Under Mongolian Blue Sky

Lunner

My Mongolian teacher is obsessed with "lunner." He wouldn't let me rest until I promised to write about "lunner" on my blog. And when I told him I intended to get him a gift for all his help, he said the best gift would be that I post something about "lunner" on my blog. Thus, this one's for you, Munkh-Amgalan.

Lunner is, you guessed it, a meal that takes place somewhere between lunch and dinner, a la "brunch." A late lunch. Or an early dinner, if you like. The word, as you can see, takes it's first syllable from lunch and it's second from dinner. Mu bagsh, as Munkh-Amgalan is affectionately known by his graduate students, is a linguist; we've spent a lot of time looking at the units, nature, structure, and modification of the Mongolian language and sometimes even of the English language.

The man loves to create new words, and he's really pushing this one with tenacity. I find it a bit hard to force off my tongue, but a google search produces several instances of the use of "lunner" and it appears in a few eclectic dictionaries, such as the urbandictionary.com and thefreedictionary.com.

The next time you forget to eat lunch and have to head out of the office in the middle of the afternoon, inform your colleagues that you'll be going out to lunner. Do it for Mu bagsh.

White Blossoms

It is now summer, even if not according to the stars. There are white and pink blossoms in the thick air.  The wind blows the heat and sand into one's face. Black flies are omnipresent.

I discussed "being other" with my colleague Simon Wickham-Smith, translator of Danzanravjaa (see Perfect Qualities) and the founder of CCALT: Center for Central Asian Literatures in Translation, who is in Mongolia for about six weeks. We decided that a good way to describe Mongolians is with the word "hard". There is no "excuse me" to be heard when someone is trying to get by. They just shove you. Of course to foreigners this feels like a breach of one's personal space, but it's perfectly acceptable in Mongolia; to be honest, I've adjusted to it.

Finally, there is the question of how to order names. I am of the opinion that it is important to retain the order of Mongolian names: father's name first with the genitive, or possessive, noun-case suffix followed by the given name. For example, Ganbatiin (or G.) Delgermaa (aka, my dear friend Degi). Simon has taken to reversing the order to fit the West's habit: Delgermaa Ganbat. What do you think?

Being Other

There's this way that Mongolian people look at me when I walk down the street. It's hard to define. I suppose because there are so many foreigners living here now and many travellers passing through, I expect something different. I forget that Mongolia as a country was closed to outsiders for decades--due to ideology and geography––and the people are still getting used to having foreigners around.

Of course, because of America's conspicuous cultural terrorism, they like so many people across the globe carry an inaccurate and refractory image of the American people in their minds. (Note: The United States is commonly known here as America, or Америк. However, I still feel strange writing this because America is so much more that simply the U.S.)

It's not that Mongols don't like foreigners for the most part: whenever I have a conversation with anyone on the street, their face quickly becomes a warm smile. However, I still find it difficult because I live here, however temporarily, and I'm not just a tourist. I want acceptance but I'll always be a foreigner, an "other".

The word that expresses "foreigner" in Mongolian is "гадаадынхан" [gadaadiinhan], which literally means "outsider". I'm always struck by how language can so often be a litmus test of a culture or people's thought.

What is Winter?

Last week I had an illuminating conversation with an American teacher here named George Economides. He has lived in Mongolia for five years. The first three he spent as a Peace Corps volunteer. Now he teaches at the American School of Ulaanbaatar and volunteers for Friends of Mongolia. We were talking about Mongolia's seasons and how to accurately translate хавар, өвөл, etc. (spring, winter, etc.) into English.

You see, the seasons as we know them do not exist in Mongolia. Using his words, we might describe winter with the following words and phrase: dry, sunny, beautiful skies. This is not generally how I think of winter. Likewise, spring in Mongolia is cold, brown, windy and dusty. That's not what I see when I envision spring. So how to translate a poem about winter into English?

In some places they refer to rainy and dry seasons. Perhaps this is a better way to translate Mongolian seasons because хавар (khawar) doesn't equate to what we know of spring. Perhaps we could call it the dusty, windy season.

Then again, maybe this only means that we ought to expand our definition of spring. We could be rigid and define the seasons on a scale of time by the stars: spring is March 21-June 21; summer is June 22-September 21, etc. Or we accept that spring can be different things at different times and still employ use of the word spring.

In this poem the point is to know that winter is dreary and spring is something we look forward to, though it sometimes may seem as if spring will never come:

Өмнөх зам бодолд дарагдан атирна.
Үнэн сэтгэлээсээ инээх минь цөөрнө.
Хүйтэн агаарт цойлох
«Хавар айсүй» гэсэн гэнэн итгэлийнхээ араас
Хүүхэд шиг инээтсэглэвч,

Тэр инээд биш, шоочхон мушийлт
Тэнгэрийн эгдүүг хүргэнэ.
Улам өвөл…

++++

[English interlinear]

Ömnökh zam bodold daragdang atirn.
Üneng setgeleesee ineekh min tsöörn.
Khüiteng agaart tsoilokh
“Khawar aisüi” reseng reneng itgeliinkhee araas
Khüükhed shig ineetseglewch

Ter ineed bish, shoochkhong mushiilt
Tengeriing egdüüg khürgen.
Ulam öwöl…

++++

The path ahead is weighted down and wrinkled
        in thought.
Laughter from my true soul diminishes.
Even though I follow my naïve hope,
“Spring’s coming,” that flies up into the cold air
And smile like a child

That is not laughter, but a mocking smirk
That stimulates heaven’s irritation.
More winter…

Excerpt from “Намраас намар, өвлөөс өвөл ургана” (Fall grows from fall, winter from winter) by G. Ayurzana; translation from Mongolian by Lisa Fink, 2006

George would assert that spring is more difficult than winter, especially for folks in the countryside. However, this poem implies the opposite. Of course the poet lives in UB and has for at least fifteen years. Perhaps he has forgotten that for herders winter is a season they sadly leave behind as they face the wind, dust and cold of spring.

More than One Way to Say "I Love You"

I don't have much to write today other than I'm now getting in the groove of language acquisition. My brain is moving toward expressing thoughts with the Mongolian language as opposed to merely transliterating from English, which is not always very effective.

Every day I write a diary in Mongolian. Sometimes I don't know how to express what I've done in Mongolian, so I look up the appropriate word in my English-Mongolian dictionary and transliterate what I mean to write. In these cases, my Mongolian language professor, Munkh-Amgalan, often has a good laugh at my expense. He says he can understand what I mean, but that it's not quite right.

Either way, writing this diary is good practice for me. I'm learning a lot of Mongolian grammar very quickly. Now I must push myself to speak and listen to Mongolian. My new Mongolian family is lovely and presents many opportunities to do this. They don't mind my errors and generously repeat the correct phrase when I've made a mistake.

One of their sons laughed quite hysterically when I said that in the countryside I had helped to herd the shoes. (I meant I had helped herd the calves.) To express 'shoe' in Mongolian, one says 'гутал' (gotal). 'Calf' is 'тугал' (togal). One can see it was an easy mistake to make, yes?

P.S. I've been steadily posting new pics to the Хøдøø and Portraits albums. You'll want to check those out!

Тийм уу?

I have figured out a way to write in cyrillic script on my laptop, but unfortunately it's Russion cyrillic, not Mongolian cyrillic, so I'm missing two letters of the Mongolian cyrillic alphabet. So far it's the closest I've been able to get.

Today I had my first Mongolian language lesson with Professor Y. Munkh-Amgalan. He's a linguistics professor at NUM and has taught for over twenty years, including for a time in Indiana. Th subject of this post is a phrase I learned today. It means, "Really?" I have heard the phrase repeatedly but never knew what it meant. I feel a very big opening with this small knowledge. I also learned the word 'тэгэт', which means 'then.' (Not sure my punctuation is quite right there. Feel free to comment with a correction. What else is a blog but a place for reader AND writer to learn?) These minor linking words are a goldmine to me. They provide those segues that make language smooth.

I am very glad to have started my lessons. It's good to have a focus. And my lessons are to be directed by me. Munkh-Amgalan wants me to decide what I want to learn and to come up with topics I want to discuss as well as to bring specific questions to each meeting. We meet every day for 1.5 hours, so I hope to progress quickly. I felt really good about our first lesson. We spoke Mongolian together for quite a while, with me saying, "Мэдэгуи" (that's not quite the right spelling, but close) when I didn't know the Mongolian word for what I wanted to say.

Soning saikhung you ben?

(What's the news?)

• Yesterday I had my first Mongolian thought. My friend Kathryn, her young son Alex and I were at Anodyne for breakfast. I gave Alex some of my blueberry muffin and Kathryn asked him to thank me. When he did, my first thought was "zoogwer, zoogwer"—"you're welcome" in Mongolian.

• Hmmm. I can't make an em dash. That annoys me. I'll have to figure that out, so this blog has correct punctuation. ...time lapse... HA! I figured it out! YOU can make an em dash too!

• Last night I had my first dream set in Mongolia. Everyone in the dream was speaking English.

• I wish I could type with the Mongolian alphabet. It'd be good writing practice and would expose more people to the Mongolian language. Oh, well.

• Almost all of my books are packed. Almost all of the walls are bare. Dust bunnies flourish everywhere.