Goal: Link past events.
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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 tells how the bus left too early
This morning the 7:05 bus to the centre left at 7:03. I saw its back lights from the end of the street and reached the stop two minutes too late.
At the language school Oyuunaa looked at the clock, then at me. "Tell me what happened," she said, "in Mongolian, and in the right order." So I did, one short sentence at a time.
| Mongolian | English |
|---|---|
| яагаад | why |
| эрт | early |
| эхлээд | first, first of all |
| тэгээд | and then; so |
| дараа нь | after that, then |
| гарах | to go out, to leave |
| хоцрох | to be late |
| минут | minute |
| хүлээх | to wait |
| өөр | other, another |
| маш | very |
| өнгөрсөн цаг | the past tense |
| давтах | to revise, to repeat |
A story in Mongolian is a row of short sentences, each one closed by a verb in –сан. Three little words tie them together, and each one opens its sentence.
| Word | Meaning | Use |
|---|---|---|
| эхлээд | first, to begin with | opens the first event |
| тэгээд | and then, so | the commonest link in speech |
| дараа нь | after that, then | marks the next step |
Mongolian does not need "and" between two sentences: тэгээд does that job and starts the new sentence. Keep every sentence short, with its verb at the end. The subject (би) is usually said once at the start of the story and then left out, as in the examples above.
The links are built from verbs. эхлээд comes from эхлэх "to begin" and means "having begun"; тэгээд comes from тэгэх "to do so" and means roughly "that being done". дараа нь is дараа "after" with нь: "after it". You will meet their ending, –аад/–ээд, on many other verbs in lesson 83. For now, learn the three words as they are.
The link words carry no tense of their own. With the present-future they lay out a plan.
Said alone, with a rising voice, Тэгээд? means "And then? What happened next?" It is the perfect way to keep a storyteller going.
Go deeper in the grammar guide: Demonstratives, тэгээд and тэгье · The four Mongolian pasts
In speech, тэгээд is everywhere. Mongolians use it the way English speakers use "so" and "and then", and in a long story you may hear it at the start of almost every sentence. In writing, vary it with дараа нь so that your text does not sound breathless.
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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