The Linguist

How the Mongolian language belies the myth that the nation's nomads are rootless drifters. By Enkhee Namsrai Over 30 years have passed since Mongolia opened up to the free world, but its culture and language remain comparatively unknown. Many people still picture Mongolia as a vast expanse of grassy steppe across which nomadic herders wander at will in search of better grazing. This romantic notion poses challenges to linguists and others keen to correct embedded cultural misconceptions. Mongolia is the 19th largest country in the world. About 40% of its 3.4 million citizens are herders. Many of the others live in the capital. To provide insights into the culture, I would like to take you on a journey through the key cultural concepts 'dwelling place' and 'home', starting with my favourite poem, Bi Mongol Hun ('I am a Mongol') by Ch. Chimed. The first verse, in my translation, reads: I, born in a herdsman's ger [yurt] From which dried-dung smoke ascends – My nutag [dwelling-place] in the wilds – I think of it as my cradle. Here the poet's home is the family ger (a wood-lattice, felt and canvas yurt) where he was born. His nutag, rendered as 'dwelling place', is the area where that ger has been pitched. Mongolian herders move their homes with the seasons, four or five times a year, usually returning to the same places. Winter and spring are passed in sheltered places, ideally with good access to fuel and water; summer grazing is not over-used; and the autumn wild hay harvest is scythed ahead of ice and snow. Thus there is no random nomadic drifting at all, but a stable and sustainable pastoral cycle (barring natural disasters). If conditions allow, the distance from place to place may be only a few kilometres. The area containing all of a family's annual ger sites comprises their nutag. Where one was born is also one's nutag. As a member of the Altaic language group, Mongolian is an agglutinative language. Illustrating this using the word-stems ger and nutag gives a good sense of how fundamental these concepts are. The agglutinations of nutag are particularly revealing: nutagshih (to get used to a new dwelling place); nutgiinhan (those from a particular nutag); nutaglah (to pitch one's ger, to settle, make a habitation); nutgarhag (favouring people from one's own nutag); and, perhaps most meaningful of all, nutagluulah (to lay a deceased person to rest). In this way, nutag embodies the journey of life, from one's birthplace to one's final resting place. The nutag where the ger is pitched creates the locus for human existence in harmony with nature, especially with the livestock on which herders' lives depend. The Mongol ger is largely unaltered in its design for centuries. Its furnishings are arranged according to ancient custom. It can be packed up or erected in a couple of hours, and can be simply adapted for comfort in torrid heat or the bitterest cold. The door always faces into the morning sun. A source of water should be nearby, and will be kept pure. Firewood may be used but dried cow dung, as in the poem, also makes an excellent peat-like fuel, whose smoke is scented with wild herbs. Here are some agglutinations of ger: ger bul (family); geriinhenteigee (with one's own family); gerleh (to get married); gergii (a wife); and gergiitei (a married man). The physical and conceptual ger constitutes the shared core of Mongol social experience; it is a circle of life where young and old each have their place. Etymology and tradition ensure Mongol speakers absorb a particular sense of 'home' and 'dwelling-place', even if they were not born in a ger scented with dried-dung smoke, pitched in the wilderness. Today many Mongols live in blocks of flats or wooden houses, but they still use ger to mean home. For townsfolk, nutag comes to mean their own rural birthplace or the place their family originally came from. Thus, they are not foot-loose nomads. A sense of belonging to a particular place is still hard- wired into the personal identity of most Mongols, even in this rapidly evolving culture. Enkhee Namsrai MCIL CL is a Mongolian language and culture consultant providing training to clients including the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. At home in Mongolian OPINION & COMMENT

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