Numbers in Mongolian. Part I NUMBERS IN MONGOLIAN In this entry I would like to provide some examples of saying and using numbers in Mongolian. It is not so difficult to learn Mongolian cardinal numbers. When it comes to ordinal numbers my students are often confused that we use different ways to name week days, months and years. 1. We can say about weekdays in three different ways. First, we use Tibetan names and Mongolian names. For example, Monday is Sumya in Tibetan and Davaa in Mongolian. Second, we use ordinal numbers to name a weekday. For example, we can say Нэг дэх өдөр for Monday which is translated “The first day”. Хоёр дах өдөр for Tuesday which is translated “The second day” and so on. However, for the Saturday and Sunday we do not use cardinal numbers. We say ‘амралтын өдрүүд’ which means “days of rest’. Also we usually say “half good day” to mean Saturday and “full good day” – for Sunday. 2. When we talk about months in Mongolian, we use either cardinal or ordinal numbers. For example. January – “the first month” which is “нэгдүгээр сар” in Mongolian. The same is for the other months such as “the second month” for February, “the third month” for March etc. Therefore, if I say my birthday, for example, I use ordinal number for month and cardinal number for birthday. Example, Нэг мянга есөн зуун тавин дөрвөн оны дөрөвдүгээр сарын арван. It’s translated as “ten of the fourth month of nineteen fifty four”. Year always comes first, then the month and the day last to talk about the date. Example. 1954/04/10 – year/month/day When we say or write address(es) in Mongolia the order is usually as following: - country - city or town - street or, usually, building. We say building # 10 or “the tenth building, the second floor, the 13th apartment”. Using street names or street numbers is not very common in Mongolia. They are mostly used in official addresses of government organizations or companies. I'll give more details about Mongolian numbers in next notebook entry.