Goal: Count to 100.
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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 reads bus numbers
Today I learn to take the bus on my own, and Temuulen comes to the stop to train me.
Every bus has a big number on the front, and I must read it aloud before it stops. Twenty-one is easy. Fifty-seven nearly beats me: тав and тавь differ by one small letter.
Temuulen is a strict teacher. Nomin says he will make a fine schoolmaster one day.
| Mongolian | Letters | English |
|---|---|---|
| тоо | too | number (in counting) |
| дугаар | dugaar | number (of a bus, a door, a phone); ямар дугаартай вэ? = what number is it? |
| хорь | khor' | twenty (хорин before a noun) |
| гуч | guch | thirty (гучин) |
| дөч | döch | forty (дөчин) |
| тавь | tav' | fifty (тавин) |
| жар | jar | sixty (жаран) |
| дал | dal | seventy (далан) |
| ная | naya | eighty (наян) |
| ер | yer | ninety (ерэн) |
| зуу | zuu | a hundred (зуун) |
| автобус | avtobus | bus |
| буруу | buruu | wrong |
| хатуу | khatuu | hard; strict |
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.
The teens are simply "ten" followed by the unit: арван нэг (11), арван хоёр (12) … арван ес (19). Inside the number, ten is always арван, the form used before another word (lesson 23).
The tens are new words, not "two-ten" or "three-ten", so learn them as vocabulary. Each has two forms: one on its own, one before a noun or before another number.
| on its own | before a noun or a number | |
|---|---|---|
| 20 | хорь | хорин |
| 30 | гуч | гучин |
| 40 | дөч | дөчин |
| 50 | тавь | тавин |
| 60 | жар | жаран |
| 70 | дал | далан |
| 80 | ная | наян |
| 90 | ер | ерэн |
| 100 | зуу | зуун |
Put the second form of the ten in front of the unit, with no word for "and":
Before a noun, the last number also takes its attributive form, and the noun stays singular. Нэг and хоёр do not change.
To ask "how many", use хэдэн in the same place: Хэдэн хүн байна вэ? "How many people are there?" The answer can be the number alone: Гучин тав.
Тав (5) and тавь (50) differ only by the soft sign ь. Ес (9) and ер (90) differ by one letter. Read slowly, and remember that before a noun they separate again: таван and тавин, есөн and ерэн.
Go deeper in the grammar guide: Mongolian numbers
Mongolians write numbers with the same digits as English, so a bus front, a price tag or a flat number is easy to see. Saying it is the hard part.
A good way to practise: read every number you see aloud, in Mongolian, all day. Bus numbers, door numbers, prices in shop windows. After a week, хорин, гучин and дөчин come out on their own. Temuulen's method, in fact.
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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