Goal: Talk about the weather.
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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 keepWind and cold on the autumn steppe
After the tea stop the sky changes. A grey wall of cloud comes from the west, the wind pushes the car sideways, and the yellow autumn grass lies flat on the hills.
Bold turns on the radio for the forecast, Nomin pulls her hat down over her ears, and I ask my first questions about Mongolian weather. Then the first snowflakes hit the windscreen.
| Mongolian | English |
|---|---|
| цаг агаар | weather |
| ямар | what kind of? what … like? |
| хүйтэн | cold |
| халуун | hot |
| дулаан | warm |
| салхи | wind |
| салхитай | windy |
| салхигүй | calm, without wind |
| цас | snow |
| бороо | rain |
| нартай | sunny |
| хэм | degree (of temperature) |
| хасах | minus |
| санаа зоволтгүй | don't worry |
Цаг агаар ямар байна вэ? "What's the weather like?", literally "the weather is of what kind?". Change the form of байх to talk about another day.
| When | Question |
|---|---|
| now | Цаг агаар ямар байна вэ? |
| tomorrow | Цаг агаар ямар байх вэ? |
| yesterday | Цаг агаар ямар байсан бэ? |
Mongolian needs no word for "it": Хүйтэн байна. "It's cold." Дулаан байна. "It's warm." Халуун байна. "It's hot."
Many weather words are built with the "having" ending of lesson 26 and its opposite, –гүй.
| Noun | With –тай / –тэй | With –гүй |
|---|---|---|
| салхи (wind) | салхитай (windy) | салхигүй (calm) |
| нар (sun) | нартай (sunny) | наргүй (sunless) |
| үүл (cloud) | үүлтэй (cloudy) | үүлгүй (cloudless) |
In Mongolian, rain and snow do not fall: they "enter", with the verb орох: бороо орох, цас орох.
хэм means "degree"; хасах is "minus" and нэмэх "plus": хасах арван хэм (–10°), нэмэх таван хэм (+5°).
The four seasons, хавар "spring", зун "summer", намар "autumn" and өвөл "winter", are used bare, like өнөөдөр, to mean "in spring", "in summer" and so on: Зун халуун, өвөл хүйтэн. "Summer is hot, winter is cold."
For what the weather is usually like, use –даг (lesson 44):
Go deeper in the grammar guide: Mongolian adjectives · The comitative case
Ulaanbaatar is often called the coldest capital city in the world: in January the temperature regularly drops below хасах гучин хэм, minus thirty. Yet the sky is usually clear and blue. On the steppe the real enemy is the wind, which makes the cold bite: a hat that covers your ears matters more than a thick coat.
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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