Goal: Make simple conditions.
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Download the Mongolian audio course24 audio lessons · MP3 · yours to keepWill it snow for the festival?
Tsagaan Sar lasts more than one day. Tomorrow, the second day, we are going to visit Saraa's elder brother, who lives in a ger forty kilometres from the city.
The radio says snow. The family says it depends. By the end of dinner everybody had a plan for every possibility: the car or the bus, early or late, warm clothes or very warm clothes.
Temuulen has only one plan, whatever happens: a snowman.
| Mongolian | English |
|---|---|
| цас орох | to snow (literally: snow falls) |
| бороо орох | to rain |
| хэрэв | if (optional, at the start of a condition) |
| хувцас | clothes |
| цасан хүн | snowman |
| яаж | how |
| яах вэ | what shall we do? |
| хүрэх | to reach, to arrive |
| эрт | early |
| хямд | cheap |
English puts "if" at the start of the condition. Mongolian puts an ending on the verb of the condition: –вал / –вол / –вэл / –вөл. Like –аад and –ж, it is a converb: it has no tense, and the sentence goes on to a main verb that closes it.
The condition always comes first and the main clause last. The main verb can be a statement, a plan or an order.
The vowel follows the stem, as in the other four-form endings:
| Verb | Stem | If… |
|---|---|---|
| байх (to be) | бай– | байвал |
| орох (to fall, to enter) | ор– | орвол |
| босох (to get up) | бос– | босвол |
| ирэх (to come) | ир– | ирвэл |
| хийх (to do) | хий– | хийвэл |
| өгөх (to give) | өг– | өгвөл |
After a stem ending in л or в, you will often meet a б instead of в: явбал (if … go), дуулбал (if … sing), эхэлбэл (if … begin). The meaning is the same. Learn these forms as you meet them.
To make a negative condition, do not put the ending on a negative verb. Use the negative –хгүй and then the word бол:
бол is also what you use when the condition has an adjective or a noun and no verb: Хямд бол авъя. "If it's cheap, let's buy it."
You can open the condition with хэрэв (or хэрвээ), "if". It warns the listener that a condition is coming, but it is optional: the ending is what makes the condition.
Without the ending, хэрэв alone does not make a condition.
–вал also covers English "when" for things that will surely happen: Зун ирвэл… is "when summer comes…", since summer always comes. The context tells you which English word to use.
Go deeper in the grammar guide: The Mongolian conditional · Mongolian converbs
Mongolians say that snow and rain "enter": цас орох (to snow), бороо орох (to rain), with the same verb as "to go in". So Цас орвол… is "If snow falls…".
Winter in Mongolia is very cold but also very dry. Snow often falls less than visitors expect, but what falls stays on the ground until spring.
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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