Prepositions in English tell you where, when, or how something happens.

In Mongolian, these words are called postpositions.

They serve the exact same purpose but are placed after the noun instead of before it.

Learning how to use postpositions correctly is a huge step toward building natural sentences in Mongolian.

This guide will break down the most common Mongolian postpositions and show you exactly how to use them.

What are postpositions?

In English, we say “on the table” or “after work”.

The connecting word comes directly before the main noun.

Mongolian reverses this order completely.

You literally say “the table on” or “work after”.

These connecting words are called postpositions because they sit at the post (end) of the noun phrase.

They help you express location, direction, time, and relationships between objects.

Let’s look at the most useful ones you need to know.

Postpositions of location

Location postpositions help you describe where things are physically placed.

They always go immediately after the noun they’re describing.

Here are the most common Mongolian postpositions for location:

Let’s see these in action with some practical sentences.

Notice how the nouns for table (ширээ), bed (ор), and bag (цүнх) come right before the postposition.

An extra ‘н’ (n) is often added to the end of these nouns before the postposition.

This is a hidden or “fleeting” consonant that appears in Mongolian grammar when connecting certain words.

Postpositions of time and sequence

You’ll also use postpositions to talk about when things happen.

The two most common time postpositions are өмнө (before) and дараа (after).

In Inner Mongolia, you might hear slight pronunciation differences for these temporal words.

However, the written form and the grammatical rules remain exactly the same across all Mongolian regions.

Other useful postpositions

There are a few other common postpositions that don’t deal with physical location or time.

These are absolutely essential for daily conversations.

The word тухай means “about” or “concerning”.

The word хамт means “together with”.

The role of grammatical cases

In English, prepositions just sit next to the noun without changing it.

In Mongolian, postpositions often require the noun to change its form slightly.

This means you must apply a specific grammatical case suffix to the noun before adding the postposition.

The most common case used with postpositions is the Genitive case.

The Genitive case shows possession, similar to adding an apostrophe ‘s’ in English.

Postpositions like дараа (after), өмнө (before), and тухай (about) always require the preceding noun to be in the Genitive case.

Look at the word for work, which is ажил (ajil).

If you want to say “after work”, you can’t just say ажил дараа.

You must add the Genitive suffix -ын (-iin) to ажил.

The correct phrase becomes ажлын дараа (ajliin daraa).

Let’s look at one more example using the word for me, which is би (bi).

The Genitive form of me is миний (minii), which translates to “my”.

Understanding which case matches which postposition takes a bit of practice.

Focus on learning the postpositions as fixed chunks of vocabulary first.

Once you memorize common chunks like ажлын дараа (after work), the grammatical rules become much easier to follow.