Mongolian (Монгол хэл)

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księżycowy
Re: Mongolian (Монгол хэл)

Postby księżycowy » 2010-01-14, 2:34

Struthiomimus wrote:Wait, what? How did two people interested in the same language talk each other out of contributing to a thread on said language? You’ve got to start somewhere, and if you two enliven this thread, you’ll help make Mongolian available to more people.

Księżyc, gothwolf is doing Mongolian as one of his TAC languages (maybe you should participate as well). Gothwolf, księżycowy is focusing on Inuktitut and Mongolian afaik, and if time is an issue with you (which is understandable with 4 TAC languages and other things in life) maybe you could post something one week and księżycowy the next week and together you guys could help motivate each other – and potentially others – to learn Mongolian...Yay!

BTW, I too think the classical script is beautiful.

Thanks for the idea. Though I doubt I'll do the TAC. But I didn't say I wouldn't post anything :wink: Just wanted to gauge interest. Though at the same time, that never stopped me from posting with Aleut/Inuktitut/Yup'ik . . . . :hmm:

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Re: Mongolian (Монгол хэл)

Postby gothwolf » 2010-01-14, 20:58

I found the book I'm using available here - http://books.google.bg/books?id=T_jKka8 ... q=&f=false but I could post here some of the lessons from the book "Modern Mongolian: a primer and reader" by James E. Bosson

księżycowy

Re: Mongolian (Монгол хэл)

Postby księżycowy » 2010-01-15, 11:55

gothwolf wrote:I found the book I'm using available here - http://books.google.bg/books?id=T_jKka8 ... q=&f=false but I could post here some of the lessons from the book "Modern Mongolian: a primer and reader" by James E. Bosson

Might be a good idea. I'd just mainly post somewhat random grammar notes.

I just wonder about copyright issues . . .

księżycowy

Re: Mongolian (Монгол хэл)

Postby księżycowy » 2010-01-17, 18:51

This will be the first of my random grammar notes I'm taking while I work my way through 'Colloquial Mongolian.' For the viewing pleasure of all unilangers (of course 8-) ).
(Unlike my other grammar posts, I'm not posting anything about pronunciation. At least not yet. Not sure if anyone much will be interested in this thread, plus (and perhaps more importantly) there are a few points of pronunciation that I don't know all that well yet.)

Vowel Harmony:
I know this was discussed in a previous post, but why not review.

As with all Mongolic and Turkic languages, Khalkha Mongolian (aka Mongolian as spoken in Mongolia) uses vowel harmony in it's grammar. Vowel harmony is fundimental to word formation and the addition of suffixes to said words.

All words are made up of either 'back vowels' or 'front vowels'. Words do not have both in them. However there are some compound words that have both front and back vowels, however these are simply two (or more) separate words that were combined to form a new word, and the vowels in the original words were kept (as I would assume is standard practice). The greatest examples of these are names:
Сүхбаатар = Сүх + баатар
ect.

Back Vowels:
а, о, у, я, ё, юу, ы

Front Vowels:
э, ө, ү, е, юү, й

The vowel "и" is neither front nor back, and can be found in words containing either set. (When и is the only vowel of a wrod it is treated as a front vowel)

The vowel "ю" can be either front or back, the other vowels in the word dictate which it is.

Verbs:
Verbs in Khalkha are only conjugated for tense, not for number or person.
Verb bases are not always easy to figure out in Mongolian and need to be learned. Some bases are formed by dropping the ending -х ending from infinitive form the verb, others drop more before the -х.

Some verbs in Infinitive form (bases underlined):
байх - to be
болох - to be permitted; may
өгөн - to give

Suffixes for verbs tend to come in four different forms depending on the vowels of the base. The Present-Future tense is formed by adding the suffix -на/но/нө/нэ to the end of the verb base.
-на for vowels а, у, я, юу
-но for vowel о
-нө for vowels э, е, ү, юү
-нэ for vowel ө
Examples:
байна
болно
өгнө

To 'conjugate' (I use the term loosely here) the verbs for person, you use the appropriate personal pronoun.
Ex.
та байна - You are
би өгнө - I give
ect.

And that will conclude it for today. Happy reading.

księżycowy

Re: Mongolian (Монгол хэл)

Postby księżycowy » 2010-01-17, 19:00

I also wanted to say, that I did not mean to stop you from posting gothwolf, if my last post seemed that way. (Though I do understand that you've been busy so hopefully that's why you haven't posted anything yet.)

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Re: Mongolian (Монгол хэл)

Postby gothwolf » 2010-01-17, 22:37

księżycowy wrote:I also wanted to say, that I did not mean to stop you from posting gothwolf, if my last post seemed that way. (Though I do understand that you've been busy so hopefully that's why you haven't posted anything yet.)


No, I would like to post some stuff here. You might be right about the copyright issues so I'll post grammar materials as well, probably there is no problem? :P

As księżycowy has written - to conjugate the verbs for person, you use the appropriate personal pronoun. And here are they in Nominative:
би - I
та - you (polite, sg.)
чи - you (familiar, sg.)
тэр - he, she it
бид (нар) - we
та (нар) - you (pl.)
тэд (нар) - they
===
энэ - this (for persons)
тэр - this (for objects)

How to ask questions?

a) with a question word - the question particle here is вэ (or бэ if the word before it ends in м, н or б
хэн? - who?
юу? - what?
хаа, хаана - where?
багш - teacher

Where is the teacher? - Хаана багш вэ?
Who are you? - Хэн чи вэ (байна)? (here the verb "to be" usually is omitted)
b) without a question word - the question mark depending on the vowel harmony of the last word in the question is:
уу (for back short vowel or a consonant),
үү (for front short vowel or a consonant),
юу (for back long vowel or diphthong) and
юү (for front long vowel or diphthong)

Энэ багш уу? - Is this the teacher? (it's уу, because багш ends on a consonant)
Тэр ширээ юү? - Is this the table? (as you can see the word for "table" is ширээ and it ends in a front long vowel and that's why the question particle here is юү)
Багш эмч үү? - Is the teacher a doctor? (эмч - doctor)

That's for me now. Any questions? :P

księżycowy

Re: Mongolian (Монгол хэл)

Postby księżycowy » 2010-01-17, 23:32

gothwolf wrote:No, I would like to post some stuff here. You might be right about the copyright issues so I'll post grammar materials as well, probably there is no problem? :P

Cool. That's kind of funny, I was going to continue some of that tomorrow, but you beat me to it, lol.

And yeah, I've been posting grammar notes based on textbooks I have all over the place on the various languages I've been learning (at least for the more obscure ones anyway), and I haven't had any problems with copyright or anything.

[Though a thought does occur, if the materials are viewable on google books, then those parts might be able to be posted. Not sure how that works.]

Either way, great that we're both posting. Maybe we can get somewhere learning Mongolian together :mrgreen: .

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Re: Mongolian (Монгол хэл)

Postby ILuvEire » 2010-01-17, 23:49

זה מאד מענין! אני לומד כיום טורקית, לכן רואה כמות הכבלות בהכנויים. אני רק שולח לספר ש מישהוא קורב. יודע, יודע, אשפה פוסט :P

This is so interesting! I'm currently studying Turkish, so I can see some similarities in pronouns. I'm just posting to let you know that someone's reading, I know, a waste of a post :P

[Though a thought does occur, if the materials are viewable on google books, then those parts might be able to be posted. Not sure how that works.]

אם זה בספרים גוגל, אז אתה יכול לשלח.

If it's on Google Books, you can post it.
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Re: Mongolian (Монгол хэл)

Postby Sean of the Dead » 2010-01-23, 5:08

Does anyone happen to know where I can find the lyrics for Mongolian songs? :P I'm looking for the lyrics to "Эрх хонгор сэтгэл" by Сэрчмаа. I love that song! :D I've been listening to it for months, and am dying for the lyrics.

I'm definitely going to learn Mongolian in the future, it sounds really beautiful, and it's grammar is really cool. But I am doing enough languages right now that I really love, and need to but the reference grammar for it first, which is $92. :P
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Re: Mongolian (Монгол хэл)

Postby księżycowy » 2010-01-24, 19:38

Sean of the Dead wrote:Does anyone happen to know where I can find the lyrics for Mongolian songs? :P I'm looking for the lyrics to "Эрх хонгор сэтгэл" by Сэрчмаа. I love that song! :D I've been listening to it for months, and am dying for the lyrics.

I'm definitely going to learn Mongolian in the future, it sounds really beautiful, and it's grammar is really cool. But I am doing enough languages right now that I really love, and need to but the reference grammar for it first, which is $92. :P

Sorry, no idea for the lyrics . . .
But it's cool that you want to learn Mongolian. Stop by and Join us whenever you start. Hope you enjoy the posts in the meantime.

Ok, some more grammar:

The Genitive:
As will be seen, Mongolian suffixes tend to have quite a few forms. It greatly depends on vowels and consonants in the word. There tend to be four main vowels found in the suffixes (а, о, ө, and э) [But suffixes are not limited to these four] There can also be more then one form of a suffix using the same 'base' vowel. Anyway, on to the genitive suffixes:

-н (for words ending in diphthongs)
-ы (for back-vowel words ending in -н)
-ын (back-vowel words not ending in -ь/и/г/ж/ш/ч)
-ийн (back-vowel words that do end in -ь/и/г/ж/ш/ч; and front-vowel words with short vowels)
-ий (front vowel words ending in -н)
-ний (for 'fleeting н' words)
-гийн (for 'hidden г' words)
Ex.
нохой --> нохойн
(dog) --> (of a/the dog)

багш --> багшийн
(teacher) --> (of a/the teacher)

Hidden Г And Fleeting Н:
There is a phenomenon in Mongolian in which certain words change form when changing from the nominative form into other forms (mostly the genitive, dative/locative, and ablative). Certain words have what is called 'fleeting н' in which an 'н' in inserted into the word. There is no real rule used to decide which words to add this to. Some of the time when the 'н' is added to the word, it changes the vowel(s) of the word, this vowel changes need to be learned, inaddition to the words that have 'fleeting н.'

Hidden г is simply words that end in -н that retain the pronunciation -нг and this -нг is then kept in the other forms of the word when suffixes are added, and thus the spelling shows it by adding the г. Again the words that retain the -нг- pronunciation when suffixes are added need to be learned as they are encountered.

That will do it for now. Until next time, happy reading!

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Re: Mongolian (Монгол хэл)

Postby モモンガ » 2010-01-26, 13:47

I want to learn it too, I've downloaded some books on it, on in English and one in Japanese, also there is a course on grammar in Japanese on the site of Tokyo University.
Grammar seems hard, and I am a very beginner, but...
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Re: Mongolian (Монгол хэл)

Postby księżycowy » 2010-01-26, 20:20

モモンガ wrote:I want to learn it too, I've downloaded some books on it, on in English and one in Japanese, also there is a course on grammar in Japanese on the site of Tokyo University.
Grammar seems hard, and I am a very beginner, but...

Great to hear. It seems that we've got a little group going here.

Hopefully gothwolf gets back to us shortly!

księżycowy

Re: Mongolian (Монгол хэл)

Postby księżycowy » 2010-02-08, 15:36

I just found an interesting Mongolian Grammar book at Amazon (and it's a little cheaper then $92! It's about half that!). Figured I'd post a link for anyone interested:
Mongolian Grammar Textbook
I know you where looking to get one, Sean of the Dead.
I don't have it yet (though I did order it), but from the pictures on Amazon, it looks pretty good, and it was published last year (2009) so it's very recent.

księżycowy

Re: Mongolian (Монгол хэл)

Postby księżycowy » 2010-02-28, 16:18

Ok, it's been a little while since there's been any activity here on the Mongolian thread (partly my fault), but let's try to fix that!

I finally have gotten the reference grammar by R. Kullmann and D. Tserenpil (yay!), so I figured I'd revise (as necessary) the posts thus far.
[I must say that Colloquial Mongolian is not the best starting book for learning Mongolian, the grammar explanations are hit-and-miss and the verbs are not dealt with properly. The authors do not give the stems! They just give you the infinitive and (I would assume) they hope that you know how to figure out the stem (which is near impossible as far as I know), or have a good dictionary that gives them. All that being said, I might switch to my other textbook, but I'll stick with 'Colloquial' for a little longer (have to at least give it a chance). Not sure if anyone else agrees with my assessment, but I suppose that if it works for you, go for it.]

Ok, now that the 'ranting' is over . . . :twisted:
[The explanations will be my interpretation/paraphrasing of the explanations in "Mongolian Grammar"]

Genitive
Ok, here are the 'case-endings' for the genitive:

EndingUsage
-ын"strong words" with short vowels* \ consonants except 'н'
"strong words" in 'н'**
-ийн"weak words" with short vowels* \ consonants except 'н'
-ий"weak words" with 'н'**
diphthongs

*In words that have short vowels at the end of the word these vowels are often dropped before the case ending is added
**Including 'hidden н'

Now where Kullmann and Tserenpil (Mongolian Grammar) say 'strong' and 'weak' words they are talking about the vowels in the word. These are different terms to distinguish vowel harmony.

Strong words = back vowels
Weak words = front vowels
[I'll try to stay with 'front' and 'back' from here on out]

Now there are a few exceptions to the rules:
endingusageinstead of
-ийнwords ending in (и, ь) [which are dropped] \ consonants (ж, ч, ш, к, г*)-ын

*г is for both 'hidden г' and for words that end in a long vowel, long vowels require an inserted 'г' before an ending is added.

Some examples:
-ын
зорилго -- зорилгын
ном -- номын

-ийн
говь -- говийн
сан(г)*-- сангийн
залуу -- залуугийн

*(г) at the end of a word = 'hidden г'
like-wise (н) at the end of a word = 'hidden (or 'fleeting', as referenced above) н'
(Above examples are from the book itself, all credit goes to the authors!)

I think that will do it for now, don't want to confuse anyone. More to come later. Enjoy!
Last edited by księżycowy on 2010-03-01, 20:44, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Mongolian (Монгол хэл)

Postby kman1 » 2010-03-01, 5:56

hmm, I didn't know there was a Mongolian thread going. Good. I have been studying Mongolian also but my focus is on the script. I finally figured out how to type in Microsoft Word/Powerpoint in the traditional Mongolian script. It took me and my Mongolian friend 7 hours to figure it out and it isn't perfect by all means but we can successfully 100% type in the old script. She is even teaching me how to write the old script out by hand. We have been studying together for about 2 hours everyday for the last 4 days except yesterday. I'm not sure how long this will last but so far so good. I'm another advocate of Mongolian. :yep:

księżycowy

Re: Mongolian (Монгол хэл)

Postby księżycowy » 2010-03-01, 13:29

kman1 wrote:hmm, I didn't know there was a Mongolian thread going. Good. I have been studying Mongolian also but my focus is on the script.

That's cool, I've always liked the traditional Mongolian script myself. It would be fascinating if they ever switched back over to it in Mongolia. Last I remember they were not using it yet . . .

Does that mean your learning Classical Mongolian, or one of the other dialects? (as I doubt your learning Khalkha, though maybe you are)

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Re: Mongolian (Монгол хэл)

Postby kman1 » 2010-03-01, 19:52

księżycowy wrote:
kman1 wrote:Does that mean your learning Classical Mongolian, or one of the other dialects? (as I doubt your learning Khalkha, though maybe you are)

Nope, I'm just learning Modern Mongolian. That's it. But I will have the best of both worlds. I will be able to speak Mongolian just like every Mongolian speaker can but I'll also be able to read and write in both scripts! The old and the new. The famous dictionary that ones needs to be able to do this is located at my university library so I am fortunate indeed!

księżycowy

Re: Mongolian (Монгол хэл)

Postby księżycowy » 2010-03-01, 20:39

kman1 wrote:Nope, I'm just learning Modern Mongolian. That's it. But I will have the best of both worlds. I will be able to speak Mongolian just like every Mongolian speaker can but I'll also be able to read and write in both scripts! The old and the new. The famous dictionary that ones needs to be able to do this is located at my university library so I am fortunate indeed!

Interesting! :hmm:

Out of curiosity I'll ask: what are you using to learn Mongolian?

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Re: Mongolian (Монгол хэл)

Postby kman1 » 2010-03-02, 7:02

księżycowy wrote:Out of curiosity I'll ask: what are you using to learn Mongolian?

All I have bookwise is Colloquial Mongolian and Modern Mongolian. My key is that I have a very active native Mongolian speaker that is helping me learn Mongolian almost everyday when she has time. :P

But you know, I speak Korean pretty well so I don't worry about Mongolian grammar too much because it is similar to Korean grammar. That is why I think my Mongolian tutor speaks Korean so well.

księżycowy

Re: Mongolian (Монгол хэл)

Postby księżycowy » 2010-03-02, 11:18

kman1 wrote:All I have bookwise is Colloquial Mongolian and Modern Mongolian. My key is that I have a very active native Mongolian speaker that is helping me learn Mongolian almost everyday when she has time. :P

But you know, I speak Korean pretty well so I don't worry about Mongolian grammar too much because it is similar to Korean grammar. That is why I think my Mongolian tutor speaks Korean so well.

Huh, that's the first time I've heard Korean and Mongolian being called similar, but I guess it's not that crazy. I'm not sure what the current thought is, but it has been conjectured that Korean is in the Altaic linguistic Family (along with Mongolian, Turkic and Japanese). I suppose I'll find out soon enough, as I do plan on learning Korean soon.

Cool that you have a tutor though! I'd image that helps quite a lot.

[And as a side note, we'd also love to have a native Mongolian speak here at Unilang, not that I'd make you impose on you tutor or anything, but . . . ]


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