Goal: Count in hundreds and thousands of tögrög.
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My envelope of Canadian dollars is getting thin, so Nomin takes me to a bank on Peace Avenue to change money.
Mongolian money is the tögrög, and the notes carry big numbers: a thousand, five thousand, twenty thousand. For a hundred dollars I get a thick pile of notes.
I feel rich for about five minutes. Then Nomin explains what a taxi costs.
| Mongolian | Letters | English |
|---|---|---|
| мөнгө | möngö | money |
| төгрөг | tögrög | tögrög, the Mongolian currency |
| доллар | dollar | dollar |
| валют | valyut | currency |
| мянга | myanga | a thousand (мянган before a noun) |
| сая | saya | a million |
| хэдэн | kheden | how many (before a noun) |
| солих | solikh | to change, to exchange; солимоор байна = I'd like to change |
| банк | bank | bank |
| ажилтан | ajiltan | employee, clerk |
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.
To count hundreds, put the multiplier in front of зуу. The multiplier takes the form you use before a noun: гурван зуу, never гурав зуу.
| Number | Mongolian | Number | Mongolian |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | зуу | 400 | дөрвөн зуу |
| 200 | хоёр зуу | 500 | таван зуу |
| 300 | гурван зуу | 900 | есөн зуу |
Мянга is a thousand and сая a million. They work the same way: хоёр мянга (2,000), таван мянга (5,000), арван мянга (10,000), хорин мянга (20,000), зуун мянга (100,000), нэг сая (1,000,000).
Start with the biggest part and go down, with no word for "and". Inside the number, зуу becomes зуун and the tens take their second form, but мянга stays as it is.
In front of төгрөг, the last number word takes its attributive form. The noun stays singular, as after every number.
Сая has only one form, so it does not change before a noun.
To ask an amount, put хэдэн before the noun and end with вэ: Хэдэн төгрөг вэ? "How many tögrög?" The answer is just the amount, with no verb.
Go deeper in the grammar guide: Mongolian numbers
In daily life you will mostly handle notes, from small ones up to 20,000 tögrög. Chinggis Khaan looks at you from the big notes.
Prices are often written with a space between the thousands, as in 25 000, and the tögrög has its own sign, ₮. So "5 000₮" on a price tag reads таван мянган төгрөг. Shops and markets rarely bother with coins.
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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