Mongolian Phonology

-The Mongolian language has both long and short vowel sounds, “but long vowel sounds only occur in the first syllable of a word” (www.wikipedia.org)
-There are fourteen vowels in the Mongolian language: seven short and seven long
-The distinction “ between long and short vowels is critical, since their use is
closely tied to the meaning of words: tos is "grease, oil," while toos is "dust” (www.koreanhistoryproject.org)
-The letter “r” is never used to begin a word
-The letter "f" is used only in foreign loan words and is often changed to "p."
-Word pronunciation can be challenging since many Mongolian words are very long,with a lot of vowels
-Letter pronunciation “isn't very difficult, since Mongolian uses sounds that are not unfamiliar to speakers of most other languages” (www.wikipedia.org)
-One difficult sound is “the "h" in Romanized Mongolian (often Romanized as "kh").In the Cyrillic alphabet, this character is written as x and indicates a sound that does not exist in modern English” (www.koreanhistoryproject.org)
-The “kh” sound “survived Old English and in Scottish English ("loch"), and can be found in German, Arabic, Turkish and a number of other modern languages” (www.koreanhistoryproject.org)
-It is similar to the “German pronunciation of "ch" in nacht,like the sound you make when gargling or clearing your throat” (www.koreanhistoryproject.org)

LISTEN TO THIS VIDEO TO HEAR THE PRONUNCIATION OF THE MONGOLIAN LANGUAGE