Basic Mongolian Expressions for Peace Corps Trainees in Mongolia/Track 1
Thank you for taking the time to study the Mongolian Language. The Mongolian language is considered one of the more difficult languages from the countries the Peace Corps serves. However, it won’t be that difficult once you figure out some of the basics elements of the language.
Mongolian is the primary language of Mongolia. By origin, Mongolian is one of the languages in the Mongol group from the Altaic family, a language family which includes Turkish, Manchurian-Tungus, Japanese, and Korean.
Modern Mongolian, based on the Khalkh dialect, developed following the Mongolian People’s Revolution in 1921. The introduction of a new alphabet in the 1940s developed along with a new stage in Mongolia’s national literary language. Mongolians still use two types of writing: the classical script and the Cyrillic alphabet. The classical Mongolian alphabet, which is written vertically, is a unique script used by speakers of all the various dialects for about a thousand years. In spite of increasing interest in using only the classical alphabet, along with the decision by Parliament to use it for official papers, the majority of Mongolian people use the Cyrillic alphabet, which was adopted in the early 1940s.
The Mongolian language is classified as agglutinative (from the Latin ‘agglutinate’-‘to stick on’). The most important characteristics of agglutination are:
- The word stem doesn’t change; instead, grammatical changes are made by adding (or sticking on) suffixes to the word stem.
- Every suffix and case ending expresses only one grammatical meaning. Mongolian does not have prepositions. A lot of English prepositions are expressed in Mongolian with a case. The cases demonstrate the kind of relationship the two words have.
Other characteristic features of the language are:
- Word order of a sentence. Subjects and objects precede verbs. Verbs are often located at the end of a sentence: Subject – object - verb
- Genders are based on vowels (masculine, feminine, or neutral). Vowel harmony is the main law of vowels.
- The absence of subject/verb agreement and plurals (in most cases). It’s common to drop the subject if it’s implied. For example:
- What did do yesterday? Instead of ‘What did you do yesterday?’
- Read some books, washed clothes and cleaned my house. Instead of
- I read some books, washed clothes and cleaned my house.
- Compared with Indo-European languages, nouns that act as verbs are much more prevalent than normal nouns.
- Shift of stress. Stress in Mongolian usually falls on the first syllable of a word.
With the following basic survival phrases we’ll try to give you a brief introduction to the Mongolian language. By reading the following pages, and listening to the tape while repeating the phrases and words, you’ll see what the Mongolian language looks like and how it sounds.
If you choose to come to Mongolia, you will be provided with more information about the Mongolian language and you’ll get a lot of resources to help with your studies. You will also receieve intensive instruction in Mongolian by native speakers during Pre-Service Training. You can use the following books, which are available in the USA:
•MONGOLIAN GRAMMAR by Rita Kullmann and D.Tserenpil
•COLLOQUAL MONGOLIAN by Alan J.K. Sanders and Jantsangiin Bat-Ireedui
•Lonely planet MONGOLIAN PHRASE BOOK
You also can check other resources from the websites:
•www.amazon.com
•www.biznet.com
•Mongolian Society www.indiana.edu/monsoc/
The pronunciation of the Mongolian dialogues and phrases on these recordings is a little slower than normal speech. This is intended to be helpful to beginning students of the language.