Mongolian Vowel Harmony and Consonant Clusters

On May 1 of this year I began a self-styled intensive Mongolian language class at a language school in Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia. I’m in class four hours a day Monday-Friday for six weeks. Then there’s homework to do, of course. For the record, during my first class it began to snow outside. I didn’t expect it, but цас (tsas) ‘snow’ was one of my first vocab items.

On that first day I also learned commands such as: уншаарай (onshaarai) ‘read please’, хэлээрэй (kheleerei) ‘say please’, сонсоорой (sonsooroi) ‘listen please’, ɵгɵɵрɵй (ɵgɵɵrɵi) ‘give please’.

The bolded endings make the polite form of the commands, and you see that there are four different vocalic possibilities. The vowel of the ending is determined by the vowel in the root word. The basic division is between what, in Mongolian, are called female vowels, namely и [i], ɵ [œ], э [e], Y [u], and male vowels, namely у [o], о [ɔ], а [a] and я [ya].

In phonetic terms this distinction amounts to one, more or less, between front vowels and back vowels. Any root with a male (back) vowel will trigger the ending -аарай, as in уншараай, гараарай (garaarai) ‘go out please’). Any root with a female (front) vowel will trigger the ending - ээрэй, as in хэлээрэй , бичээрэй (bicheerei) 'write please'. In addition, back rounded mid-vowel o [ɔ] and front rounded mid-vowel ɵ [œ] trigger full identity: сонсоорой versus ɵгɵɵрɵй.

When vowels are being matched for frontness or backness and/or roundedness, this phenomenon is called vowel harmony. In other words, front vowels harmonize with front vowels, back vowels with back, while the ‘birds’ of the rounded mid-vowel ‘feather’ harmonize together. This phonetic feature gives Mongolian a soothing sound, especially in such phrases as сайхан амраарай (saikhan amraraii) ‘pleasant rest please’, which is said at the end of the day or workweek, or уучлаарай (oochlaarai) ‘excuse please’, which often comes up.

Many languages, such as Finnish and Hungarian and Turkish, exhibit vowel harmony. In Mongolian it is completely consistent. If the answer to question ‘Where are you from?’ is France, the answer is: Францаас (frantsaas). If it is Mongolia, the answer is: Монголоос (mongoloos). If an ending to make something into a noun is formed from a verb with a female vowel such as сэтгэх (setgekh) ‘to find something new,’ we have word сэтгYYл (setguul) ‘magazine.’ If a male vowel is involved, such as the verb сурах (sorakh) ‘to study,’ the noun comes out as сургууль (sorgool) ‘school.’ Note that the –Vx ending to make the infinitive follows the principles of vowel harmony: сэтгэх (setgekh) versus сурах (sorakh).

Another audible feature of Mongolian is its wide array of consonant clusters. For instance, the cluster -mtl- is found in the word амтларч (amtlarch) ‘spice’ and -vts- found in word хувцас (khovtsas) ‘clothing’. There is the female name мɵнхцэцэг (mɵnkhtsetsek) that means Eternal Flower (mɵnkh ‘eternal’ tsetsek ‘flower’) and has the internal consonant cluster –n-kh-ts–. The clusters start piling up when verbs are conjugated and nouns declined.

When put into the accusative (direct object) case, Eternal Flower becomes мɵнхцэцэгийг (mɵnkhtstsgiik). The cluster extends to five: –n-kh-ts-ts-g– because the two э [i] vowels in ‘flower’ are elided to put the phonetic stress on the ending -ийг (-iik). (The name is still spelled with the two э [i] vowels.) I had my teacher pronounce мɵнхцэцэгийг over and over, and sure enough she had those five consonants lined up perfectly every time. It also sounded very nice coming out of her mouth. For me, it’s something of a tongue twister, but I am able to get my lips and tongue around most of the clusters.

English is a Germanic language in the Indo-European stock. Indo-European languages characteristically have a lot of consonant clusters, and these can trip up people who speak languages from other language stocks. For instance, the word ‘sixths’ (siksθs) can be very challenging for non-English speakers to pronounce correctly (and some us English speakers fudge it when speaking quickly). There are languages in the world that do not allow any consonant clusters whatsoever, Vietnamese being one, and some, like Japanese and Korean, that allow only very limited clusters in certain positions in the word.

There are quite a lot of Koreans at my language school (not to mention tons of Korean restaurants around town – apparently Mongolians have a taste for spicy kimchee). One of my teachers said that her Korean students complain and complain about Mongolian pronunciation. She offered the explanation that these are people who like to complain. She said it nicely and in a way that made me realize she likes all her students. I suggested that the consonant clusters are the problem. She didn’t buy it. After all, she can pronounce мɵнхцэцэгийг without a hitch.

On a happier note for the Koreans, the Mongolian name for ‘Korea’ is Солонгос (solongos) and is related to the word солонго (solongo) ‘rainbow.’ The country is so named because of their colorful traditional clothing. Very pretty.