Goal: Say what you can do.
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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 keepCan Limba ride a horse?
At dinner Bat asks me the question every Mongolian seems to ask a foreigner sooner or later: can you ride a horse? The honest answer is: once, for one hour, on a very calm horse in Alberta.
Temuulen, who is ten, has been riding since he was four, and he offers to teach me. Saraa says that Grandma Dulmaa will teach me something even more useful: how to make buuz.
| Mongolian | English |
|---|---|
| чадах | can, to be able to |
| морь | horse |
| унах | to ride |
| бага зэрэг | a little |
| нэг удаа | once |
| жижиг | small |
| хурдан | fast |
| заах | to teach |
| хоол хийх | to cook |
| бууз | buuz, steamed dumplings |
| сайхан | fine, wonderful |
| сурах | to learn |
English puts "can" in front of a bare verb. Mongolian puts the content verb first, in its linking form in –ж (or –ч: the same form as in –ж байна), and then чадах "to be able". Only the last word, чадах, carries the tense, the question and the negation.
The –ж form is called a converb: a verb form that links one verb to the next. You already use it in –ж байна, and in lesson 84 you will see it link whole actions.
| Meaning | Form |
|---|---|
| I can ride | унаж чадна |
| Can you ride? | унаж чадах уу? |
| I can't ride | унаж чадахгүй |
| I could ride, I managed to | унаж чадсан |
| I couldn't ride | унаж чадаагүй |
Чадна. "Yes, I can." Чадахгүй. "No, I can't." Бага зэрэг. "A little."
When the question has a question word, чадах takes вэ, because it ends in х:
The same frame works for every person: Номин морь сайн унаж чадна "Nomin can ride well", Тэд морь унаж чадахгүй "They can't ride".
чадах is about being able: skill, strength, know-how. Asking whether something is allowed takes another verb, болох, in the next lesson. Би морь унаж чадна says that you know how to ride; it says nothing about whether you may take the horse.
Go deeper in the grammar guide: Can, must, want, like · Two-verb sentences
Children on the steppe learn to ride very young, often at four or five, and at the Naadam horse races the jockeys are children. Mongolian horses are small but tough, and many are half-wild: ask before you touch one, never walk close behind it, and get on from the left side, as the herders do.
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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