MWW 10: дүү

Cyrillic	дүү
Transcription	düü
IPA	[tʉ:]
Layman’s Pronunciation	DOOH
Translation	younger sibling; younger
In Genghis Khan’s time it was degüü.

By my calculations I owe you three words of the week. Continuing with the theme of words that make distinctions English doesn’t, this day’s (week’s?) word is дүү.

There’s probably no better word to begin talking about the differences between traditional Mongolian and English-speaking families. Дүү does not correspond in a one-way relationship to any English word for a relative, because it can refer to either a younger brother, or a younger sister. Mongolian does not have separate words for them. However, it never refers to an older brother (ах) or an older sister (эгч). Basically, дүү is a word that classifies relatives by their age, not their gender.

Of course Mongolians can be specific if they want. If they want to be more specific they can call a younger brother эрэгтэй дүү or бүстэй дүү and call a younger sister эмэгтэй дүү or бүсгүй дүү. English speakers can also add “younger” or “older” to the words “brother” or “sister” if they want to talk about how old they are. The point is that English speakers have to specify gender when they talk about siblings, but they don’t have to specify age, and that Mongolians have to specify age, but they don’t have to specify gender (at least for younger siblings).

This is part of a bigger pattern. English words for relatives usually indicate the gender of the relative (except “cousin”). They don’t distinguish the ages of people in the same generation. Mongolians words for relatives don’t always distinguish the gender of the relative, but many of them distinguish whether relatives in the same generation are older or younger. For example, in addition to the words for siblings, Mongolian also has different words for one’s aunts and uncles, depending on whether they’re older or younger than one’s mother or father.

Perhaps in Mongolian culture age is just a bigger deal than it is in America. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that older children often participate in the family’s work, including acting as a caretaker for younger children. Children of different ages really aren’t considered the same or equal. I do know that in my сум (county), children of rural nomadic families usually have to live in a dormitory during the school year. Students are grouped in dorm rooms primarily by who is related to whom. For most of the year school children don’t live with their parents, but they do live with their older brothers and sisters, who are then responsible for their дүү нар (that’s the plural of дүү). Of course this doesn’t apply to the hundreds of years before Mongolians had primary-school education. I don’t really know the reason, but I do know there is some deeply ingrained social reason that Mongolians feel that the age of relatives is essential information, but Anglophones don’t.

She’s дүү-er than me

Дүү refers to age in a more general sense because people use it to talk about who’s older or younger, even when they aren’t related to each other. To say that someone is younger than you, you would say something like,

Тэр надаас дөрвөн нас дүү.

She-NOMINATIVE me.ABLATIVE four year younger-sibling

“She is four years younger than me.”

using the word for younger sibling. It could be rendered into English as “She is my younger sister by four years,” but “she” doesn’t have to be related to the speaker at all in order to say this. Here, it simply means, “She is four years younger than me.”

Confusion

If the different way of talking about relatives confuses you, don’t worry, it confuses Mongolians too. Mongolian schoolchildren seem to have been taught that English “brother” is equivalent to Mongolian ах (older brother) and English “sister” is equivalent to Mongolian эгч (older sister). They also know that “younger brother” and “younger sister” both mean дүү. However, it’s never pointed out that Mongolian and Western notions of family are different, or how. Many of them don’t realize that “younger” is a separate word that describes “brother” or “sister” and is completely optional. This means that whenever I talk to Mongolians, they almost always tell me that a younger brother is a “younger brother.” For the rest of the conversation, they will continue to use the full phrase “younger brother,” even though I knew long ago that he was younger.

In fact, many of them don’t realize that a “younger brother” is still a kind of brother and that a “younger sister” is still a kind of sister. This means that (no joke) I have also had conversations like this:

Me:                  Do you have a brother?

Student:            No, I do not have a brother. But I have two younger brothers.

Me:                  ???

I really think these kids need to learn more about culture, not just memorizing vocabulary and grammar rules.

Erecting a Ger - Part IV: Inside the Ger

Inside the ger, they put up curtain-like wall hangings. These sheets are the equivalent of wall paper. They look prettier than the wall framework and gray felt sheets. Like some of the other stuff, they have loops that are tied to the top of the wall beams and hang downward.

Now they attach the rope that runs from the very center of the roof ring, goes through the eastern pillar, hangs down, and and is bunched up above the roof poles. Every ger has one of these, but I don’t know why. I'm convinced it must be symbolic rather than functional. In fact, it's taboo to hand your clothes (or anything else) from this rope.

Now the floor needs more work. When it turns out that the floor boards aren’t completely even, one of the boards is padded up by folding an old instant-noodle bulk box and slipping it on top of the board, underneath the plastic floor cover. Now the floor is even!

Giant rolls of scotch tape seal the cracks / gaps in the plastic sheet, so less air seeps in through the bottom of the ger. (Fun fact: The Mongolian word for tape is скоч, from the word "scotch.")

Later part of the floor will get covered with a proper carpet. But as one of my friends asked, since Mongolians have been living in round gers for thousands of years, why don’t they make round floor coverings or rugs?

This is not round

Now the ger is complete and people can live in it! (Well, actually, they still need to set up at the bed and stove.)

Erecting a Ger - Part III: Dressing the Ger

A layer of canvas is put over the roof poles. Ropes help keep it down.

So do cloth loops.

Then there’s a felt sheet over the roof.

Push more of them up with a spare pole.

Felt sheets around the walls. Ropes threaded through one corner of the sheet, over the roof, and threaded again through the other corner, help keep the sheets on the ger.

Putting up the paper covering.

This is Russian. Apparently the paper covering is … milk?

Putting up the waterproof plastic tarp.

More canvas on top.

There are two pillars on either side of the doorframe. Two ropes (or in this case, giant rubber bands, I guess) run all the way around the outside of the ger. They are looped around the poles and then tied to the doorframe.

MWW 9: ингэ

Cyrillic	ингэ
Transcription	inge
IPA	[iŋk]
Layman’s Pronunciation	INK
Translation	adult female camel
In Genghis Khan’s time it was ingge.

Today’s word is an example of something where Mongolian makes much finer distinctions than English does, and perhaps about how Mongolians care a lot more about camels than Americans do. Today’s word is ингэ, an “adult female camel.” This means that the camel it refers to is fully-grown and female. It is not a male camel. It is not a baby camel. And it most certainly never ever refers to a male llama embryo. By contrast, poor English only has the very broad word “camel,” and to get the level of specificity above it has to tack on two adjectives for a total of six syllables, all to say what Mongolians can say in one concise syllable: ингэ.

Erecting a Ger - Part II: Assembling the Framework

The center of the ger is put together first, upside down. The pillars are lashed to the roof ring.

Roof ring + pillars

Some other people extend the walls and put them up around the floor. You can’t tell, but the tops of the walls lean inwardly slightly. The walls themselves are also a little bent. So the side of a ger isn’t straight but a little convex.

Putting up walls

This is the assembled pillar-and-window set, lying in the middle of the ger and waiting to be put upright.

The beams at the edge of each wall fit together with the edge of the next wall like a puzzle. A rope is woven through the place where they join.

Edges of walls with rope woven through

Then the roof poles are put up. The laced ends rest on top of the walls, and the twine loop is looped over the beams in the walls. The tapered ends are fitted into the notches of the center ring. There’s also a rope running around the top of the ger, through the wall beams, and another one running through the wall beams near the bottom.

Roof poles in place

Twine loop + top of the wall

Roof poles fitting into the roof ring

The ropes running the circumference of the ger are tied to either side of the doorframe. There’s also a rope running from the roof ring to the top of the door frame. Everything is getting all tied together, literally.

Doorframe

Here's another rope in the roof. It must have some function, but I don’t know what.

Another rope

Erecting a Ger - Part I: Building Materials

Since I’ve already discussed winterizing an already-standing ger, this time let’s discuss putting up a ger from the ground up. Three months ago (of course) I got to help put a new ger together, although I ended up doing more photography than actual labor. It’s OK though, they understood that I don’t get to see this in the U.S.

Seeing as this is so long, I'll try something new and split this into several posts. It's a ger-building series!

Elements of a ger

In this first picture you can see the parts of a ger gathered together and laying in a dusty yard. We have the doorframe, walls, center pillars, canvas cover, tarp, wall hanging, rope, roof poles, center ring, and floor. Here they all are individually:

Ger floor

At this point the floor (шал or хаяа) has already mostly been put together. The workers swept, leveled, and stomped the area where the ger would be put up, and layed out nine wooden floor pieces made of boards nailed together. Then there’s a thick plastic sheet with a fake linoleum design on it.

  

Ger walls

A ger wall (хана) is a framework of hinged wooden beams that can be compressed or stretched out like an accordion. The size of a ger is expressed by how many walls it has. My ger is a five-wall ger, so there are five of these accordion-like segments put together. This ger only has four, so it’s a little smaller than mine.

Here's a close-up

Roof ring

The roof ring (тооно) is the ger’s “window,” the round opening at the top of the ger in the center. It is painted with traditional designs. The outer rim of the ring has slots for the ends of the roof poles to fit into.

8259

8263

Roof poles

These poles (унь) form the roof, or at least the basis of the roof, of the ger. One end of each roof pole has a twine rope threaded through it. The other end is tapered.

Pillars

These pillars will hold up the roof of the ger. They are also highly decorated.

Ger coverings

Among the various sheets and covering that go in the ger are the canvas layer, the wall hanging, and the water-proof plastic tarp, all shown here.

These paper sheets - basically like a giant paper bag - also form part of the covering.

Felt sheets (эсгий)

Ger door (хаалга)

Next up: Assembling the framework...

MWW 8: дээл

A girl wearing a deel, the Mongolian national costume. Hidden in the pattern of her deel are the words for various traditional Mongolian clothes, written in эвхмэл бичиг.

Since we recently had Mongolian National Deel Day, дээл (deel, often spelled del) is a fine word for this issue. In this case, “Mongolian National Deel Day” is not really a “day.” Nor was it a “week.” True to the way of doing things here, which sometimes seems strange to me, Deel Day was actually four days long, lasting from Monday through Thursday (but not Friday). Also, it was not a nation-wide celebration. It was our school’s idea to do it and as far as I know only we did it. “National” here instead is meant to refer to the fact that the дээл is the national dress, for both men and women. The point of Mongolian National Deel Day was probably to stir up pride in traditional culture. More concretely, it was to get all the faculty, staff, and students to wear the national costume for four days.

Cyrillic	дээл
Transcription	deel
IPA	[te:ɬ]
Layman’s Pronunciation	DALE
Translation	del/deel, traditional Mongolian robe
In Genghis Khan’s time it was debel.

The дээл is a kind of robe, but instead of being buttoned in front like American clothes, it’s fastened on the side. Putting on a deel, first the right side of the robe is pulled over the front of the body, all the way over to one’s left side. Then, the left side of the deel is pulled over the right side. On the edge of that left flap are tiny cloth loops. There are also tiny cloth knots on the right side of the deel, under the sleeve and on the shoulder. To fasten the deel you slips the knots through the loops, just as you would slip a button through a buttonhole. Then a бүс (deel belt) - like a long scarf - is wrapped snuggly around the waist. Your deel is fastened!

The left and right flaps of the deel and the belt create a large pocket on your chest. Deels have collars, that can also be fastened by loops and knots. The bottom of the deel usually goes all the way down to the top of one’s boots, covering the legs too. The sleeves are much longer than a person’s arms. Traditionally Mongolians didn’t wear gloves. When they went ouside they just let the edge of the sleeve hand over their hands, and when they needed to do fine handwork, they flipped back the sleeve.

Deels can be made out of different kinds of fabric. There are also different seasonal deels. Summer deels are thin and light. Winter deels can be very heavy and are often lined with felt. Both men and women wear deels, although the fashions for each of them differ. Everyday deels are usually a dull blue or green, but festive deels come in all colors and usually have geometric patterns embroidered on them. All Mongolians used to wear deels, but under Soviet influence and modernization, professional people began to wear suits. Since the nation’s democratization many people follow Western fashions, and kids dress a lot like kids in the U.S. Nowadays some herders still wear deels on a day-to-day basis, but for everyone else, deels are usually worn on special occasions, sort of like tuxedoes, or like kimonos in Japan.

Mongolian students wearing deels

Blue Christmas

You know, now three weeks without using the internet doesn’t seem like such a long time.

I was excited to get a nifty thermometer for Christmas and installed it in my ger. If I make a fire, the thermomemeter will spring up as high as 37°C (98.6°F). If I don’t make a fire, during the middle of the day the temperature in my ger stays fairly consistently just below 0°C (32°F). Unfortunately, it only goes down to -10°C (14°F), and every morning when I wake up it’s at the lowest reading, so I’m never sure if it’s really -10°C or if it actually got colder and my thermometer was just unable to register it.

Speaking of Christmas, I spent Christmas in the аймгын төв (aimgiin töv, provincial center) with five other regional PCVs, two Korean KOICA volunteers and some of their Mongolian friends. Mongolians don’t get Christmas off, but luckily it was on a Sunday this year. Next year I may have to file for time off to celebrate.

When I got back, some of my possessions were frozen, and some weren’t. The peanut butter, 5% vinegar, soybean oil, and milk (4%!), as well as all water, froze. The jelly, 70% vinegar, bleach, and dish soap did not.

My village had a Christmas-themed New Year’s party with a blue Santa Claus. Mongolians don’t know much about American holidays and most of them think Christmas is the American New Year. I told some people that it’s a different holiday, but I think what they got out of it was, “Americans celebrate New Year’s on December 25.”

Santa Claus

Left to right: School director, Santa, student, soum governor, two students, school social worker. The students won an art contest.

Santa and the snow fairies