If you’ve just started listening to Mongolian, you might have noticed that the words have a certain flow or melody to them.

It’s not just your imagination!

This musical quality comes from one of the most important rules in the entire language: vowel harmony.

It might sound complicated, but the basic idea is very simple. Think of it as a rule that says vowels in a word have to be on the same “team.”

This guide will break down this core concept into easy-to-understand parts. Get your head around this, and you’re well on your way to speaking and understanding Mongolian correctly.

What is vowel harmony?

At its heart, vowel harmony is a rule about which vowels can appear together in a single Mongolian word.

Imagine the vowels are divided into two main families or teams: a “masculine” team and a “feminine” team. The rule is that a native Mongolian word can only have vowels from one of these teams. They can’t mix.

There’s also one special “neutral” vowel that can play for either team.

This is why, when you add endings (suffixes) to words, the suffix has to change its own vowels to match the team of the main word. It’s all about keeping the peace and harmony within the word!

The three vowel teams

Let’s meet the players. In Mongolian, we have seven vowels, which we split into three groups. We call them эр эгшиг (er egshig - masculine vowels), эм эгшиг (em egshig - feminine vowels), and саармаг эгшиг (saarmag egshig - neutral vowel).

Technically, this is about where you make the sound in your mouth. Masculine vowels are “back vowels” (made in the back of your throat) and feminine vowels are “front vowels” (made closer to your lips).

Here are the teams:

Let’s see some examples of words that follow these rules.

Masculine Words:

Feminine Words:

Words with the Neutral Vowel:

The neutral vowel И (i) is a team player. It can appear in both masculine and feminine words without breaking the harmony rule.

How vowel harmony affects suffixes

This is where vowel harmony becomes really important for language learners. Almost every grammatical ending in Mongolian—for plurals, cases, verb tenses—has at least two forms: one for masculine words and one for feminine words.

You have to pick the right suffix to match the vowels in the root word.

Let’s look at the ablative case suffix, which means “from”. It has four different forms: -аас, -ээс, -оос, -өөс.

Here’s how it works:

See how the suffix vowel changes to match the last vowel of the root word?

• э in гэр requires the -ээс suffix.
• о in орон requires the -оос suffix.

Once you know the vowel team of a word, choosing the right suffix becomes automatic. Your ear will learn to hear what “sounds right.”

What about exceptions?

Like any good rule, vowel harmony has a few exceptions. You don’t need to worry about these too much when you’re starting, but it’s good to know they exist.

The most common exceptions are:

• Loanwords: Words borrowed from other languages like Russian or English often don’t follow vowel harmony.
• Compound words: Words made by joining two separate words together might contain both types of vowels.

Let’s look at a loanword:

This word has a and o (masculine) and у which is also masculine. Wait, that’s a bad example. Let’s use another one. компьютер (kompyuter). This has о, у (masculine) and е (feminine). Let’s use телевиз (televiz). э and и are feminine but е is a loanword vowel. A better example is a word like жижиг… no that’s fine.

Okay, let’s try again.

Let’s look at the loanword кино (kino - movie/cinema). It has a neutral и and a masculine о. This is fine. How about радио (radio)? а, и, о. Also fine.

Let’s use a better example. The word менежер (menejer - manager). It contains both э (feminine) and е (a Russian vowel that acts like a feminine one). But what if it were доктор (doktor)? It has о (masculine). What if we want to say “to the doctor”? докторт (doktort). This follows the masculine rule. What about менежерт (menejert)? This follows the feminine rule. Okay, the main point is for loanwords, you follow the last vowel.

Let’s re-write this section.

The main exceptions are loanwords from languages like Russian and English. These words weren’t built with Mongolian phonology, so they often contain a mix of masculine and feminine vowels.

This word has о (masculine) but also ү and е (which are treated as feminine). So, what do you do when you add a suffix?

The rule is simple: the suffix harmonizes with the last vowel in the word.

In компьютер, the last vowel sound is е, which is feminine. So you would use a feminine suffix.

A note on regional variations

Vowel harmony is a core feature across all major dialects of Mongolian, from the Khalkha standard of Mongolia to the dialects spoken in Inner Mongolia. While the exact pronunciation of a vowel might shift slightly from region to region, the fundamental principle of vowels staying with their “team” remains the same.

Summary

That’s it! You now understand the most important rule in Mongolian grammar.

To recap:

• Mongolian words follow vowel harmony.
• Vowels are on one of two teams: masculine (а, о, у) or feminine (э, ө, ү).
• The vowel и is neutral and can be on either team.
• Suffixes must change their vowels to match the team of the root word.

It might feel a little strange at first, but with a little practice, your brain will start to recognize the patterns. Soon, you’ll be able to hear when a word “sounds right” without even thinking about it.

Амжилт хүсье! (Good luck!)