In addition to the never-ending struggle that is improving my Korean skills, it behooves me to pick up a third (OK, technically fourth) language. As you can probably imagine, this has much to do with my upcoming wedding - most of my inlaws do not speak English, and I figure being able to communicate with the Mrs’s folks might be helpful. Besides, I like languages, and learning a third one is probably a better hobby than smoking pot. The problem is, I’m in a quandary as to which one to learn. Mongolian would seem to be the natural choice, but most of my inlaws speak Russian to some degree, as do many urban Mongolians as a whole. Anyway, I jotted down a quick list of pros and cons to learning each:
- Mongolian
- My fiance is a native speaker
- There got to be a niche for Mongolian speakers somewhere - how many Mongolian as a Second Language folk do you know?
- Related to Korean - should be interesting from a linguistic perspective.
- Should give me greater insight into Mongolian culture
Pros
- Cons
- Not the most marketable of languages - it’s Mongolian, for Christ’s sake!
- Vowel harmony shit looks like a real bitch.
- Mongolian ranks high among world’s ugliest language - Lonely Planet likens it to “two cats hissing and spitting at one another until one finally throws up.”
- Learning materials close to nonexistent, both in English and Korean.
- Russian
- Much more marketable.
- Much easier on the ears.
- The fiance and much of her family is fluent in Russian.
- Opens up much of Central Asia.
- Has one of the world’s greatest canons of written literature.
- Learning material is plentiful and easy to obtain.
Pros
- Cons
- Saying you know Russian at parties isn’t quite as cool as Mongolian.
- The further outside of Ulaan Baator you go, the less useful Russian becomes.
- Learning Russian isn’t easy. But then again, neither is Korean. Or Mongolian.
- From a linguistic perspective, learning Russian wouldn’t give me the same kind of wood that learning another Altaic language might.
Well, any advice out there?
19 Comments
Don’t have a clue about Mongolian but Russian’s not actually all that hard after you get over the Cyrillic alphabet. Shares many roots with European languages.
Learn Russian and Mongolian. You should find Mongolian materials from Leeds University in England. Lattimore taught there and you should be able to get the necessary materials. Lattimore could speak Chinese. He learned Mongolian by traveling there with a Mongolian who could speak Chinese. This was some time ago.I can get greater details if you want.Email me. He wrote the first English-Mongolian dictionary. I am a little hazy on the details but can clarify them. If you can handle Korean you should be able to handle Mongolian. I speak several Chinese dialects as well as Mandarin. I learned Taiwanese after I married my husband. When you are really mad, you want them to understand you. When I met Lattimore he was already an old man and I was 20. Russian is basically western.
Margaret
Russian is horribly difficult. I am supposed to be a language genius. Two years of 4 hours a week Russian led me nowhere (although I suspect the prof to be part of the problem). Vowel harmony is nothing compared to the havoc accents wreak on vowels (’o’ has 3 pronounciations). Thought Latin was hard? Arf Arf! Some people say German words are long. Sure. Try Soyouz Sovietskykh Sotsyalisticheskykh Respublike without breathing… And that’s a short one.
At least, with Korean, you’ll be used to the noun-particle noun-particle verb structure. And do learn the Uighur-Monghol script, it is beautiful (doesn’t help much learning Modern Mongol though, since what is written Ulaan Baatar in Cyrillic is written Ula?쨀an Ba?쨀atar. Yep, they kept the 13th Century forms… Or at least that’s what my dictionary uses…).
Okay, Uighur-Mongol has a lill’ problem: vowels are not indicated clearly. Influence of Arabic via Syriac, UI think. But it’s fun (and then you can impress people by being able to read Manchu as well, although you won’t know what you’re reading!!!)
It would seem to me that more people speak Russian than Mongol. Therefore, if you want to maximize the number of potential people you could communicate with, pick Russian.
Uh… are you really that interested in “one of the world’s greatest canons of written literature”? And wouldn’t you have to train like an Olympian to get that good at reading Russian? “Speaking with mother-in-law” and “professionally-marketable-slash-scholarly- functional” Russian are probably light years apart.
If you have children, what will the wifee speak to them? How does true love figure into the equation ? If that’s your biggest motive and if the food really doesn’t make you sick, then do the right thing - Mongolian is probably the easiest language there is for Korean speakers. Learn to say “I’ll wash the cloth diapers with my bare hands while you make those dumplings that smell even worse, honey babe” in Mongolian. Dostoevsky’s dead - he’ll still be around when you when you retire.
I just wanted to say that I have nothing to add.
Kevin
Which county has the hotter chicks? Answer this question for yourself, and then you have your answer.
I think Mongolian is the obvious choice for two main reasons:
1. The “coolness at parties” factor (although throat-singing may be the ultimate choice here)
2. If you are serious about studying and your fiance is willing to teach you (instead of, say, constantly reverting to your current preferred language), it should be faster than learning Russian.
Here’s my two cents having learned Uzbek and Russian at pretty much the same time.
Russian is pretty cool, but it’s a bitch. I can speak village grandmother provincial Russian pretty well, but it’d be really hard to get anywhere near academic with it.
I think I should have focused more on Uzbek. In retrospect, it’s a cool language that’s easy to learn. I’d imagine Mongolian’s the same at first: harder than anything, but then really easy. Nomads don’t really come up with terribly complex languages.
So, coming up with no real conclusion, I say learn both of them. You never know when a Mongolian market will open up.
Learn Mongolian!!
Well that’s what my mom tells me all the time. Such a shame…don’t even know my own native language. But hey: I say learn Mongolian over stupid Russian.
I know it’s not very practical advice (less than 2 million ppl in the world speak it), but the most important woman in your life does…so learn it!
And then….there’s the party effect…
Bayartai (one of the few words I know)
It would be interesting to know how close Monglian is to Korean: it certainly is visibly related to Turkish. Vowel harmony is easy: a lot easier than Russian palatalisation/ velarisation. Russian aspect is also quite difficult, and the case system. There are actually a lot of words in common: Russsian bogatyr, hero, is borrowed from Mongolian, and a lot of Mongolian words come from Russian. From a commerical point of view, there are very few competent Mongolian speakers with English as a first language: that does not apply to Russian. Learn Mongolian: but try and pick up a smattering of Russian as well.
I took a quick look at your pro’s con’s list and i looks like the weight is slightly to the russian side to me. I have tried learning russian myself and i can tell u its a difficult language (the pronanciation alone can tie your tongue in a knot) but then again as you say so is mongolian.I myself am greek and I still had problems with Russian, but since you are going to marry a native mongolian I think you should start learning Russian now and over the years of your married life I’m sure you will pick up some Mongolian at least on a common conversable level.so there you go.
ps.Definitly pro to read the Russian classics in their native language (thats why I started learning but I never got there)
so good luck either way!!
Learn mongolian!
They both share the Cyrillic alphabet, and aren’t that much varried. I plan on learning mongolian, as when I graduate, some friends of mine and I plan to move to Mongolia and become Nomads. And Since I already know cyrillic, I could probably learn the language quite quickly. So I would suggest learning Mongolian first, because:
1) it’s a cool language
2) You’d have bragging rights as one of the very few who speak the language
3) Your wife is mongolian
4) Russian is a bitch to speak!
So go with mongolian, I am!
Sain baina uu?
Hm. Both are pretty cool sounding languages. I was in mongolia briefly last year, i was pleasantly surprised by the sound of it. sure, at times i thought it was a bit like Tolkien’s Black Speech, but when spoken softly it sounded rather pleasant. The voiceless “l”’s remind me of welsh, though the nasalization of vowels sounds too much like french which is not a very good thing. hey! at least theres no uvular trills. learn both, or learn mongolian.
are you crazy? Korean would have to be one of the most amazingly easy langauges. I love it.
I was thinking about some Mongolian/turkish/japanese only cause it relates so closely to korean that they must be good.
But if you’re are into learning out of interest Russian is probably the better choice because it is the most different.
cheers
Since your fiance is mongolian, you should learn mongolian. Without learning her native language you would never understand completely her emotional world.
Hello. I’m mongolian. I’m so sorry that, my english level is not good. I recommend you all: never decry other nations or languages!!!
1. Mongolian language is one of the Altaic languages. Members of Altaic language: mongolian, korean, japanese, chinese, turkish. Do you see that, if you completly understood one language then you can understand other member languages.
2. Russian language is diffrent from mongolian language, becuase russian is member of slaviyan languages. Mongolian and Russian language is only same in cyrillic alphabet. But they have little diffrence. In russia has 33 alphabets, mongolia has 35 alphabets.
3. If you said about mongolian language “bitch”, you never learn our great language.
4. Our mongolian people said ” most important three things are language, country border, herd animals”. Because all mongolian historical wars, and fights, livestyles, cultures about their.
5. Many mongolian words in korean language now. For example: juukum (little) - joohon, urenjuk (west or right) - ornozug, abba(daddy) - aavaa etc.
6. In the end I wish you all the best, and I’ll pray to God for give you intellect about mongolians. All korean people think about yourselves: we are great nation, we have culture and history, we have land… But real condition is you are not great nation (remember Mongolian empire, during this time you are our one of the colonies), you have not your own history (your history is same to chinese, may have little diffrent) your culture is same to japanese and chinese, novadays going to americanism, and you haven’t land, because now you are american colony in all industry (politics and economy, millitary, trade…) So are you understand your disgrace? If you want to know more about Mongolia, contact me.
this comment is a response to tufshin-
the chinese languages are part of the sino-tibetan language family and mongolian is part of the altaic language family.
they are not related languages, but i’m sure there have been several chinese loan words due to centuries of contact. and i doubt if you know mongolian you’ll understand turkish. it like saying if you learn hindi you’ll understand english (they are both in the indo-european family)
korean officially not in any language family, but the closest possible relative is japanese, which also is an isolated language. both of these langauges have some features related to the altaic family, but no big connection has been made. but there are many chinese loan words in these languages too, the chinese basically dominated east asian literature for centuries.
for the dude:
learn russian and mongolian, the more languages you study the easier it is to learn them.
your brain gets into language learning mode
To Ashley