Goal: Say the biggest, the best.
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Download the Mongolian audio course24 audio lessons · MP3 · yours to keepWhich horse is the fastest?
Ganbaatar has eleven horses, and he knows each one like a person. This morning he brings three of them to the ger: a black one, a grey one and a big white one.
The black horse won the race at the district naadam this summer, and Ganbaatar tells me so with as much pride as if he had won it himself. The grey one is calm and patient. The white one is the biggest and, according to Ganbaatar, the laziest horse in Arkhangai.
Guess which one I will ride tomorrow.
| Mongolian | English |
|---|---|
| хамгийн | most (before an adjective: the …-est) |
| аль | which |
| наадам | naadam, the summer festival of wrestling, horse racing and archery |
| сум | district (a part of a province) |
| түрүүлэх | to come first, to win |
| унах | to ride |
| зун | summer |
| залхуу | lazy |
| муу | bad |
| зөв | right, correct |
| дуртай | fond of, liking (Би Монголд дуртай: I like Mongolia) |
In lesson 78 you compared two things with the ablative. To say that something is at the very top, "the biggest", "the fastest", put хамгийн (most) in front of the adjective.
Nothing else happens. хамгийн never changes its form, and the adjective stays in its dictionary form. There are no irregular words like English "best" and "worst": they are simply хамгийн сайн (the best) and хамгийн муу (the worst).
хамгийн + adjective behaves like any adjective (lesson 27). In front of a noun it is part of a phrase; at the end it is the whole predicate.
| Phrase | Sentence |
|---|---|
| хамгийн том гэр (the biggest ger) | Энэ гэр хамгийн том. (This ger is the biggest.) |
| хамгийн тайван морь (the calmest horse) | Саарал морь хамгийн тайван. (The grey horse is the calmest.) |
To say "the biggest in Mongolia" or "the youngest in the family", put the group in the genitive in front of the whole phrase:
With a verb, use хамгийн их (most much) in front of it:
дуртай means "fond of, liking": Би Монголд дуртай. "I like Mongolia", with the thing you like in the dative-locative. Put хамгийн in front and you have the everyday word for "favourite": Миний хамгийн дуртай хоол бууз. "My favourite food is buuz."
аль (which) goes in front of the noun, and the question ends in бэ or вэ by the usual rule: Аль морь хамгийн хурдан бэ? "Which horse is the fastest?" Here бэ follows хурдан, which ends in н.
Go deeper in the grammar guide: Mongolian adjectives · The genitive case
Where does хамгийн come from? Dictionaries explain it as an old genitive of a word meaning "all". So хамгийн хурдан is, at heart, "fastest of all", which is exactly what a superlative says. You do not need the history to use the word, but it explains why хамгийн never changes: it is a frozen form.
A fast horse is a herder's pride, so in the countryside you will hear хамгийн хурдан very often.
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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