Learning Mongolian

[benjamin]

Hi all!
I would really love to learn how to speak fluent Mongolian. What do you people think would be the best way to learn? I don't think I will find many Mongolian language teachers here in Australia.
Thank you

[jamyangnorbu]

If you good with grammars and self study you could try a course such as:
Colloquial Mongolian: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series)

And then follow up with a conversational tutor using a service like Skype to communicate.

For fluency you will need to spend some time in Mongolia.

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

Spending a year in Mongolia would be the best way, I guess

[Subu'atai]

You can learn the basics quite quick within weeks if you have mates nearby, but most Mongolian travellers/students come to Sydney. Back in Perth I found no Mongols all the years I've been there, then a Mongol friend told me that she was there for a while, and that there only seems to be perhaps 2-3 Mongolian families max in Perth at a time in between 10-20 years - impossible to find! ;D

Even if you do learn though, unless you plan to work with Mongolians or plan to live in a place where there's more Mongolians around (such as Sydney), you will lose it just as quick if you live in Perth, as you won't be able to use it. It's (Halh) unfortunately a very isolated language, and Oirat is even more isolated. The Hazara language is completely different too if you want to learn (but I'm assuming you're more interested in Halh). Curious though... why such interest btw?

Australia isn't exactly a place to learn/use Mongolic languages. Not only is there a very small community of Mongols here, some families brought up here end up losing their language quickly due to isolation and resulting assimilation. Such as mine, and "Aussie" culture has already claimed my old man, but he's very old and dazed, so they can claim him and I don't really care. The community in Australia, even in Sydney, is just too small.

[benjamin]

Thank you jamyangnorbu and H. Ihsan Erkoc for your replies
That book seems really good. Thank you very much for the link ;D

Hi Subu'atai,
Actually I wasn't expecting to find any Mongolian families in Perth at all, and to be honest, I'm not sure which language i want to learn. I have just been reading around on the internet so far.
What are the differences between the various Mongolic languages? Which is most commonly used by modern Mongols?

I have always been interested in steppe and nomad culture and history. Particularly the Mongols. However, I have only really been researching on my own about them for 6 months or so and it just interested me to have a go at learning the language.
Ultimately I would love to travel to Mongolia and live with the people there and learn about them and experience what nomad life is really like

[yesughei]

I'm also very interested in learning some Mongolian because I want to go to Mongolia next year. I don't expect to ever speak Mongolian fluently but I don't want to go to Mongolia without being able to speak and understand some basic words.

That book jamyangnorbu suggested looks great, I'm certainly going to buy it.

[Subu'atai]

Modern Mongolian, which is used in Mongolia, is the Halh dialect. That's all you really need to learn I guess if you wish to converse with Mongolians.

EDIT:

Sorry for the hasty reply earlier, anyways now that I have a break I'll answer your questions a little better...

Mongolic dialects are still similar to each other, the exception is Harazajat which is heavily iranic-influenced (Harazajat is spoken by the Hazara Mongols who live in Afghanistan - they also have a solid but small community here in Australia ever since the war, they may also have contacts with any possible Mongolian families in your area)

Hazaras are a great people, one of the best; friendly, hospitable, cultured, respectful and strong. The type of people who you will love within the first few hours of meeting them - kinda like the Irish. The only other people I can think of that measures up to their level of awesomeness in my opinion are probably Zoroastrian Iranians - pretty much the only Iranians who don't hate us Mongols senselessly too it seems heh... seriously speaking of which, I'm getting rather sick of...

As a side fact, know that Hazaras along with other Afghans have contributed alot to Australia in the past too as camellers crossing the blue mountains - something you never hear about. The reason I tell you this is because Hazaras are a lot more numerous in Australia since the (lol) "war on terror" - which fortunately was actually a good thing in one way (Pashtuns were about to call for another ethnic cleansing of Hazaras b4 the U.S./Allies stepped in). You have higher chances of finding a Hazara social circle then a Mongolian one in Australia.

Learning Hazarajat however, won't be of help with other Mongols though I guess - for that you need to learn Halh Mongolian (Modern Mongolian), and you should be able to converse with most Mongols excluding Hazaras. In Dzungaria/Kalmykia/Buryatia - language is little rusty, too much russification/sinofication, and in the case of Kalmyks, two attempted genocides within 3 centuries is a bit too much to hold onto language at the same time. (Something I will always respect the Hazaras for, they put up with much worse).

So there you have it, some understanding of the various Mongol groups, not just Mongolian (I use Mongol for ethnic, Mongolian for nationality).

[benjamin]

Thank you for such a detailed reply Subu'atai!
It's really interesting to learn about all that sort of stuff.
Still a couple of questions though
Who are the Pashtuns?
And has modern Mongolian changed much since, say, Genghis Khan's time for example? Is the language very different than it was back then?
Thank you ;D

[jamyangnorbu]

You can get a rough idea of the types of divergences from proto-mongolian that the various Mongolic languages exhibit by checking out the chart here:

wikipedia.qwika.com/de2en/Mongolische_Sprachen#Lexikalischer_Vergleich

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

In vocabular sense, Khalkha (Halh) Mongolian looks pretty much a shortened version of Pre-Classical and Classical Mongolian - same case with Old Turkic and Modern Anatolian Turkish. Btw in Inner Mongolia, they still use the Mongolian Uyghur Script but surely their pronunciation is Modern.

[sarmat]

I believe Uyghur script is actually also used in Mongolia interchangeably with Cyrillic now and is also mandatory for study at schools.

[jamyangnorbu]

Here is a scholarly take on the state of the mongolian dialects/languages:

books.google.com/books?id=GMmjLzJhA2EC&lpg=PP1&dq=mongolic%20languages&pg=PA177#v=onepage&q&f=false

This book is great, but costs too much $$$. Luckily a good chunk of it is available online.