Сайн байна уу?! This Mongolian course was developed by the U.S. Peace Corps for its volunteers going to Mongolia. It can be useful as a primer for learning the basics of the Mongolian language. You can listen and follow along to each lesson or download the whole course directly.

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Lesson 1 – Introduction to Mongolian

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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:

1. The word stem doesn’t change; instead, grammatical changes are made by adding (or sticking on) suffixes to the word stem.

2. 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:

1. Word order of a sentence. Subjects and objects precede verbs. Verbs are often located at the end of a sentence: Subject – object - verb

2. Genders are based on vowels (masculine, feminine, or neutral). Vowel harmony is the main law of vowels.

3. 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.

4. Compared with Indo-European languages, nouns that act as verbs are much more prevalent than normal nouns.

5. Shift of stress. Stress in Mongolian usually falls on the first syllable of a word.

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Lesson 2 – Mongolian Alphabet

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The Mongolian alphabet is comprised of 35 letters.

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Lesson 3 – Phonetic Drills

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1. Listen to the alphabet as many times as you need. 

2. Listen and repeat the alphabet below. There are some letters which are written the same as in English, but pronounced differently. 

A [ah] B [ve] H [en] P [er] 
X [heh] E [ye] C [es] У [oi] 

3. Listen to the sounds of the alphabet and repeat them. Some letters have similar pronunciation to each other. 

Ж [dze] З [ze] Ц [tse] Ч [che] Ш [sh] C [es] 
X [heh] Г [g] К [ka] Д [de] Т [te] 
Б [be] В [ve] П [pe] Ф [f] 
О [o] Ө [ồ] У [h] Ү [ữ] 
А [ah] Э [a] И [ea] 

4. Short and long vowels are very important and they change the meaning of a word. 

Ав - аав нүх - нүүх сэр - сээр 
to take - father hole - to move wake - backbone 

xол - xоол ул - уул өр - өөр 
far - meal sole - mountain debts - different, else 

5. Listen to the words and repeat them. 

America / American - Америк England / English - Англи 
Asia / Asian - Ази Europe / European - Европ 
Mongolia /Mongolian - Монгол Russia / Russian - Орос 
China /Chinese - Хятад Florida - Флорида Dollar - Доллар Tugrik* - төгрөг

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Lesson 4 – Greetings and Goodbye

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Dialogue 1

The following greetings should be used between people meeting for the first time, seeing each other for the first time in a day, or in an official situation.

Dialogue 2

The following greetings are used frequently by young people and between friends.

Dialogue 3

Dialogue 4

Dialogue 5

Culture note: When Americans first meet each other, they say “Nice to meet you.” Mongolians don’t say anything like this at the beginning of a conversation.

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Lesson 5 – Polite Conversation

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Dialogue 1

Dialogue 2

Dialogue 3

Dialogue 4

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Lesson 6 – Personal Conversation

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Dialogue 1

Dialogue 2

Dialogue 3

Tаны, таныг, та /tanii, taniig, ta/ - is addressed to someone who is older than you.

When Mongolians first meet foreigners, they typically ask many questions out of curiosity.

Some of these questions may seem very personal. For example, they may ask your age or if you are married. To Americans, these types of questions may seem very forward initially, but they are quite common for Mongolians.

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Lesson 7 – Questions About Language

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Dialogue 1

Dialogue 2

Dialogue 3

Note: Чиний, чамайг, чи /chenii, chamaig, che/ -is addressed to someone who is younger than you.

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Lesson 8 – Asking Questions

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Lesson 9 – Can/May I

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Dialogue 1

Dialogue 2

Dialogue 3

Note: The word ‘can’ has different meanings depending on context.

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Lesson 10 – Food Preferences

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Lesson 11 – Expressing Your Feelings

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Lesson 12 – Emergency and Safety

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Lesson 13 – Vocabulary

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Personal Pronouns

Weekdays

Food

Places

Family Members

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Lesson 14 – Numbers

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More Numbers

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Lesson 15 – Dialogues

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Dialogue 1

In the Grocery Store

In the Post Office

In the Local Cafeteria

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Original Course Text

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