгч an older sister, and дүү any younger brother or sister. To be precise, people say эрэгтэй дүү (younger brother) or эмэгтэй дүү (younger sister).
These words are also polite forms of address. A young person calls an older man ах and an older woman эгч, even a stranger in a shop. It is friendly and respectful at the same time.
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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