MWW 33: Зуд

Cyrillic	Зуд
Transcription	zud
IPA	[tsʊd]
Layman’s Pronunciation	DZOOD
Translation	blight, disaster, harsh winter
In Genghis Khan’s time it was jud.

A зуд, or “harsh winter,” is a Mongolian term which covers a variety of weather disasters, which all have one important common denominator: animals can’t find forage, so they can’t eat, and they die. As such it is a particular and very bad kind of хатуу өвөл (harsh winter). There are a variety of reasons why animals might not be able to get food, and this is the basis for distinguishing different kinds of зуд.

• Хар Зуд - “Black Zud.” Little rain falls during the summer, so there isn’t much plant growth and not enough food is left for the winter. The animals run out of food, so they can’t eat and they die. Since I’ve also seen this as харын зуд, where the appearance of the genitive ending -ын suggests that we’re dealing with a noun here, maybe it could also be translated ominously as “Zud of Blackness.”
• Цагаан Зуд - “White Zud.” A bad blizzard. Snow falls buries the land. The snow is so deep animals can’t dig their way to the plants underneath. They can’t eat, and they die.
• Ган Зуд - “Gan Zud.” During this kind of zud, rain falls and then freezes, trapping grass inside a solid sheet of ice that animals can’t break through, so they can’t eat and they die. A lot of sources call this an “iron zud,” because ган means “steel” or “iron.” However, I don’t see the connection with iron, and there are at least four other homophones of ган[1][2], so I wonder if these people may be translating ган зуд wrong, albeit evocatively.

Aside from that, the phrase зуд турх means “famine.” When any of these disasters happen, you may say:

Зуд	бол-	-сон.
Zud	become	PAST
A zud happened.

Zud can be more generally a term for any disaster, as in this saying:

Сүрэг малын зуд байгалиас
Сүрэг	мал	-ын	зуд	байгаль	-аас
herd	animal	GENITIVE	disaster	nature	ABLATIVE
Animal disasters are from nature
Сурагч хүний зуд залхуугаас
Сурагч	хүн	-ий	зуд	залхуу	г	-аас
student	person	GEN	disaster	lazy	(epenthetic consonant)	ABL
Student disasters are from laziness

Zuds are a big deal. For a herder who depends entirely on animals, a bad zud can wreck his life. For the entire country, whose major industry is herding a zud can mean economic disaster. When this many animals die, people end up going hungry as well.

People are always wary of a zud happening and will do whatever they can to mitigate it. In my area, early September, about the time frost arrives, brings a frenzy of mowing, as everybody and their mother hoards hay to feed their animals during the winter. A lot of rain fell this summer - an unusually large amount, people say - so we will definitely not have a Black Zud. And it’s already pretty late for rain to fall, so we probably won’t have an Ice Zud.

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[1] Altangerel

[2] Mongolian Tour Guides Association