This is Randi Hacker with another Postcard from Asia from the KU Center for East Asian Studies.

Mongolian, which is taught at KU, is an Altaic language meaning it’s agglutinating meaning it uses suffixes to express ideas that in other languages would be accomplished using separate words. In this Postcard, we’ll deal only with those suffixes that take the place of prepositions. You can thank me later. Anyway. There are suffixes that mean of, to, by, with and from. So, for example, eej means mother, eejiin means of mother or mother’s; eejid means to mother; eejeer means by mother; eejtei means with mother and eejees means from mother. The sound of the suffix changes depending on what vowels are in the root word. Thus Kansasaas from Kansas and Mongoloos from Mongolia. Let’s put this to practical use in our sign off, shall we? Listen now…

Center for East Asian Studiesaas, this is Randi Hacker. Wish you were here.